GM crops: global socio-economic and environmental impacts 1996- 2009

This paper is relevant to the impact areas in the following areas:

Crops	Cotton, Maize, Oilseed Rape, Other, Papaya, Potato, Soybean, Sugar Beet
Traits	Not Trait-Specific
Countries	Not country-specific
Regions	Not region-specific
Tags	environmental, overview, socio-economic

Abstract or Summary

Some of the key highlights from the report are:

Biotech crops have contributed to significantly reducing the release of greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural practices – in 2009, this was equivalent to removing 17.7 billion kg of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or equal to removing 7.8 million cars from the road for one year;

Biotech crops have reduced pesticide spraying (1996-2009) by 393 million kg (-8.7%) and as a result decreased the environmental impact associated with herbicide and insecticide use on the area planted to biotech crops by 17.1%;

There have been substantial net economic benefits at the farm level amounting to $10.8 billion in 2009 and $64.7 billion for the fourteen year period.

GM crops: global socio-economic and environmental impacts 1996- 2009 (held on an external server, and so may require additional authentication details)

CropLife International fully acknowledges the source and authors of the publication as detailed above.