An American journalist, scholar and GM advocate says Australia could be a leader in food biotechnology if politicians were willing to 'make some real hard choices'.

Jon Entine, a senior research fellow at prominent American agricultural school, the University of California, Davis, said Australian scientists were instrumental in developing a new apple that's resistant to browning after it's been cut.

But, he said Australia wouldn't see commercial benefits of the work.

"Australia helped develop the technology that developed the Arctic Apple, but they had to export it to Canada because there's no path to development in Australia," Mr Entine said.

"Do you want [Australia] to be an exporter of technology and ultimately see that part of the industry wither away?

"Or do you want to be on the forefront of technological change that can actually feed the world in a constructive way?

"I think politicians need to make some real hard choices."

In Canberra to address the National Press Club, Mr Entine said while GM technology was 'not a silver bullet', it was one of the tools the world needed if it was going to double food production by 2050.

"We need organic agriculture and some of the information that we learn from caretaking for our soil, we need agro-ecological innovations, but we also need modern technology," he said.

"If we didn't have synthetic fertilisers we could probably support a world population of 3-4 billion. We're close to double that now, so if we were to cut out synthetic fertilisers which were introduced in the green revolution, half the world population would have to die off.

"Well, we don't want half the world population to die off.

"We need technology, we just need to deploy it in a way that is ecologically sensible, and biotechnology opens up a lot of doors."

However, consumer concerns about GM crops persist.

Last month, Scotland's rural affairs secretary announced that country would seek to ban the cultivation of GMOs.

In Australia, a dispute between a GM canola grower and his certified organic neighbour has made headlines, and moratoriums on GMOs are still in place in Tasmania and South Australia.

Attitudes toward GMOs changing

Mr Entine said that in the United States, however, there had been a shift in the perception in favour of GM foods in recent years.

"Two years ago in the Unites States, the overwhelming majority of newspapers and the population was very, very pro-mandatory labelling, and very concerned [with whether or not] GMOs were safe," he said.

"Over the past two years we've had a major shift in public opinion.

"Every major liberal [left-leaning] newspaper, what we call the progressives, have been the ones that have been most sceptical [about biotechnology], I think because of the fear that it's a big business enterprise.

"There's been a real shift.

"The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, well known science publications [like the] Scientific American, the American Medical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy for Sciences - these are all very, very well known progressive organisations.

"Every one of them have come out for the safety of GMO foods and for opposing mandatory labelling [of GMO foods] on the grounds that labelling as it's been proposed in the US would be very deceptive for a whole wide range of reasons.

"That's a sea change. That wouldn't have happened a few years ago."