The result is a second wave of GM food crops adapted to the needs of poor nations. Emerging nations are turning to gene splicing to boost food supply and to protect harvests from the ravages of climate change, pests and pathogens. The new crops are hardier and healthier versions of staple crops. In the works are South African potatoes that repel tuber moths, Brazilian lettuce with a superdose of folic acid, a natural source of the vitamin B that aids neural development in babies, and Chinese rice that can withstand heat and drought. India is using biotech to improve bananas, cabbage, cauliflower, sweet corn, groundnuts and okra. Brazil is ginning up black beans to outsmart the mosaic virus that claims up to 90 per cent of harvests. Malaysians are fortifying papaya against the devastating ringspot disease.

It’s been more than a decade since biotech companies began to redesign agriculture by splicing genes from bacteria into crop plants or between different kinds of food. This first generation of transgenics were mostly cash crops, such as herbicide-resistant soybeans and maize. Big farmers found them easier and cheaper to manage, but they offered no benefit in taste or significant savings to consumers. In the developing world, biotech firms oversold GM products as a silver bullet for world hunger, kept a tight lid on their technology, and charged high prices. The effect was to inhibit research and frustrate poor farmers. Public opinion quickly turned against the technology, at least for food crops.

Gradually, though, a shift in attitudes, consumer habits and trade practices has been wearing away at the barriers. Significantly, developing countries are leading the way: more than 13 million farmers now plant biotech crops on 125 million hectares worldwide, triple the area planted with GM in 2000. Twenty of the 25 countries sowing GM seeds are in the emerging markets. Brazil, India and the Philippines are plowing government money into the “gene revolution”. South Africa is now the world’s eighth largest producer of biotech crops. India is the world’s fourth-largest grower of GM cotton, and China is the biggest investor in agricultural biotech after the United States. After years of balking, Beijing last year launched a $2.9 billion plan to develop a line of GM crops over the next decade.

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