Genetically modified crops in Switzerland: implications for agrosystem sustainability evidenced by multi-criteria model

Abstract

In Switzerland, genetically modified (GM) crops have been banned in 2005 and have never been used in agriculture. The relevance and sustainability of genetically modified crops for agrosystems have been assessed following a mandate from the Swiss Parliament defined by the Federal Act on Agriculture (187d al.1). For that, an ex ante study based on a multi-criteria decision analysis model that summarises literature and the opinion of experts has been done.The impacts of genetically modified crops on both environmental and socio-economical sustainability in Switzerland have been assessed. Here, we review four model crops for Swiss agriculture: maize, sugar beet, potato and apple. Each crop was compared for both conventional and genetically modified farming systems that contain a specific trait, namely insecticide production (Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt)), herbicide tolerance (HT), fungal resistance (FR), or bacterial resistance (BR). Results show that six out of seven scenarios showed a lower socio-economical sustainability for genetically modified compared to the conventional systems, whereas a slight improvement in the environmental component, mostly resources use, was observed in all scenarios. In conclusion, our work indicates that only carefully tailored and designed genetically modified crops would meet the high standard of requirements of Swiss agrosystems. Our model has thus allowed a quick diagnostic on the impact of genetically modified cultivation on sustainability.

The Future of Digital Sequence Information for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

“…More work is needed to evaluate the relevance of the proposed models for each specific sector and the potential impact of digital “free-riding” on science, innovation, breeding, and ultimately food supply. Taking advantage of operational research methods, sustainability prediction of each particular model presented here is possible in a more quantitative way by applying robust decision-analytic tools used in other policy-making fields (Wohlfender-Bühler et al, 2016; Zheng et al, 2016). Whatever the most appropriate model of treaty-based international regulatory regime for PGRFA and their commons may be (by a reform of the existing instruments or by a new overarching treaty that would specifically fit to digital genetic resources), it appears already clearly that an increased degree of multilateralism and harmonization is necessary to align to the current practices and unravel the formidable potentials originating from digitization of PGRFA.…”

Evaluating Agricultural Sustainability Based on the Water–Energy–Food Nexus in the Chenmengquan Irrigation District of China

“…Studies over the past two decades have developed a wide variety of methodologies for evaluating agricultural sustainability. Most of methodologies have a similar structure constructed by index selection and data gathering, reference values definition, weighting indexes, and index aggregation [6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. However, there are huge differences between selections of indexes.…”