 I'm Johanna Nusset. I'm Senior Vice President for Strategic Planning here, and I head up our work on global food security. We're really pleased to have you here. We're pleased to have a number of special guests, and we're pleased to have a chance to talk with you about a new report that we've put out just in the past couple of days. It's looking at the role of GM technology in food security with a particular focus on East Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. So I want to say a few words about the report and about sort of our process, but first want to recognize a couple of individuals and particular bits of information. First thing I have to say is that I want to point you to Jim Dunton, who's way in the back, who's never, ever recognized or noticed. But Jim has headed up our publications team for almost 20 years, and he's read every publication we put out, and he almost dropped to the floor when I told him we have a very special guest who's coming from Uganda. Can we please get this report done in two weeks? And so here it is. So Jim, thank you. I know that you never get any airtime, but we just really appreciate all that you do, because our publications are such an important part of what we do at CSIS to share ideas and research. So thank you. Yes. So I want to just give you a little bit of background about this project. And then the agenda for today is that Kristen Wedding, who's a primary author on the report, is going to walk through our findings and observations from our work. Jennifer Cooke is going to follow up. Jennifer leads our Africa program, and she's going to give a bit of a political forecast of adoption in terms of where GM products are with each of these countries and what some of the dynamics are within the region. And then for the bulk of our discussion, we're really, really honored to have Dr. Tushima Warewe from Uganda. He's a banana specialist, and is going to talk about Uganda's particular path on GM technology and research and communication, which is a very, it's just a really interesting story. And we're just so happy that you could be here. And he's going to be complimented by Dr. John McMurdy, who heads up USAID's work in this area. USAID has been supporting regulatory work, supporting research, supporting scientific capacity on biotechnology for quite some time. And John spearheads that within USAID now, but he's also complimented with a lot of people from other agencies. The Department of State has been very engaged on this set of activities in this issue area. USDA is, of course, very engaged. And we've got all the research universities throughout the US who also serve as partners, as well as the private sector in the US. So it's just a very dynamic set of partnerships, and we're really delighted to be able to talk about it today. To give you some background on how we came to this particular set of countries and set of issues, we actually are part of a set of projects that's funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Patrick Mitten is with us from the Foundation in the back. And so he's kind of stewarding these 14 research efforts. And Carl Prey is also with us who's doing another one. And really, the question the Foundation put out was sort of a big picture, how can science change lives, question, which is, can GM technology help feed the world? And from that, we said, well, we've been doing a lot of work on research and technology, scientific partnerships. We've also, we had done a baseline research piece on the GM debate in Kenya, South Africa, and Zambia. We did that, and it was published in 2010, and we took that on because as food security was starting to become much more of an issue and more of a focus area with the US, we felt that it was gonna be very quick that US congressmen and policy makers would turn to GM technology as an option. And we wanted to understand what is the lay of the land? What does public opinion really look like? And sort of what's the scientific debate and discussion and research look like in key countries? We come to this question in as neutral a way, I hope, as possible. We've tried to really look at our three countries over the past 18 months. We've done research trips. We've done many, many dozen interviews with scientists, with journalists, with policy makers, with smallholder farmers in rural communities to say what does this technology look like for you? Where is the science? Where are all of the products? And when might they come out? And who might adopt them? And what might that look like? And the results are really contained in this report where we try to really neutrally assess does this technology have a role? And is it likely to be picked up by smallholder farmers? And we did focus on food crops. And I think it sounds like a very niche topic. It sounds like a very narrow focus, but what we discovered as we got into it is actually quite large because it touches on every aspect of agricultural development, from research, to science capacity, to extension, to seed systems, to finance and credit. And ultimately, all of those systems need to work for any kind of new technology to take hold. As you all know, less than a third of land in sub-Saharan Africa is planted to hybrid crops. So the idea that you need to invest in all of the different systems to make any kind of crop or improved crop, improved technology crop is a very important one that we wanted to try to emphasize. But when I kind of asked myself throughout the course of all these discussions and all these meetings and all these trips, why are we looking at this? Is this really even relevant? Because there is so much to do. There's so much to do on agriculture in every country. And I think we all came away, as Jennifer and Kristen and Richard and others of us spoke with people. There are sort of three big picture issues that we felt made it really relevant for us to be looking at this technology. One is that this is sort of the forefront of ag. This isn't actually the cutting edge forefront of ag technology. That's nanotechnology. But this is one of the important parts of science. And scientists in every country want to be at the cutting edge of science. And they want to have access to be doing work in areas that are going to make a difference. So that's one important reason to look at it. A second reason is that these are very long lead times. To stand up a regulatory system, to get products honed for a particular environment or climate takes up to 10 to 15 years. So a country can't just say, oh my gosh, we had a massive drought this year, we really need this new thing. It's gonna take time. So that long lead time means it's important to be looking at it today. And the third, I think probably most overwhelming reason why we felt that this was an important issue was that there is a type of tool that GM technology can bring that other conventional breeding can bring. And I think all of us, as we looked at the situation, felt that the message that GM technology should be for increased productivity or for all kinds of different things is a tough sell. Because you can raise productivity in a lot of different ways. But there are pests, there are diseases, there are climate issues and drought