Leading article: There is no reason for a blanket ban on GM crops

Some plants that look dead can suddenly spring back to life again. Genetically modified crops seem to have accomplished such a trick. After a prolonged period of quiet, GM is back on the political agenda. The environment minister, Phil Woolas, told this newspaper yesterday, after talks with the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, that these crops might help alleviate the present global food price crisis.

Gordon Brown reiterated this message yesterday at a meeting of European Union leaders in Brussels. After years of bowing to public hostility to GM crops, the Government seems ready to play a more active role in promoting them.

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Longstanding opponents of GM, such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, have reacted with hostility. While these environmental groups do a valuable service in influencing many aspects of public policy, this newspaper believes they are misguided in their blanket rejection of GM.

Some of humankind's most significant advances throughout history have been a result of agricultural innovation, from irrigation in ancient Mesopotamia, to Jethro Tull's seed drill. The genetic modification of crops can be part of this noble tradition. Drought and salt-resistant strains of crops have the potential to increase yields considerably and to bring more land under cultivation.

It is, of course, simplistic to argue that GM alone can solve the global food shortage. The present crisis is too complex for any quick-fix solution. And there are, at present, no GM crops with these particular capabilities on the market. But GM technology certainly has the potential to play an important part down the line in bringing more land under cultivation in the developing world and Africa.

The projected growth of the global population presents one of the most serious long-term challenges to world policy makers. To put it bluntly, if we fail to increase agricultural yields on our planet, people will starve. Faced with such a chilling scenario, it would be positively immoral for governments to reject GM out of hand.

This is a story that governments around the world need to tell. They also need to confront public fears about the health impacts of so-called "Frankenstein foods". There is no scientific basis for arguing that these crops present a threat to human health. And the environmental lobby groups have done a disservice to the debate by seeming to endorse such scare stories.

Yet, despite all that, there are legitimate public concerns about the effect of herbicide resistant GM crops on ecological diversity. This is where a crucial distinction needs to be drawn.

At present the only commercially available GM crops are those that have been designed to be resistant to powerful weed killers. This enables farmers to dump vast quantities of chemicals on the land without harming the crop. Not only does this have a catastrophic impact on the local ecology, it also does very little to boost yields. There is also justified scepticism of companies such as Monsanto which have, thus far, deployed their energies, not in boosting overall production levels, but cornering the agricultural seed market.

The Government's re-invigorated support for GM technology is welcome. But if it is to be successful in winning over public support for these crops, it needs to make it clear that what it wants to see is improved yields, not crops resistant to ever more powerful weed killers. We will not feed the world by decimating its plant and wildlife.