Global organic farming now occupies 26-M has

Organic farming, developing rapidly throughout the world, now occupies 26 million hectares. This practice of farming is a systematic conversion of land to certified practices that ensure food safety and security from the farm to the table, a comprehensive and fully traceable system.

According to the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements’ study – ‘The World of Organic Agriculture Statistics and Emerging Trends in 2005" – 36 countries achieved organic mega-country status in 2004, meaning that over 50,000 hectares of certified organic land are currently being cultivated. Overall, 26 million hectares of organic farms generated over $25 billions in revenues in 2003.

One hundred eight countries with 558,449 farms are currently certified, and many millions of people are involved in the production, marketing, processing and distribution of organic farm produce, generating immense incomes for a great number of people as they enhance biodiversity and protect the environment for future generations.

Organic agriculture is a holistic system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. Certified organic products are those which have been produced, stored, processed, handled and marketed in accordance with precise technical specifications and certified as organic by a certification body. The use of GMOs within organic systems is not permitted during any stage of organic food production, processing and handling.

An annual report on the amount of global biotech crop acreage is issued by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA). The 2005 report indicates that there were 14 biotech mega-countries in 2004 (countries where more than 50,000 hectares where biotech crops are being grown.)

Biotech crops grown in so-called mega-countries are planted indiscriminately without any substantive regulatory framework. Increasing reliance on dangerous herbicides and pesticides creating super-weeds and destroying biodiversity in order to increase yields in the short term but ultimately rendering the cropland unproductive while simultaneously contaminating the world’s major crops with undesirable characteristics. For this contamination, the biotech industry should be held liable under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.

Biotech crops were not approved for human consumption but nevertheless entered the food supply, prompting the recall of over 300 contaminated food products from shelves in the USA and to the illegal entry of 1,000 tons of Bt10 into the European Union, also not approved for human consumption and the recent publication of internal Monsanto documents, reviewed by EU scientists, revealing serious health damage to laboratory animals fed with Monsanto’s new GM "rootworm-resistant" corn. Rats fed with mutant corn developed smaller kidneys and blood abnormalities.

Biotech crops containing industrial enzymes, pharmaceutical viruses, antibiotic resistance markers have been planted in large-scale field tests for years in the USA, but tests for those experimental crops do not exist, and thus it is likely that contamination of agricultural crops is much more widespread.