Are our trail blazers looking backwards?

When the Prime Minister, John Howard, recently announced another $350 million in drought aid for farmers he said we would "lose something of our identification as Australians if we ever allowed the number of farms in our nation to fall below a critical mass".

There has been much written about how Australia's national character emerged from a bush ethos:  the idea that a specifically can-do Australian outlook exists in rural and regional Australia.

Some environmental and animal welfare campaigns recently have challenged key assumptions, portraying farmers as harmful to the environment and inhumane.

But there has also been an attack on the idea of Australian farmers as innovators, risk takers and trail blazer from within.

Australia was the first country to release a genetically modified (GM) organism, the crown gall bacterium back in 1988.

But over the last 10 years things have stalled.  We only have GM cotton (released more than a decade ago), while overseas, farmers are growing GM canola, soybeans, maize and rice.

Indeed, recent research in Japan has shown that by inserting a gene from maize into rice it is possible to increase rice yields by 35 percent while sucking in 30 percent more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

But Australian farmers haven't gotten past the basics.  They still haven't opened the door to GM canola, a crop grown in Canada for 10 years.

With this year's canola crop failing across much of southern Australia and down to a likely harvest of just 20,000 tonnes in NSW this winter, it is quite possible Australia will be importing canola from Canada within 12 months.

We will be importing a product that our farmers are banned from growing.

It is no good simply blaming Greenpeace for the moratoriums on new GM crops in place across Australia.

The NSW Farmers Association supported the legislation and the organisation is still debating the health implications of eating GM food.

Never mind that people are eating GM foods all around the word and that the science is unequivocal:  it is safe!

Its is also worth reflecting that when the NSW Farmers Association supported bans on GM canola, we had already been eating vegetable oil made from locally-grown GM cotton for several years.

What happened to the idea of Australian farmers as risk takers and trail blazers?

While our farmers argue about the pros and cons of importing GM canola from Canada, farmers in much of the rest of the world are looking to the next generation of GM crop varieties that will combine superior yield and weed control with improved nutrition.

This week McDonalds said it will change the cooking oil used in its Australian outlets from standard Australian canola to healthier new oil blends with much less trans-fatty acid.

There are already varieties of GM soybean in the US with low linolenic acid profiles -- reducing trans fat and thus a reduced risk of heart disease.

Unless Australian farmers pull the finger out soon and remember what once made them not only so internationally competitive -- and national icons -- city folk will soon be looking elsewhere for their role models.  Maybe they already are?

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