Tim Jeanes reported this story on Monday, June 20, 2016 12:49:26

ELEANOR HALL: In South Australia, an infestation of Russian wheat aphids is triggering debate over the use of genetically modified crops.



GM crops are banned in South Australia but the Australian grains industry is promoting a pest resistant strain of genetically modified wheat as a way to counter the pest.



Opponents of GM though say conventional controls should be used.



Tim Jeanes reports.



TIM JEANES: The discovery of the Russian wheat aphid in South Australia's Tarlee region last month sent shudders of concern among Australia's grain industry.



It's since spread across other South Australian grain growing regions and into Victoria.



If left untreated it can cause damage of up to 75 per cent.



Unlike many, biodynamic farmer Phillip Dunn from Tarlee is sanguine - confident that natural predator insects will take care of the problem.



PHILLIP DUNN: It's a bit of an unknown. We can't spray so there's no other option. We're pretty busy and whatever happens, happens. I can't worry about it so we'll just play it by ear.



TIM JEANES: But not everyone is so confident natural bugs will be the answer with hopes GM technology may be able to provide answers.



MATTHEW COSSEY: There's certainly the capacity and in fact there is international research going on to develop new aphid resistant GM wheat varieties and other crops.



That's why innovation in agriculture is so crucial.



TIM JEANES: That's the chief executive of Crop Life Australia, Matthew Cossey representing Australia's peak body of the agricultural chemical and biotechnology sectors.



South Australia and Tasmania have banned the use of GM crops until at least 2019.



Proponents of GM technology say that's hindering national research projects as it makes research dollars less likely, with investors put off by the prospect of developing products that can't be used across the country.



Mr Cossey says the South Australian approach is bad public policy.



MATTHEW COSSEY: States like South Australia should get rid of these antiquated moratoria that serve no purpose except to make farming harder.



TIM JEANES: Could this be done with non-GM techniques?



MATTHEW COSSEY: Well, we advocate the research should go on in all spaces from the plant science industry but GM research and GM crops still provide some of the greatest breakthroughs that technology is 30 years proven, it is the safest plant breeding that has ever been done in human history.



GM crops in fact are the most tested food technology in human history altogether and it is the science that really holds some very, very important breakthroughs for farming into the future.



TIM JEANES: Not so says the executive director of the group Gene Ethics, Bob Phelps.



He says wheat varieties have proven notoriously difficult to develop using GM technology and the state should keep its moratorium.



BOB PHELPS: Well, the new genetic manipulation technologies known as gene editing pose the same kinds of hazards at least as the old cut and paste techniques to the environment, to public health.



TIM JEANES: But go to any supermarket in America for example and there's a fair chance that you buy your canola, corn, soya bean products, you will be buying a GM product. Surely if these health risks that you say are real, they would have been banned?



BOB PHELPS: We're not saying that anybody is going to die tomorrow from these things but for instance the recent revelations about the most used herbicide in the world glyphosate, that it's a probable human carcinogen; these things should concern us and the same with the slow burn impacts of genetic manipulation.



ELEANOR HALL: That's Bob Phelps from the group Gene Ethics, ending that report from Tim Jeanes.