our ability to achieve those sort of reductions in insecticide use. But not only that but seeing the productivity gains that we have observed. MR LINDWALL: So you’ve got the productivity gains plus the environmental benefits? MS MULLER: Yes. MR LINDWALL: You think you can operate your GM crops next to non GM crops of another type of crop, without cross - - - We have strict refuge policies in place which ensure that MS MULLER: there isn’t those sort of issues. MR LINDWALL: So you minimise those risks. MR BAXTER: But you’d have on northern New South Wales and Queensland where you’d have, say, 1,000 hectares under crop and maybe two or three kilometres away you then have somebody growing wheat? MS MULLER: Yes, I would say that would definitely be the case. But you wouldn’t necessarily get - it would depend on the harvest cycles and things like that. MR BAXTER: Sure. Yes, understood. Yes, you would definitely have operations where you MS MULLER: have cotton, a GM crop, operating in - a cotton farm is not all over cotton farm, so there might only be 40 per cent, the rest might be grazing or other sort of cropping. Plus you can’t do, necessarily, back to back cotton and things like that. Actually on the farm itself then growers might be growing sorghum or whatever else they might be growing and there’s been no reported incidences of issues. MR BAXTER: The state moratoria on GM technology, is that affecting the growth of the cotton industry in Australia? MS MULLER: I would have to defer to our person who works on stewardship. We were certainly supportive of removal of the moratoria and I think that in terms of what has been outlined in our draft report, there are new breeding technologies which potentially are not being able to be taken up. Plus there’s issues associated with strain traits, which I think are also of issue and that may be impacted by the moratoria.
our ability to achieve those sort of reductions in insecticide use. But not only that but seeing the productivity gains that we have observed. MR LINDWALL: So you’ve got the productivity gains plus the environmental benefits? MS MULLER: Yes. MR LINDWALL: You think you can operate your GM crops next to non GM crops of another type of crop, without cross - - - MS MULLER: We have strict refuge policies in place which ensure that there isn’t those sort of issues. MR LINDWALL: So you minimise those risks. MR BAXTER: But you’d have on northern New South Wales and Queensland where you’d have, say, 1,000 hectares under crop and maybe two or three kilometres away you then have somebody growing wheat? MS MULLER: Yes, I would say that would definitely be the case. But you wouldn’t necessarily get - it would depend on the harvest cycles and things like that. MR BAXTER: Sure. Yes, understood. MS MULLER: Yes, you would definitely have operations where you have cotton, a GM crop, operating in - a cotton farm is not all over cotton farm, so there might only be 40 per cent, the rest might be grazing or other sort of cropping. Plus you can’t do, necessarily, back to back cotton and things like that. Actually on the farm itself then growers might be growing sorghum or whatever else they might be growing and there’s been no reported incidences of issues. MR BAXTER: The state moratoria on GM technology, is that affecting the growth of the cotton industry in Australia? MS MULLER: I would have to defer to our person who works on stewardship. We were certainly supportive of removal of the moratoria and I think that in terms of what has been outlined in our draft report, there are new breeding technologies which potentially are not being able to be taken up. Plus there’s issues associated with strain traits, which I think are also of issue and that may be impacted by the moratoria.
20160819-sydney-agriculture.docx