conditions that really can't be tackled with conventional breeding. And for that reason in particular, we felt like it was really worth looking at this particular set of questions and really spending some time analyzing it. So with that, I wanna ask Kristen to give an overview of the project and findings and observation. And then we'll go from there. Thank you. Great, thanks Johanna. And I'm delighted to see you all here today. I also wanna start out by thanking a couple people. Anna Appelfield in our food security work, Richard Downey from our Africa program and Farhad Tahir from Africa program, really contributed greatly to the project, both conducting field research and also with writing the report. This was really a very large collaborative effort. So as Johanna said, I'm just gonna run through a couple of the key findings and then Jennifer will jump into what this means. I think one of the biggest takeaways is, looking at the vast food security challenges in these countries is that really one of the essential backgrounds or backbones is investing in delivery systems. Regardless of if the countries adopt GMOs, there are still a number of basic technologies that need to be adopted by smallholder farmers in order for any technology to really live up to its full potential. We noticed that the extension systems were very weak and the seed industry had a lot of deficiencies as well. Some of those barriers would need to overcome sort of regardless of if a country will end up moving forward with GMOs. And see, in assessing the debate between the three countries, we definitely noticed that it took place within the local context but was strongly influenced both with domestic governments, foreign governments, philanthropic groups, and NGO efforts. So much of the debate that was taking place at the local level mirrored a lot of the debate at the global level but also you could see how the domestic political structures really shaped it. The message that came across most clearly is, as Joanna mentioned, that talking about GM crops as a solution to potential problems really was a way to talk about the broader national food security debate at sort of a larger level that people could understand. So I think that's how the public becomes more involved in some of the GM aspects. Finally, I think one of the big pushing points is that political will is really gonna be making the big difference on countries choices, whether to move forward with these technologies or not. The domestic political structures are really shaping how the regulatory system set up and how scientific research is conducted and that will have sort of the long-term effects on commercialization and adaptation. As Joanna mentioned, one of the things we focused on was regulatory capacity. A lot of investment has been done in these countries. Probably Kenya's been involved the longest and has a pretty deep bureaucracy set up and a pretty sophisticated regulatory system. Uganda is just in the final stages of passing its biosafety laws and then Tanzania is still sort of developing it and probably is the most strict of three countries. We also looked at scientific capacity in each of the three countries and in thinking about this, we wanted to get a sense, we spoke with the scientists in all of the countries and really found that they're deeply committed to these issues and have been involved for a very long time and are driven by solving the food security issues in their countries and this really highlights the need to develop crops that are pertinent to local issues and that address those problems. But most importantly that this work is being done and that the scientists can be such great communicators to the broader public and the region on what types of technologies they're working on that can improve their country's food security situation. One of the recommendations that came out of this report was that they can take a really big lead both in communicating with the public but also the importance of training journalists and rewarding them for good scientific communication. The focus of the study really in the end was to look at the potential impact of GM studies, GM crops on smallholder farmers and in talking with a lot of the smallholders in the country we realized that this is sort of a largely ignored population when it terms to what their opinions are on it. Many of the farmers we spoke to had maybe heard of GM, had heard that it might make you infertile. I mean they just had heard a few sound bites of it. But quite honestly it's a product that's not available and if it was they probably wouldn't have access to it. So in the end it was a very abstract technology to them. It became after speaking spending the day with a group in Kenya and talking about their priorities the bottom line was sort of like well we'll use them if the government says they're safe and we can access them but I'd really like some solar light so I can harvest later in the evening or a plow. So I think there's a lot of things that need to be tackled along this path. But the bottom line really is that farmers need good products and need access to them. Finally we looked at these three countries as part of their regional dynamics and really have come away with the feeling that national policies are really gonna strongly impact what happens in the region. As if one of these countries moves forward to towards commercialization and I think as we're looking at it it looks like Uganda might head out first. It's likely that the other countries will try to keep up. I mean they're very interconnected. I think Jennifer will talk a little bit more about this but it's gonna be hard to sort of keep it in the bottom when neighboring countries see, neighboring farmers see that their farmers have access to these technologies. It's likely to spur on sort of that effect. One of the other big concerns that we came across is that there is really a real tangible fear toward that commercialization of these crops is gonna have negative trade impacts. And we commissioned a study by John Coleman and David Welfula that largely found this to be untrue in the sense that a lot of the crops that are being developed right now for food security crops are largely traded at the regional level and not necessarily exports to Europe so there needs to be a focus on how to communicate that to farmers and really how to consider what crops they're developing. Just to touch briefly on the high level points of the forecast for adoption. One of the biggest things is that ultimately consumer and farmer demand is really gonna drive the need for development of these crops but right now there needs to be almost someone to push those crops out so that's gonna probably be the government and the private sector and without this pull from local farmers it's hard to know how the government's gonna prioritize that in a lot of other competing political problems that it's facing without hearing a vocal call for these crops. Either way, adoption is gonna end up being sort of a longer process and it usually comes with fits and starts as opposition increases and decreases. And as I mentioned it'll likely spread through the region. Finally, I think just some sort of top line