Those of you interested in issues of Genetically Modified Organisms, you can sign up to participate in the 8th conference on Biotechnology. The details on what is to be discussed in this e-conference and the procedures of joining the discussion are included in the forwarded message below.
Enjoy your week. ----- Forwarded message from Biotech-Admin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----- Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2002 17:10:39 +0100 From: Biotech-Admin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: Biotech-Admin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Launch of FAO Biotech e-mail Conf. 8 (Research) To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Dear Forum Members, We wish to announce that Conference 8 of the FAO Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture begins on Wednesday 13 November and runs for four weeks, finishing on Wednesday 11th December 2002. The title of the conference is "What should be the role and focus of biotechnology in the agricultural research agendas of developing countries?". The second conference to be hosted by the Forum in the year 2002 therefore deals directly with a topic that has arisen on various occasions in previous conferences of the Forum. By dedicating an entire conference to this theme we hope to encourage a useful and positive dialogue that will provide food for thought and be of assistance to policy makers in developing countries. The outcome of the conference will also be used in the preparation of The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) 2003, which is one of FAO's main publications, providing an annual report on current developments affecting world agriculture. The purpose of this message is to invite you to join the conference and to provide you with the Background Document for the conference. Please pass this information on to other colleagues that might be interested in joining the conference. As the Background Document sets the scene for the conference and highlights the elements to be discussed, it should be read carefully by members wishing to participate in the conference. The Background Document will be put on the web next week - at http://www.fao.org/biotech/C8doc.htm. NB NB NB NB NB !!!!! You, as a Forum member, are NOT automatically subscribed to this conference. Instead, if you wish to join, you should subscribe yourself. I. TO SUBSCRIBE TO CONFERENCE 8: To subscribe, please send an e-mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] leaving the subject blank and entering the one-line text message as follows: subscribe biotech-room4 No other text should be added to the message (e.g. mail signature) otherwise FAO's mailserv facility will reject the subscription request. Note, you must first be a member of the Forum to subscribe to the conference. If someone wishes to both join the Forum and subscribe to the conference, send an e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] leaving the subject blank and entering only the following two-line text message: subscribe BIOTECH-L subscribe biotech-room4 II. TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM CONFERENCE 8: You may leave the conference whenever you wish. This can be done by sending an e-mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] leaving the subject blank and entering the one-line text message as follows: unsubscribe biotech-room4 No other text should be added to the message (e.g. mail signature) otherwise FAO's mailserv facility will reject the unsubscription request. III. TO SEND A MESSAGE TO CONFERENCE 8: Compared to the first six conferences, which typically lasted two months, this conference is shorter, lasting just four weeks. We encourage you therefore to participate actively right from the beginning of the conference. You can send messages now. Messages will be posted in the period from 13 November to 11 December. All e-mail messages posted during the conference will be placed on the Forum website at http://www.fao.org/biotech/logs/c8logs.htm. To contribute to the conference, send your message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Before doing this, remember to carefully read the Rules of the Forum as well as the Guidelines for Participation in e-mail Conferences, which you got by e-mail in the Welcome Text when you first joined the Forum (also available on the Forum website http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp). Note: participants are assumed to be speaking on their own behalf and not on behalf of their employers, unless they state otherwise. IV. ARCHIVES: All messages posted during the conference will be stored and can be retrieved. The messages are stored in monthly files. To retrieve them you send an e-mail message and the stored messages are sent to you by return as an e-mail message. To get any messages posted in the conference during November 2002, send an e-mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] leaving the subject blank and enter the one-line text message as follows: send listlog/biotech-room4.nov2002 To get any messages posted during December 2002, send an e-mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] leaving the subject blank and enter the one-line text message as follows: send listlog/biotech-room4.dec2002 Note: lower case letters as shown here, and not upper case letters, must be used. No other text should be added to the message (e.g., mail signature). V. CONTACTING US: If you have questions or comments about the Forum, contact the Forum Administrator at [EMAIL PROTECTED] This e-mail conference will be moderated, so that all messages will be screened before they are posted to ensure that they follow the Guidelines for Participation in e-mail Conferences and the Rules of the Forum (e.g. that they are not offensive), are not too long (600 words should be the maximum length) and are directly relevant to the topic of the conference. The moderator will play an active role in the conference to ensure that the discussion is of high quality. If you have questions or comments about this e-mail conference you may contact the conference moderator at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Best regards The Forum Administrator e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] FAO website http://www.fao.org Forum website http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp FAO Biotechnology website http://www.fao.org/biotech/index.asp VI. BACKGROUND DOCUMENT TO CONFERENCE 8: What should be the role and focus of biotechnology in the agricultural research agendas of developing countries? 