Poor farmers warned off Internet GM crop deals

By: Rex Dalton

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<h1>Poor farmers warned off Internet GM crop deals</h1>
<h4>By: Rex Dalton</h4>
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<p>A Northern Irish couple is using the Internet to tempt farmers in developing nations into planting crops that are genetically engineered to produce commercially useful molecules.<BR><BR>The couple hopes to broker contracts between the farmers and biotech firms seeking new regions to grown biopharmaceutical crops such as transgenic maize and tobacco.<BR><BR>But environmentalists and scientists have expressed concern at these attempts to get poor farmers from Asia and Africa to agree to make thousands of hectares available to biotechnology companies.<BR><BR><a href="http://www.nature.com/login/scidev_login.taf?ref=/nature/journal/v421/n6925/full/421776b_fs.html" target="_blank" onclick="pageTracker._trackPageview('/tracking/external/'+this.href);" rel="noopener noreferrer">Link to full <em>Nature</em> news story</A><BR><BR>Reference: <em>Nature</em> 421, 776 (2003)</p>

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<p>This article was originally published on <a href="https://www.scidev.net" target="_blank">SciDev.Net</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.scidev.net/global/news/poor-farmers-warned-off-internet-gm-crop-deals/" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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A Northern Irish couple is using the Internet to tempt farmers in developing nations into planting crops that are genetically engineered to produce commercially useful molecules.

The couple hopes to broker contracts between the farmers and biotech firms seeking new regions to grown biopharmaceutical crops such as transgenic maize and tobacco.

But environmentalists and scientists have expressed concern at these attempts to get poor farmers from Asia and Africa to agree to make thousands of hectares available to biotechnology companies.

Link to full Nature news story

Reference: Nature 421, 776 (2003)