highlights on the adoption is that Kenya really has sort of led the way on developing a regulatory system and scientific capacity but it really lacks sort of a clear champion within the government. Just recently, I guess maybe last November that they have a regulatory system up and running but then they decided to ban GM imports and GM crops based on the advice of the health minister who isn't actually part of their regulatory system so in effect they have a biosafety system but didn't necessarily use it to regulate GMOs. So given the democratic nature of the country there really needs to be clear political champions within the country. Tanzania we found had really a strong and robust scientific community who was starting to feel a little frustrated with the work that they are doing on GM and it's a little bit of an uphill battle. There's much more public empathy towards the technology and more distrust of the private sector so I think in that sense it's a different public opinion battle to overcome. And they're also recipients of a lot of agricultural development dollars right now so I think that the Tanzanian government's also facing a lot of pressures to adopt some of these higher level technologies. Finally in Uganda we see that it seems there's been a quick steady incremental approach towards both the regulatory system and the science to go along with it so it's sort of tracked together and the government has been able to communicate a message that's uniformly positive and I think this also goes to the political structure of Uganda that a lot of talking to people the message was sort of that everyone's reading from the same script. They all had a clear vision of GMO as being a tool to improve food security but just recently as they're nearing the passage of the biosafety bill we're starting to see an upcrease in opposition so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. And then I just included a couple additional resources that we've published as I mentioned the trade and tribulations paper and then we have a forthcoming paper by Judy Chambers from Ithpre with an in depth look at the regulatory systems. So thank y'all turn it over to Jennifer now to do a in depth look. Great, thanks so much Kristen and Johanna and to you all for being here. I'm gonna keep it fairly short because I think there's a fair amount of overlap between the presentations and we want to get to our star turn and our guests today. So I thought I'd just say a little bit about some of the dilemmas and challenges that we found as these countries are moving forward on exploring GM crop technologies as a means to boost the productivity of small holder farmers which was really our focus in this. The things that have slowed the process and some of the things in my mind that will eventually drive the process forward. The first issue and as Kristen said is that there is really very little sign of a demand pull from the end user which is the small holder farmer. Obviously small holder farmer it's not a monolithic group it's very hard to say well the farmer say this or that but that actually doesn't stop a lot of people from speaking for the farmer. So I think there's no one opinion on the matter but one does get the impression that as of now that the idea of GM is fairly abstract for the average rural farmer. Some of the non governmental groups we talked to really spoke about the difficulty of explaining the technology in terms that a rural farmer can understand. I have trouble with the concept myself at times. One group that took us and introduced us to a group of farmers told us just please don't mention GM it's just still tainted and it's controversial and this was a group that was actually fairly a proponent of the technology. Opponents of the technology told us with no doubt in their mind that farmers are fearful that this will squeeze out traditional varieties that they are very wedded to their local varieties they don't want to lose those and they're very fearful of becoming entirely reliant on large corporate seed companies and scrupulous Western commercial interests. Proponents on the other hand told us that if farmers see a solution that minimizes risks from pests and disease that lowers the need for costly inputs and that increases productivity they'll probably very quickly overcome any skepticism. So I think one of the big challenges I'm sorry I'm losing my voice one of the big challenges is actually trying to gauge the opinion of smallholder farmers. A lot depends on how the technology is explained to them how the questions are framed and frankly who's interpreting the results in the end. So you actually get a very polarized view of depending on who's doing the talking and the interpreting of what small farmers that abstract question would be. Thank you. One thing that though that did seem clear is that as Johanna and Kristen both said is that GM technologies are not really a priority for the smallholder farmer even if the issues that they're intended to address are. A second dilemma in the absence of this strong demand pull from the smallholder and the end user the great burden of pushing the process in research and development in public communication in legislative and regulatory frameworks in dissemination and training in commercialization and so forth in regional harmonization all falls on the public sector and to some extent on the scientific community as well but the big question then becomes whether the government leadership can generate and sustain the political will and momentum on GM to see it through these various processes which require a good deal of heft a good deal of outreach across the government to the public and these are governments that are strapped with many other priorities within agriculture itself but then on a much broader range of things and we saw Kenya which had a surge on GM and a lot of excitement in the legislature had Rilo Dinga and Ruto behind it kind of then entered into an election year and kind of you see that kind of collapse after a while so that these are countries that are facing many priorities and GM frankly and the overall scheme of things that may be important for some and it may be seen as a big opportunity is not the big political priority particularly when there are varying degrees of public resistance and particularly that came up in Tanzania and an uncertain take up uptake by the eventual user. So what does help drive a sustained effort? First and I think again it's being mentioned is an empowered articulate scientific community that has the tools to communicate with policy makers and to communicate with the broader public. In Tanzania a lot of the scientists there told us they were frustrated, they wanted to be at that cutting edge but they acknowledge we're not actually very good communicators and we don't really, we don't have a whole lot of experience in explaining complex scientific issues and issues of risk and how do you measure risk and how do you balance risk to the public or to policy makers. So that was an acknowledgement there. In Uganda by contrast there actually is being a very strong effort to have this kind of consistent ongoing dialogue between the public, between farmers, policy makers