Europe’s summer of drought has been impossible to ignore. The hot, dry conditions have wreaked havoc on Europe’s agriculture. Most of the continent’s water-starved fields will produce lower than expected yields this summer.
This is reported by ProAgro Group citing Wired.
For some crops the difference is stark: Soybean yields are 15 percent below their five-year average while sunflower yields are 12 percent down. With agricultural supply chains already stretched because of the war in Ukraine, the vulnerabilities in Europe’s food system are looking extremely exposed.
If European droughts are here to stay, farmers might need new crop varieties that can withstand long, dry summers. Now there are signs that the EU’s position might be about to change. The European Commission is responsible for creating new legislation in the EU, and in April 2021 published a study outlining its desire to loosen regulations on gene-edited crops.
“The commission realized that the European Court of Justice decision was not science-based. It was legally based but it wasn’t science-based,” says Cathie Martin, a professor of plant science at the John Innes Centre in the UK. The European Commission’s study concluded that the EU’s existing GMO rules aren’t suitable for regulating crops made using gene editing. It also said that gene-edited crops could help the EU meet its goals for sustainability and food security.
