Bolivia concentrates GM food production

Date:07-23-2013

Santa Cruz de la Sierra is the region where genetically-modified food production is concentrated, which already includes four crops in Bolivia: sugar cane, rice, cotton, and corn.

Researcher of Food Security entity, Manuel Morales, said that in the field works he performs, he proved that agricultural producers, mainly in Santa Cruz, use transgenic seeds. This was ratified by the National Institute of Agriculture, Livestock and Forestry Innovation (INIAF) to the Strategic Research Program of Bolivia (PIEB).

Effective legal regulations permit transgenic soybean production. In this respect, 98% of more than one million planted hectares in Santa Cruz is transgenic.  Morales said that in the field works they discovered that “rice is also transgenic, because our producers cannot sow again once they harvested rice, so they have to buy rice seed; and the situation is similar in the case of the sugar cane”.