and the scientific community where the kind of issues that come up from the public citizens you know does it make me infertile? Does it, you know, all those kind of things that oftentimes get laughed off and dismissed as foolish are taken seriously and answered in kind of a serious civil way. So building kind of a trust and mutual respect on that. Champions within government as I said, it can be a powerful driver but it's not necessarily reliable as we saw in the Kenyon case. Champions, if they're big and influential they probably have many things on their mind and their attention can turn. So in that way you need kind of a bureaucracy and a regulatory, institutional regulatory framework that is kind of working on the same page as working towards outcomes rather than simply process that there's been a consultative process not only with the public and the scientific community but within government so that people are talking on the same page and there's some consensus on that. In Tanzania we were told you know there are even within ministries there's a debate between the minister and the deputy, between one ministry and the other, between one regulator and the other. So there's not a lot of consensus there and there's a lot of turf and lines of authority that are not always clear. I'm really sorry about my voice. I don't know what's happened here. So I'll try to keep it short. Another thing that we'll drive it forward is kind of the go and see missions that we've seen and that has been an inspiration I think to scientists, to farmers, to legislators and to policy makers as they're trying to decide and actually seeing something that's concrete going to South Africa and talking to farmers there going to Burkina Faso and talking to the policy makers and the farmers about how that process happened has been extremely important and I think you know that's something getting the media involved in that as well I think is extremely important. A third dilemma is that as these processes and I think Kristian you mentioned it as they come to fruition and the issue becomes less abstract you're likely to see more resistance growing. You've seen this in South Africa where there's a big, very elaborate scientific infrastructure but there's still a lot of resistance and the kind of debates that go on here in Washington and so forth. A couple of things kind of going forward though that I mean I've given you some of the dilemmas of this. First I think there is likely to be a breakthrough. I think Uganda is a very likely candidate for getting something on the market. I think they projected to the commercialization stage 2015, 2016 perhaps and I think once you begin to see these pockets of places that have crossed that barrier there will remain kind of the very difficult challenge of disseminating it to farmers, get the uptake and so forth but I think that brings it from the realm of the abstract into the concrete and you get a very powerful demonstration effect that way. I think new markets so much as being kind of dictated and the perceptions driven by what happens in Europe and European markets. There are new markets opening up in the rest of the world, in China, India where other GM producers and I think that will kind of as Africa turns eastward perhaps that may lower some of the perceptions of risk and around that. I'm gonna really stop talking any moment. Finally, the regional dynamics. Again, if one of these countries moves towards GM right now at the regional level there's not a lot of discussion about how policies will be harmonized. The East African community doesn't really have this as an issue within its headquarters that was suggested. A lot of this though I think will depend on whether a Uganda or Kenya moves forward with the technology will likely draw along the region as well. There may be issues on that. I think Tanzania is still very much when one gets the sense of operating on the precautionary principle. People talk about something of a two track East Africa community with Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda kind of on the more moving ahead more quickly on integration and Burundi and Tanzania kind of struggling along. But I think ultimately it may take some time but that regional dynamic will push the technologies forward across the region. Just one last point on US engagement. The US does not wanna be in a position of really pushing this technology. I think it can add fuel to some of the debates that are happening within the country that are running their course. There's in those countries that have taken it up like Uganda, the US can be focused and present in talking. In others I think it could be very counterproductive. And there are so many other issues to be addressed to increase agricultural productivity and to help set the stage for the eventual uptake of GMOs where the US can be focusing that get it less mired in those controversies. Again I'll stop there and turn to our next speaker. I'm looking forward to the discussion and thanks again Joanna for having me. Okay well let me just mention one other person who's my nice husband Chris here who pointed out to me that for this project I was away one out of 12 work days over the past year leaving him stranded with our two young sons. So he was very kind and patient to do that. We're gonna make sure to leave ample time for Q and A at the end but I want to before we really turn to that to actually get sort of some stage setting comments from John and then Dr. Tush has a really wonderful and quite detailed presentation to really talk through where Uganda is. So I think we'll save that for when John finishes so we can launch into a very serious set of questions and answers. And you can speak from there or from the podium, whichever you'd like. Actually we'll just stay here if that's okay. This guy's on. You guys hear me? That's on. Okay well first thanks CSIS for the invitation. Nice for me to be here in front of all of you and thanks for Tush for making the stop over on your way back to Uganda. It's great to see you here in this setting versus our normal setting. I figured I'd talk a little bit about our rationale for USAID on investing in biotechnology and I think it hits on a lot of the points that Jennifer just finished with in that there's a lot of need out there. There's certainly more need than we as just one donor can possibly fill and there's obviously a finite amount of resources but I think it's the motivation on we really limit our investments in biotechnology to those products, those approaches that really have a high reward, that there's a need. It's a challenge that we haven't been able to solve through an alternative method and one where we can bring some specific advantages through our long history of exposure to this technology. So we supported biotech and I'll use biotech in this context just to mean transgenics for about 20 years now at USAID starting with some very early work by Michigan State University in places like South Africa, Egypt and a few other countries. So we have quite a history of doing this and our approach has always been to look for countries who have come and expressed a need and an interest to us. I think there's this perception a lot that