Russia will be planted with GMOs

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Sowing other people's genes: the Russian government allowed the registration of the seeds of genetically modified plants

In Russia, it is allowed to sow genetically modified crops - this follows from the government decree No. 839 adopted on September 23, Oleg Sukhanov, head of the market research department of Bunge (one of the world's largest sunflower oil producers), said at the Agroholdings of Russia conference.

The decision comes into force on July 1, 2014, the seed registration process, he believes, will take a couple of years, the first crop of genetically modified soybeans can be harvested in 2016-2017.

Now in Russia, GMOs can be grown only on experimental plots; the import of some varieties of corn, potatoes, soybeans, rice and sugar beets (22 plant lines in total) is allowed. However, several of Vedomosti's interlocutors know that vertically integrated agricultural holdings have been actively sowing their fields with GMO fodder in the past. Food products with the use of GMOs are allowed in Russia, but must be labeled.

Registration of GMOs is attributed to the jurisdiction of several departments: the Ministry of Health will deal with those used for the manufacture of drugs, Roszdravnadzor - medical devices, Rospotrebnadzor - food, Rosselkhoznadzor - animal feed. The finished certificates will be entered into a special register of GMOs and products obtained with their use - it will be kept by the Ministry of Health.

The first permits can be obtained in 1, 5-2 years after the start of registration, says the President of the Russian Grain Union Arkady Zlochevsky. IKAR CEO Dmitry Rylko has been talking about at least three years. How much it will cost to obtain a certificate, the resolution does not say. “It will depend on the normative documents, where the order will be regulated,” says the representative of the Rosselkhoznadzor Alexei Alekseenko.

The most promising GMOs are soybeans, corn and sugar beets, says Vladimir Petrichenko, general director of the Prozerno company. Zlochevsky believes that GMOs will be popular with farmers: "Genetically modified soybean seeds cost about 1.5 times more than usual (from 25,000 rubles per 1 ton), but their use can reduce the cost of the final product by 20%." According to Sukhanov, the yield of soybeans in Russia in 2013 was 0.97 tons per hectare with a harvested area of 1.2 million hectares, and the average yield of GMO soybeans in Argentina, Brazil, the United States was 2.5-3 tons per hectare. ha.

According to Rylko, in the US, 85% of corn, 91% of soybeans and 80% of sugar beets are GMOs. "Soybeans are a high-margin crop, which may interest agroinvestors, but they may lose the export premium for non-GMO products," Sukhanov said. Zlochevsky is confident that GMOs will not completely replace traditional varieties due to consumer demand for organic products.

Syngenta, Monsanto, KWS, Pioneer can become importers of GMO seeds to Russia, says Petrichenko. In Russia, according to Zlochevsky, the Center for Bioengineering of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the All-Russian Research Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology are engaged in development, but domestic seed production covers only a third of the needs, Russia remains import-dependent.

According to the website gmofree.ru, 14 regions in Russia are classified as GMO-free zones, including Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Belgorod region. It is because of this that Efko is in no hurry with GMO, which owns one of the country's largest soybean processing plants. “The main consumers of our soybean meal are meat enterprises in the Belgorod Region, a GMO-free zone. If the policy of the region changes, then we may switch to GMO soybean seeds,”says Efko CEO Yevgeny Lyashenko.

Alekseenko believes that the resolution was adopted prematurely: "It will take considerable effort to carry out laboratory work to assess the quality of seeds." It is also wrong to draw conclusions about the safety of seeds on the basis of the dossier drawn up by the applicant, Alekseenko is sure.

The production of GMO products is possible, health and environmental risks have not yet been registered, said Dmitry Yanin, chairman of the board of the International Confederation of Consumer Societies. Rospotrebnadzor also supports the use of GMOs.

The impression that the use of GMO seeds reduces the cost of production is deceptive, says Anna Lyubovedskaya, Director of External Relations of the Union of Organic Agriculture: “GMOs are not reproduced. Farmers will have to constantly buy such seeds abroad, since we have almost no seed production of our own”. For their cultivation, special and very poisonous herbicides are required, which will also have to be bought from Western producers, Lyubovedskaya is sure.

Rylko does not see an explosive growth in the use of GMOs by farmers in the future. In a 10-year perspective, a maximum of 20-30% of corn will be produced using these technologies, he is sure: "If we see more aggressive growth, it will mean that the process has become uncontrollable." We will have to spend money on separate storage, a laboratory monitoring system, which will also slow down the transition of agriculture to GMOs, he is sure.

Maxim Basov, CEO of Rusagro, said in an interview with Vedomosti in 2011 that with the help of GMOs, irrigation and spot farming, sugar production can be increased by at least 2 times. One of the problems of Russian agriculture is a small set of crops, which leads to a delay in the development of the agricultural industry: for example, wheat is already enough and is no longer needed, he continued, and some GMOs - rapeseed, soybeans, corn - would allow the peasant to diversify crop rotation.

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