15. Dr. Peter Kenmore, Senior Officer, Integrated Pest Management, FAO, introduced the theme and presented a matrix (Fig1) showing the inter-linkages between the scale of effects and the level of responses. He noted that agriculture, which included forestry, fisheries and farming covered roughly 40% of the surface of the globe and provided some of the best studied systems from the viewpoint of ecosystem functions, trophic-level interactions, community assembly and energy flows. Agriculture and the associated biodiversity are key components of environment and biodiversity as recognised in the Convention of Biological Diversity3. While the scale of environmental effects of GM crops could be categorised under three levels namely the crop-field, crop associated biodiversity and the natural landscapes; the environmental issues arising from them can be clustered under three separate but interconnected themes depending on their scope and impacts. These are hazards (mostly direct effects), ecological resilience (mostly indirect effects); and agricultural practices. He looked for scientific guidance from the experts that would assist FAO and member countries to provide practical methodologies for assessment of the environmental effects holistically and in an integrated manner.
16. Dr. Paul Jepson, Oregon State University, USA, discussed the importance of selecting appropriate temporal and spatial scales in the design of experiments and monitoring programs that seek to quantify the hazards and benefits associated with new agricultural technologies including both pesticides and GMOs. The expert pointed out that real-world scale of agriculture more closely matches the scaling of population processes in pest and beneficial species than does the scale of conventionally designed experimental studies. Significant ecological effects, including local extirpation of beneficial species, may only be detected when the practice is adopted on a large scale that intersects with the scaling of critical factors that govern local persistence of pests, and their predators and parasites. Examples were provided from long term farming systems studies in Europe and USA, particularly those that measured local persistence of beneficial species in sprayed agricultural systems. Systems vary in their sensitivity/resilience in the face of new agricultural technologies, and experiments/observations that capture the intrinsic characteristics of a given system were likely to provide realistic predictions of ecological impacts. Experiments like the on-going multi-site farm-scale assessments of GM crops being carried out in UK, would capture trends associated with treatments applied in many farms that span a complete agroecosystem. The expert felt that there was a need to consider monitoring through properly designed experiments to provide data and general surveillance of possible eventualities.
17. The key points of the discussion in this session were as follows:
3 The Programme of Work on Agricultural Biodiversity of the CBD (COP decision V/5).
http://www.biodiv.org/programmes/areas/agro