we're forcing a lot of these technologies, these R&D projects, this policy engagement on countries when in fact we're actually responding to a lot of requests from countries who are interested. This is evidence in the places where we work. We're very active in places like Kenya, like Uganda, like Malawi where the government's very interested. They have problems they wanna solve and they've come to us to try and help look for some alternative solutions and indicative of why we don't work certain places where there's not as much of an interest, places like Zambia, places like Cambodia. So we really limit ourselves to where there is that need and that interest from the government. Our investment in biotech, it's about maybe between one and 2% of the Feed the Future initiative. Probably most people are familiar with the agricultural initiative at USAID. So it is very indicative that it's, that we're only using it to focus on sort of these big challenges and there's a lot of other activities going on out there. It's not necessarily how it's always represented in the media that USAID and Feed the Future is all biotech. It's really actually quite a small but important part of our portfolio. And of course only one of a handful of donors in this space. Pretty much us, the Gates Foundation, Diffit a bit, Rockefeller a bit, Howard Buffett a bit, Sita a bit. That's pretty much the list right there. So there's really not a lot of players and there's a very finite amount of things you can do. So it really affects our ability to make good choices on where we work. So just a couple of comments on the R&D side. We try and look for investments and opportunities where either the private sector hasn't had a willingness to engage because there's not a market or we look to really kind of buy down some of that risk. Focus on these high reward, high potential technologies. So that can cover the gamut of things that are further upstream. For example, we support a number of new technologies using RNAI interference as an approach to address several diseases. It's much more upstream research but it's that real high reward type projects that we can address things like Aflatox and address things like stem rust where there have been minimal if any successes in crop breeding for specific strains of stem rust and specifically for Aflatoxin. We look at a lot more that are kind of more medium to downstream type efforts. So you've probably heard a good bit in the news about the insect resistant eggplant technology in India. This is, I don't know if you've seen that in the news but actually the way that's presented in the news a lot of times is that it's a wholly Monsanto private sector led project that's being forced upon the Indian populace and it's not gonna be an affordable solution. Unfortunately, the part that gets completely lost in that discussion is that there's a huge public sector side of that taking that insect resistant trait, putting it in open pollinated varieties of eggplant making it available exactly the same way as any other variety of eggplant is. So it's just a bit of a mischaracterization but we look for opportunities like that where there hasn't been a solution through an alternative technology to deal with some of the insecticide use in eggplant. So we look at a biotech approach. So maybe I'll skip ahead. In addition to our R&D type investments, I think it's, we all know in this room that it's important to have a regulatory system in order to actually get some benefit for these investments. You could obviously spend millions and millions and millions of dollars on technology development and it will never get out the door. If you don't have a system that is somewhat grounded in science and somewhat available and can be met by the public sector. I think that's one of the things that we see a lot of times is that the only one that can meet some of the barriers that have been set forth by these more restrictive regulatory structures is they can't be met by their own institutions. So that's something we try and encourage governments to be cognizant of that to at least when they're developing the regulations to consider their own R&D institutions who are often the ones who might have the only technology and the pipeline in that country. So they're basically working at cross purposes by restricting access to that. So I guess we've hit on a lot of important points in the discussion so far. I think that the underlying motivation for supporting this at all is really that make biotech more tangible. We keep hearing that it's either the greatest thing in the world or it's the worst thing in the world but when it comes down to it it's very hypothetical in a lot of places. You can, you have people flying in and arguing one position, arguing another position but there's nothing to argue about. It's just an idea rather than an actual product and I think there's nowhere that that's more evident than in Tanzania right now. You have a lot of money going in there from both sides and there's nothing in the ground for anyone to look at. There's nothing to argue for other than the idea of biotechnology. In a climate where the regulatory system isn't necessarily encouraging for the private sector to bring something in there, the public sector needs to engage to see where there's some opportunities, where can we actually just get some R and D started so people can understand what it is. Whether they want to go forward with it or not go forward with it, at least bring it to a more fungible level and I think that's one of the important roles of the public sector in this space. I think, jump ahead here, because we've hit a lot of the things. I think maybe switching just quickly on the actual report, I think it hits pretty clearly and pretty accurately on the issues in a lot of these countries, at least to my knowledge and it gives a good cross-section of where countries are across the continent, be it dealing with sort of political issues in Kenya or be it just trying to get legislation passed in the first place in Uganda. So I think it gives a nice kind of cross-section of what you see in other places in the continent. So there's probably a lot of lessons that can be transferred from this to other countries. Just a couple other salient points on the report. I think the issue of exports is an important one. I definitely would recommend the paper that CSIS commissioned on the, what are the actual potential impacts on export markets of some of these technologies and you'll see that it's actually preposterously overblown that this is used as a messaging point. One in that the technologies that are under development and two in this misperception that somehow Europe doesn't take biotech imports when they're wholly dependent on biotech imports, including pretty much every soybean going into Europe. So it's this amazing, one among many misperceptions around this technology, but one that I think is worth a look again and to understand. I think maybe I will just kind of skip for the next part and just maybe a couple, three key thoughts for the end as I was kind of thinking about what to say here. The first thing is that the science is changing so rapidly that what we're considering now a