In future, we will depend on crops that can withstand drought, heat, pests and pathogens, and produce the same yields with less fertiliser. In China, a genetically modified variety of rice has been developed that requires less nitrogen fertiliser in the soil, which benefits the quality of drinking water. The same technology could also be used for grain crops such as wheat, barley and maize, all of which are grown on a large scale in Switzerland. Thanks to new methods, such as the “gene scissor” (CRISPR-Cas), new varieties of pest and drought-resistant crops can be bred with utmost precision and thus avoiding non-specific breeding methods we used in the past, such as chemicals or radioactivity (see also this
blogpost
). Among livestock, the genetically modified Enviropig that has been developed in Canada and China can utilize feed phosphate 50% more efficiently, thus reducing phosphate in animal waste, which could also be of advantage for Swiss agriculture. Such advances achieved with modern breeding methods help the environment and thus reduce the ecological footprint of agriculture.
Threat to agricultural innovation
Without modern breeding and development methods, we will not achieve agricultural breakthroughs that benefit our society and environment. A ban of these methods, which is explicitly demanded in the Food Sovereignty initiative and implicitly in the fair food initiative as well, would make our agricultural sector dependent on technological progress elsewhere. Our national crop research would effectively come to a halt. Today, Switzerland is a global leader in agricultural research and development. Scientists at Swiss universities develop solutions for agricultural and nutritional challenges that find applications all over the world. Adoption of the Food Sovereignty Initiative in particular would be a devastating for Switzerland’s status as an internationally leading research location and for agricultural innovation. We need both, however, if we want to be fit for the future.
This text was first published in modified form as an independent article in the NZZ am Sonntag. It was co-authored by Wilhelm Gruissem and
Beat Keller
, Professor of Molecular Plant Biology at the University of Zurich.