1. Introduction The second conference to be hosted in the year 2002 by the FAO Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture deals directly with a topic that has arisen on various occasions in previous conferences of the Forum - the role and focus that biotechnology should have in the agricultural research agendas in developing countries. By dedicating an entire conference to this theme we hope to encourage a useful and positive dialogue that will provide food for thought and be of assistance to policy makers in developing countries. The outcome of the conference will also be used in the preparation of The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) 2003, which is one of FAO's main publications, providing an annual report on current developments affecting world agriculture. 2. Agricultural Research At the "World Food Summit: five years later", which took place on 10-13 June 2002 at FAO Headquarters, Rome, Italy and was attended by delegations from more than 180 countries, Heads of State and Government unanimously adopted the "Declaration of the World Food Summit: five years later" (http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/MEETING/005/Y7106E/Y7106E09.htm#TopOfPage). Among other things, the Declaration considered (in paragraph 25) agricultural research and biotechnology, stating "We call on the FAO, in conjunction with the CGIAR and other international research institutes, to advance agricultural research and research into new technologies, including biotechnology. The introduction of tried and tested new technologies including biotechnology should be accomplished in a safe manner and adapted to local conditions to help improve agricultural productivity in developing countries. We are committed to study, share and facilitate the responsible use of biotechnology in addressing development needs". The importance of agricultural research is clear when consideration is given to the very difficult challenges that farmers in developing countries must face in the coming decades. For example, Pardey and Beintema in a recent report (2001) from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) express this quite clearly: "Little land remains for the expansion of agricultural production (and some of the land, water, and other natural resources needed for agriculture are being degraded and diverted to other uses in other sectors), so crop and livestock yields must continue to increase for the decades ahead. They must then be maintained - at these much higher levels - for the foreseeable future against environmental, biological, and other factors that undermine past gains in production. Continued strong performance in research and innovation is needed to maintain a favorable food balance if, in addition to the 6 billion people we already have, we are to feed 3 billion more over the next half century" (see http://www.ifpri.cgiar.org/pubs/fpr/fpr31.pdf). In the same report, Pardey and Beintema provide an overview of the status and key trends in global agricultural research. They estimate that investments in public agricultural research rose from $11.8 to $21.7 billion (in inflation-adjusted terms) from 1976 to 1995, although in some areas (e.g. Sub-Saharan Africa) growth in spending halted in the most recent years analysed (1991 to 1995). Considering the latest figures (circa 1995), a total of 47% of investments were made in developed countries while 53% went to developing countries, specifically to China (10%), Asia and Pacific, excluding China (21%), Latin America and the Caribbean (9%), the Middle East and North Africa (7%) and Sub-Saharan Africa (6%). The influence of individual countries was quite significant. Four countries (France, Germany, Japan and the United States) accounted for two-thirds of the spending in developed countries while three countries (Brazil, China and India) accounted for 44% of spending in developing countries. These public sector investments were, however, quite small when expressed as percentages of the agricultural Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the percentages were lower in the developing than the developed world. Investments represented just 0.6 and 2.6% of the agricultural GDP in developing and developed countries respectively (i.e. for every $100 of agricultural output, developing countries invested $0.62 in public agricultural research and development). Investment per capita was also considerably lower in the developing world i.e. $2.5 versus $12 in developing and developed countries respectively, or $8.5 versus $594 spent per agricultural worker. In addition to publicly funded agricultural research, Pardey and Beintema estimate that funding from the private sector accounted for an additional $11.5 billion in the mid-1990's, representing roughly one-third of the global agriculture research investments. However, unlike public sector resources, these were invested almost exclusively (94%) in developed countries. As a consequence, just over half of all agricultural research carried out in developed countries was funded by the private sector whereas in developing countries, research was almost totally funded by the public sector. 3. Agricultural Biotechnology Research Biotechnology is a collection of tools that can be applied to many areas of food and agriculture. The range of tools is very broad, as can be seen from the Background Documents to the first four conferences of this Forum, dedicated to the crop, forestry, animal and fishery sectors respectively. Some of the technologies may be applied to all these sectors as well as to agro-industry, such as the use of molecular DNA markers, gene manipulation and gene transfer. Others, instead, are more specific, such as vegetative reproduction (crops and forest trees), embryo transfer and freezing (livestock) or triploidisation and sex-reversal (fish). Some of the biotechnologies, in particular, offer tremendous potential to address real problems facing farmers in developing countries. For example, the area of genomics, allowing the identification and characterisation of individual genes influencing traits such as disease or stress resistance, growth rate or yield, promises to be of great value. The genetic material (genomes) of several hundred species, including mammals, plants, fish, bacteria and viruses, has already been sequenced or sequencing is in progress and the information generated from genomics studies in other fields, such as human medicine or basic science, may also be useful for the application of genomics to food and agriculture. There are no clear figures in the literature on the relative resources being invested by the various stakeholders in agricultural biotechnology research. The information that is available focuses primarily on the crop sector where it is clear that the vast majority (maybe 65-80%) of agricultural biotechnology research is carried out by the private sector in developed countries. For example, Byerlee and Fischer in a discussion paper from the World Bank (2000, http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDS_IBank_Servlet?pcont�tails&eid
