While many private firms, research institutions, and public agencies have been very active in communications regarding the benefits of agricultural biotechnology over the past 25 years, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has been marginally engaged at best. In 2004, the FAO released its State of Agriculture Report which focused on agricultural biotechnology and what technology could provide to the food insecure. The FAO received a lot of criticism from activist environmental organizations for supporting agbiotech and subsequently pulled back on events and initiatives in this space. Over the intervening years, the FAO has had very limited involvement with agbiotech.
After 20 years of relative inactivity on the agbiotech file, it came as quite a surprise to many in the agriculture industry when the FAO announced in early 2025 that it was organizing a conference on agricultural and food biotechnology, including gene editing technologies. From June 16-18, 2025, the Biotechnologies for a Sustainable Future: Driving Agrifood Systems Transformation conference was held at the FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy. The conference brought together a wide representation of farmers, scientists, academics, government representatives, and non-governmental organization representatives, many from the Global South. Informative sessions were held on topics ranging from agbiotech’s contributions to improving food system sustainability to how biotech innovations will contribute to improvements in crop production, livestock production, forestry, and aquaculture.
I was fortunate to have been included as one of the academics attending the three-day conference. Given that some of the FAO messaging in recent years has been heavily favourable of organic food production and agro-ecology, I was quite uncertain about what to expect.
The stage was set by the opening comments from Qu Dongyu, the Director General of the FAO, who stated that agbiotech would be critical for the future of improved sustainable food production. A statement this bold would have been unimaginable from the FAO ten years ago, but it set the stage for the conference. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the conference was the comment from Victor Manuel Villalobos Arambula, former Secretary of Mexico’s Ministry of Agriculture that genetically modified (GM) crops provide benefits to food production and environmental benefits like reduced pesticide use and that biotechnology regulations need to be science-based. During Secretary Arambula’s tenure, he led the campaign in Mexico to ban GM corn imports and to ban the use of glyphosate. Now that Arambula is no longer bound by politics, he has completely reversed his views and soundly rejects the activist environmental propaganda that was responsible for the GM corn import and glyphosate bans and is strongly supportive of science and innovation. This was incredibly refreshing to witness.
It would have been impossible for the FAO to not include environmental activists, but fortunately, they were limited to just a few representative presentations. Given the Director General’s strong statement on the importance of science and innovation, not only was their participation limited, but their messaging was soundly refuted by representatives from the Global South. One activist presenter stated that agro-ecology was a viable solution for improving food security, but evidence presented on the impacts of GM cowpea production in Nigeria thoroughly refuted this message. This research confirmed yield increases of 18-20% and profitability increases of 47-52%. Upon hearing their deliberate false information soundly and thoroughly refuted by expert scientists and evidence, the activists abandoned the conference. The activists attended the opening session and closing session and were not evident in the audiences for any of the sessions in-between. Their lack of participation in the conference confirmed that eNGO activist organizations are not interested in the environment or improving food security.
It quickly became evident in the sessions that the FAO has realized that gene editing holds tremendous promise for increased food system resilience and the sustainability of food production. Presentations from industry, as well as academics, clearly identified that the gene editing revolution will be led by small and medium enterprises, not large, multinational companies as was the case with the commercialization of GM technologies.
Officials with FAO identified that a plan of action would be developed from the conference and used to guide future initiatives. This is promising news as having a leading global institution like the FAO leading the push for risk appropriate regulation of gene editing technologies, this will deal a severe blow to the deliberately false information campaigns from eNGOs. Many governments in the Global South place high confidence on the FAO and will increasingly view eNGOs as barriers to the domestic ability to increase food security.
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