genetically engineered crop is changing pretty fast. From something like RNA interference, from something like zinc fingers, moving to some approaches that companies are taking now to do rapid mutagenesis and screen it real quickly. So basically what that means is the line between genetically engineered and non-genetically engineered is already fuzzy and it's getting more and more fuzzy by the year to the point that if we consider the way the technology is changing we need to be careful not to tie ourselves up in knots in the way we regulate it. So it's just something to keep in the back of your mind as we're thinking about some of these technologies that in Kenya and Uganda where they might actually be 15 year old technologies, for example. It's certainly not gonna become any less political of a debate if the situation in the US is anti-indicator. So I think as was said elsewhere, it's really up to the research institutions, people like my friend here Tush and his colleagues and colleagues and other institutes to get out there and sort of talk about what they do, to bring it to more of a tangible product and more sound information. And last is to continue to have neutral parties like CSIS to engage in things like this and bringing fact, bringing recommendation, bringing insight to a lot of policy makers. But then at that point, realizing that it's gonna be a decision of that host country government. There's only, all we can do is bring facts to the situation, bring insight, bring research, but then it really is a sovereign decision. Yeah, I mean, my personal opinion would be, I think all farmers should have the same choice that farmers here in the US have, but not my decision to make. So thank you. Thank you, John. And John is a scientist himself, a biochemist who is one of a line of AAAS fellows who has been working on this issue at USAID. So not a scientist with any problem communicating. So it's great to hear your thoughts. Thank you. Dr. Tush, we would love to hear from you about your research and your work. We had an opportunity to visit one of your research stations while we were in Uganda and look at all of the bananas, just the fields and fields of bananas that you're working on. So I think we'd love to hear your presentation and have a chance to ask you some questions. Thank you. And you're welcome to stand or to sit. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity and thank you for inviting me here. I intend to take you through a case study of banana as an example of how we are going through the process. Keep talking. I'm going to just move your mic a little bit. In Uganda, when a decision was made to start applying biotechnology, banana was picked as a startup crop because it was one of the crops that was most needed in terms of the technology that we are going to apply. So I will concentrate on telling you this story to show you where we came from and where we are now. And I give you a projection for adoption because you've done some studies to gauge what sort of reception you have when you have a project. I have a background. This first slide, I wanted to show you the location of Uganda in Africa. And it's in that landlocked country. It's a very small country with a big population of about 32 million. And with one of the fastest population growth rates, 3% is a very high growth rate. And agriculture contributes up to 20% of our GDP. And the priority crops that we grow are those ones listed. They are not listed in the order of importance, but those are the key priority food security crops. And I will pick up the banana to talk more about it. But that map is intended to show you the distribution of the crop across the country. You'll notice that mostly grown in the southern parts of the country around the lakes. And it's less grown in northern areas. But the situation is rapidly changing because the advantages people see with the banana further south. The people, father knows, have also seen and yet the crop can grow literally everywhere across the country. And there is a demand for it. The banana is a very important food security crop. And I give the points, I will not go through all of them, but I will pick some which are very critical of food security, like all the around provision of food and family income. For a community to have value as a food security crop, it needs to store very well, like cereals. Or it needs to remain in the field for a long time and providing the piece of meals as the rent is required. And banana is one of those crops which once you have, say, a neck of bananas, every day you'll have the mature banana and they're not mature at the same time. So at the end of the time, you have food and you have money in your pockets because you can save something or you can eat. So that makes bananas very important food security crop. In fact, many farmers in Uganda will tell you that banana is an insurance. And once that crop goes, that insurance is gone. Here I intended to show you the different, the bananas appear to be many different types but they are pulled into just a few. And the one at the extreme end, the Estatrican cooking banana is the one who grow in Uganda, that's the one we eat, that's the one which is taken the way which is taken in other countries. And it constitutes about 80% of our production. But this very important crop, which farmers call the insurance, has is threatened now. The productivity has been rapidly going down and the plantation life also, good plantations in Uganda last very many years. In fact, you come across some plantations which are as old as 50 years. But of late, that life has been shortening and we have plantations which disappear within four years. And that has scared farmers. So what farmers want are plantations which last long and plantations which give them high productivity. And we analyzed and found out that what I've listed there are the factors reducing productivity and plantation life, tests and diseases, then soil fertility decline. But the banana also has other weaknesses like nutrients, it's low in nutrients. And it has post-harvest and marketing challenges different from what you get when dealing with cereals. This slide was intended to show you the different tests. The tests we have are the weavals. I think we probably will be familiar with the weavals in other crops. What they do, they eat the stem of the plant. They are the ones which shorten the plantation life. Within a short time, they accumulate and make the plant, they kill the plant. Then nematodes, they have the effect of eating roots. Then a plant will fall over. And that uses the most important one in recent times is banana bacterial wilt. It makes a plant wilt, but also it spoils the fruit, even when the fruit is there, it rots and it cannot be used. And the disease can clear 100% of the plantation within one year. It's very, very destructive, controllable, but in a small amount of farmers, it's very, very difficult to control. And the other diseases are black sega tokai. Shigerium is not a disease of our type of banana, but we have sweet bananas, 20% of our bananas are sweet types, which are affected by fissure. So our most serious disease for the time being at the highest priority disease is