As biotech crops span globe, backers cheer growth

By Carey Gillam

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Reuters) - Food and fuel prices are soaring and farmers are scrambling to meet demand. And for makers of biotech crops, that adds up to a bright future.

Debate over the risk and benefits of such crops, which use genes from other plants and other organisms to effect special traits, still rages in many nations.

But from the U.S. Midwest, where farmers this spring will seed new fields full of transgenic soybeans and corn, to the other side of the world where Chinese farmers are growing genetically altered cotton and other crops, biotech agriculture appears to be taking root.

"It's my judgment that the ag biotech industry has a huge head of steam," said Charles Benbrook, former executive director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences and a critic of biotech crops. "They are prevailing in wearing down the opposition."

The good times are rolling for U.S.-based Monsanto Co, a world leader in manipulating plant DNA to make crops resistant to weedkillers and insect pests. The company's surging sales pushed its stock up 150 percent over the last year as farmers stocked up on the company's seeds and chemicals.

Corporate giants such as Syngenta, DuPont Co, Bayer CropScience, BASF, and Dow Chemical Co are also expanding their reach around the world, promoting technology they say can better help feed people and livestock, create alternative fuels and put more money in farmers' hands.

Naysayers dispute that the tech giants are doing anything more than deepening a base of chemical-friendly crops that help boost sales of herbicides. The majority of the biotech crops commercialized today are engineered to tolerate dousings of herbicide to help farmers kill weeds easier.

But biotech backers say the proof is in the bottom line. Acreage planted to the many different biotech crops is expanding around the world as prices for food and fuel rise rapidly and demand for corn, soybeans and other crops increases in Asia, Latin America and other growing economies.