WHEN genetically modified crops first hit the market in 1996, opponents warned that they could seriously damage the environment and human health. Proponents countered that the new technology was safe and would “feed the world”, as Norman Borlaug, the Nobel prizewinning agronomist, later wrote in an editorial in The Wall Street Journal.
Since then, the debate has shed more heat than light. But GM crops have built up enough of a track record for us to begin assessing what they really mean for farmers and the environment. And, peering up the biotech companies’ pipelines, we can get a sense of…