bacterial wilt, which is quickly destroying higher-end bananas. We diagnosed these problems, and between 1994, we did studies to quantify how much these pests and diseases were damaging. And we found that they were causing forte to, in the South African higher-end bananas, that was before bacterial wilt. Before bacterial wilt, the yellow pests and diseases were causing between 4% and 60% of the yield. Then, immediately, we made a decision that we needed resistant varieties to address this problem. So in partnership with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, we developed a breeding program in Uganda, which we started in 1994. And since then, between 1994 and, up to now, the program still runs, but we run into challenges when you decide to breed bananas. They are not as easy as other crops that we have in Uganda. This picture is intended to show you what we do in banana breeding. The sources of resistance are in a wild banana on the right called calcutta. And what complicates breeding, that wild banana is not anywhere, it's beta, and it's not good. Yet it's the one which has the resistances that we need. In fact, it has all the resistances that we need for tests, for diseases, namely, it's almost all they accept for bacterial wilt. So when you cross, you will drag along some undesirable things together with the traits that you are interested in. In the next step, I'm showing you what you do when you do a cross, you get tetraploids and some improved diploids. Then in the next step, when you cross that improved diploid, a tetraploid, you get the hybrid that will release the farmers. You don't have to take in that. The breeding bananas is possible. The only difficulty is that you get a good hybrid which is not acceptable to consumers. That's one of the challenges that we've had with conventional breeding of bananas. In the next slide, I highlight the real challenges of conventional breeding bananas. The one I've already mentioned, hybrids will be marginally acceptable to consumers. So you get good hybrids, but you can't get a banana which you will sell on the market. The next challenge, not all bananas can be improved. The highland bananas are in many different variants called cultivars, and they are as many as 50 different types. But of the 50, only a few can be bred because all the others are sterile. That complicates breeding because the most acceptable varieties, cultivars, are those which are sterile, which cannot be bred. So with breeding, you only improve a few, but the most popular varieties will not be improved. And that's another complication. The third complication, some traits like I mentioned, banana bacteria would be the most difficult problem we are dealing with. But when you go into the banana family, all bananas, both wild and even relatives of bananas, are susceptible to this disease. So you cannot peak resistance that you use in breeding. That leaves us completely defeated if we have to deal with the bacterial yield problem. In fact, when we wanted to convince our government that we needed to do some biotechnology to improve some of our crops, this is the example we gave them. So yeah, we are stuck. You supported us to do breeding for these years, but we have these challenges and this only solution we could go for is to try genetic engineering. Then the government listened and said, we support you to explore that option. And we started exploring that option from around 2000. By 2004, we had started getting ethnic partners coming in to give a hand. And our first objective was to build capacity because we didn't have capacity, we didn't know what to do. We are all conventional. We knew how to carry out conventional breeding but not how to carry out molecular breeding. And with the infrastructure in place and the human resources training, our next objective was to use that capacity to begin to develop transgenics for problems which were completely recastrant to conventional breeding. And we would do this for all crops starting with banel. So what I will do, I will quickly take you through some highlights of where we are with molecular breeding, development of transgenics. What I've listed are the steps we'll go through in development of transgenics. And in our case in Uganda, we do two steps because bananas are difficult to breed but they are also very difficult to transform. But we've identified a variety that is very easy to transform. It's a non-East African herald type. It's one of the sweet bananas which is affected by the same constraints as higher-end bananas. But it is easy to transform. That's the one we use as our model banana to test the different traits that we are looking for. So we go through that process in two steps. In round one, we do proof of concepts and we move from step one to step four. At step four, we confirm whether a trait will work. Then once we know that works will go back but putting hygiene this time in a preferred East African herald banana. And here is a summary of where we are. We have very many studies going on in what I've called proof of concept. That's proof of concept phase, the first round. But there are two traits where we've completed the proof of concept and we are in product development phase. And that is tackling the bacterial wilt resistance and we are using a gene which was pulled from sweet paper. And it's a project we are working on together with the International Institute of Tropical Education and supported by another government at USID. But the other one where we have a proof of concept, we are trying to... I told you that bananas are very poor in nutrients and micronutrient nutrition is a big problem in Uganda. It's an identified health problem. In fact, micronutrient malnutrition is considered the third most important health problem in Uganda after HIV and malaria. So we are trying to develop an intervention of putting those micronutrients, the key ones are vitamin A and iron, and we are trying to put them in banana fruits. And so far we are being successful with vitamin A, with iron we are still very far. This slide is intended to show you the highlight of what we got from proof of concept for bacterial wilt resistance. And we... you will see a plant which has three are wilted. That's one of the control plants. And the other ones which have remained standing, this field had... we've now harvested it but it remained for three years. And all plants which were susceptible wilted and fell down, those which remained standing are resistance, we inoculated with a disease again and they remained standing. So we are now sure that those plants are resistant. But this is in the mode of banana. So what we are doing now, we are moving the gene into the esophagus and higher in bananas, which are the ones preferred by our consumers. And we've also completed proof of concept for bio-fortification with vitamin A. And that's... we have... with vitamin A we selected two lines which accumulated six times as much as the vitamin A there is in bananas. In our scheme of work, our target is the 5th fold. We have to increase to a vitamin A in the fruits, in banana fruits, 5th fold to be able to create impact on the consumers. And we already see that we can reach six times. So now that confirms