Why GM crops won't fly in South Australia.

Advocates have failed in their bid to stop the State Government’s suspension on the introduction of GM crop technology in South Australia.  Not because of what they have said, but because of what they haven’t said.  Or rather, the key questions they haven’t answered.

That is, how will the introduction of genetically modified grain to South Australia’s much differentiated food system add value to customers and consumers of our products here and abroad?

Rightly so, the State Government has adopted an integrated perspective of South Australia’s food industry.  For example, understanding the relationship between food and tourism is why an integrated perspective is important for South Australia.  Hence, we have Tourism Ministers making announcements about South Australia's food system.  A smart marketing move.

Whilst individual debates such as GM technology will always circulate, the ground-swell of opinion across South Australia’s broader food industry is that we needed to dare-to-be-different and use this to build a sense-of-place about South Australian food that can be marketed to the rest of the world.

Whether or not GMs are safe is not the issue here.  The South Australian food industry has a mantra to provide premium food produced at the highest standard and to give people an authentic food experience.  It is the current view of consumers that GM foods are not premium quality and are not authentic - safe or otherwise.

Consequently, the State Government has developed, prioritised and committed itself to a range of new programs and market-centric strategies that are propelling South Australia’s food industry around the globe and is capturing a niche in consumer sentiment.

For the moment that means some individual farm-gate requests have not been met in order to achieve the greater good for South Australia’s food industry.

It is vital that the local grain production community soundly demonstrates how their future wishes at the farm-gate can be integrated into the greater vision for South Australia already under way.

Farmer choice at the expense of consumer choice is not how things are done.  Clearly, this is not the request of South Australia’s grain producers.

But what has not been explained is how the grains sector intends to work-in with the rest of South Australia’s food industry vision on the issue of GM crops.  It is important that primary producers of all types view themselves as part of the broader food value-chain community in South Australia, or risk being isolated from the decision making process.

Without that buy-in, it will be 2019 and beyond for no GM.

Food for thought.

So what do Australian consumers think about all this?

It's interesting that a lot of the debate about GM gravitates around whether or not they are safe for consumers. 

For the average punter in the supermarket, whether or not GM is safe scores quite low. Why? 

Because in Australia we have generally kept consumers in the dark about GM. What is influencing their decision against GM the most, is that consumers actually see no real value in having GM foods. They see no benefit in altering food that way. 

Consumers are not scared of the advancement of powerful new sciences, because they know it does great things such as cure disease.

But why food?  Would Australian consumers buy into the need for food security, as this is often presented as the case for GM crops?  

The average consumer would not be aware the world already produces enough food to feed 12 billion people.  But most families understand food waste and the need to reduce it.  

So if food security is the problem statement, then consumers would change their attitudes about food waste much sooner than they would change their attitudes about lifting productivity via GM, simply because they see value in one and not in the other.  

This demonstrates the power of consumer decisions to lift the efficiency of the entire food chain, not just one group involved in supply.  These are the type of local market shifts Australia should be aiming for, to improve the profitability of our entire food industry.

With the information consumers do have available when making decisions about foods to buy, what scores highly then are things like origin, quality and authenticity. They use these to work out points-of-difference and points-of-parity. 

The SA moratorium is not about whether or not GM is safe. It's about deliberately targeting what we know consumers do currently value, in order to extract a premium from them. 

As it stands today, consumers do not view GM as authentic, premium or provenant - safe or otherwise. 

If you want to grow GM you need to convince consumers THE VALUE of eating them.