Australia looks to GM crops after scorching 2007
Great News! Australia’s agriculture minister, Tony Burke, is encouraging farmers to combat climate change with genetically modified crops. Australia endured a devastating drought last year, and while the government cannot force farmers to grow gm crops, they did say they may start encouraging it’s use. Read more about this below.
C.S Prakash
Australia looks to GM crops after scorching 2007
Check biotech
January 3, 2008
SYDNEY - Australia's agriculture minister on Thursday hailed genetically modified crops as a means to help farmers combat climate change, as data showed 2007 was the country's sixth hottest year on record.
Agriculture Minister Tony Burke said Australia's farmers needed to face up to climate change, foreshadowing major changes to drought relief payments worth billions of dollars.
Burke said Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's recently-elected government wanted to improve farmers' ability to deal with climate change, rather than simply propping them up as they struggled through the worst drought in a century.
'What I don't want to see is situations where some people can go onto the system of relief and have no incentive during that time to actually improve the property to better deal with climate change,' Burke told commercial radio.
Questioned later on public radio about what farmers could do to help make their properties more drought-resistant, Burke said the center-left Labor government was considering genetically modified crops as a possible solution.
'There's some answers that may well be provided through genetically modified crops in different parts of the country,' he said.
'There'll be some places where there'll be specific water strategies, where there can be changes in ploughing methods.'
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