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20 SEEDWORLD.COM JUNE 2016 South America Excels Brazil is the second largest grower globally with 44.2 million hectares planted thats 25 percent of global production. Farmers in Brazil planted the stacked heat toler- ant insect resistant soybean on a record 11.9 million hectares in 2015 just three years after its launch according to ISAAA. Argentina saw 24.5 million hec- tares planted with GM crops. While many farmers in South America have access to GM tech- nology the controversy here lies with royalty collection. More and more companies are resistant to bringing their newest innovations to the market without having some form of compensation in place for the research and development that went into those new innovations. In South America royalty col- lection systems vary from country to country. For example Uruguay is known to have a good system in place while Brazil and Argentina do not. This leads to consternation in the market. For instance Monsanto recently canceled its plan to sell its new bio- tech seeds in Argentina because of disputes over royalty payments. Monsanto had been discussing a royalty collection plan with government officials but agricul- tural authorities under Argentine President Mauricio Macri ques- tioned Monsantos efforts to collect payments from farmers. In a statement Monsantos Brett Begemann president said that the governments actions were not consistent with its past promises to support intellectual property rights and private agreements. In order to bring more inno- vative products into the region frameworks such as royalty collec- tion need to be developed. Controversy in North America Moving north to the United States there are currently nine crops are approved for commercial plant- ing maize soybean cotton canola sugar beet squash alfalfa and papaya and potato. In Canada four crops are approved. This year the United States saw a number of firsts including the commercialization of Innate Generation potatoes Arctic Apples and GM salmon. Additionally the first non-transgenic genome- edited crop to be commercialized globally SU Canola was planted in the United States. The big issue here is consumer acceptance and whether the U.S. would follow Europes lead. The seed industry continues to try and educate the public about the sci- ence and technology but it can be difficult to cut through all the noise. The biggest question is how new breeding technologies will be received by both regula- tory authorities and consumers Wesseler notes. Companies are innovative enough to develop new tools to respond to the challenges agri- culture is facing in developed as well as developing countries he says. The most significant bottle- neck isnt the technology itself its the regulatory systems. They can speed up or delay the innovation process. Influencing those system in a positive way is key Qaim says but is anything but easy. Consumers are so misinformed and theres so much pressure on poli- cymakers not to move forward and approve various technologies that could have many benefits he says. I have a lot of optimism that in the long run people will come to their senses and we will realize that without modern biotech and genetic engineering we will not be able to manage the challenges of sustainable development in the future. But in the short term Im not optimistic well see dramatic new GM crops being released and accepted worldwide. SW Farmers in Brazil planted the stacked heat tolerant insect resistant soybean on a record 11.9 million hectares. 44.2 million hectares of biotech crops planted in Brazil. 25 of global GM crop production goes to Brazil. 24.5 million hectares of GM crops were planted in Argentina.