The European Union may still be resisting genetically-modified crops but GM plants continue to spread across farmland elsewhere.
The leading annual survey of GM in agriculture, published earlier this year by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), showed the worldwide area of “biotech crops” increasing from 114m hectares in 2007 to 125m ha in 2008, producing a harvest worth $7.5bn. The number of farmers planting GM crops rose from 12m in 22 countries to 13.3m in 25 countries.