that the concept works. And we are now trying to move the gene into the esophagus and higher in bananas. This slide is intended to show you the control. The lower one, which is brownish, not good at telling the colors. The upper one, which is white, is the control which doesn't have the vitamin A enhanced. The lower one, you see the color has changed. And we have the vitamin A level that we need to put in these bananas. And now we are ready to go into the esophagus and higher in bananas. And quickly, these are our projections because we've proven the concept. We know we can do it. And in product development, we are budgeting, developing transgenic lines with enhanced vitamin A and others with enhanced bacterial resistance. And to release them, what did I say? We will complete the generation. We will complete the development of the plants by 2014. And we will then take them into confined field trial. And we hope to complete the confined field trial by 2017. And the next step will be, if we hope by then, the biosafety law will be in place. And we hope to complete the marital location and the biosafety regulatory evaluations by 2020. And to release the varieties, we will release two separate varieties, one with vitamin A and another one with bacterial root resistance in 2021. That's our target. There are other activities involving development of transgenics. We have cassava with resistance to brown streak, then maize with growth tolerance, and nitrogen-efficient rice and sweet potatoes with resistance to weevils and potato virus. All of those are under development. The only difference is that whereas for the banana, we've developed them in Uganda, these ones have been developed by the labs with patented wheels in the North, some in America, other than Europe, and they've been transferred to Uganda for evaluation. We always ask the question about why are you going for the GMOs? And here, I tried to answer that question, at least for banana, why you went for it? You looked at the production constraints that we are addressing. Let's give an example of bacterial root. Bacterial root with wipes will cause 100% loss and there is no source of resistance in the cultivated varieties, so we can't do breeding for this variety. In the absence of conventional breeding, we can try cultural practices of sanitation. Farmers have been trying them, but they have failed. In fact, the banana production in Uganda is quickly going down and as it goes down, even the prices of bananas go up like now the prices have more than... In the last two years, they've multiplied by three and they are not going down and we can't sit and wait. We have to do something and what we've decided to do is to use the GM approach and see whether we can get farmers in variety that is resistant to the problem. And when you look at all the other problems we are dealing with, they all fall in this category. They cannot be improved. These crops cannot be improved for those traits using conventional means. We don't see a reason why we shouldn't use that approach to get to our farmers something that solved their problem. Mind of that, you leave the crop to go. Some adoption forecast In the case of banana bacteria we commissioned a study by a PhD student to see that he was resistant to the diversity of badminton and the task of this student was to assess the likely acceptable of these bananas when we finally released them and here is what he found. The 58% of the gardens expressed willingness to accept the GM banana when they were 58%. And the reason they gave was that they were seeing benefits particularly for bacteria with to solve their production problem and food security problem. The growth that expressed willingness they have similar attributes more or less. Most of these people were rural farmers who are also consumers. And they must have big families and they have difficulties in feeding their families. In fact, we know from studies that none of them take one meal a day instead of two or three meals like others who they already have a big challenge of feeding their families. And this group of rural farmers have confidence that the GM banana will be safe if government will clear it and say it's safe. They believe it will be safe. And they need to do what others already said. But there was another group which makes up 42% of the organic population according to this study. And this group said they were doubtful whether we needed the GM banana. And the reason they must give for them it was not how it would benefit the rural people. They said it was not likely to be safe. So for them their biggest consideration was safety. And this group with the characteristics of this group they are mostly urban people who are well safe and food secure. The group also includes the educated both in rural and urban areas people who are educated would consider elite in those areas. And they have access to sufficient food. Unlike the area group this one's food was not a problem. And when they were told about the likely benefits that we are going to accrue when a resistant banana gets to producers that was not convincing enough to them because after all they buy what they eat and there is enough to buy and they have the money to buy it. And as already said most of these live in urban centers. And we see some implications for communication for those who are going to assist us in communicating this. Clearly messages need to target these educated and well safe groups who must live in urban areas. The 40% are the ones we need to target. And the messages need to focus on assuring this group that GMOs are safe. The other concern they have is that the GMs will be controlled by multinational companies who will come to exploit our poor farmers. They need to be assured like what we are doing what we are being supported to do with our farmers. We are putting these GMOs in the hands of the public they are being moved from control of the private companies to into control by public institutions which will release them free. But many of our elite don't know this we still need to explain it to them again and again. But the most key thing is assuring them about safety. My statement here will contradict what someone said earlier. But let it remain here for discussion purposes. I have a feeling that the Europeans and these institutions who support us should also talk you need to speak out also in support of particularly safety of these products and need for public institutions to own these products and about how accepting these products are in Europe here. It is easier for you to convince this group of ours than ourselves you can imagine me here going to this group of these skeptical educated Ugandans and trying to convince them that yes we have learnt how to do these products and they are safe and even in Europe they are safe and in Europe in America they accept I will be less convincing you are more convincing when you talk about it to these people. I keep hearing that our American partners should do less and less talking about personal I don't agree with that because I think you convince our skeptical group more than we are able to do and you need to speak out. The important thing is the message telling them about the benefits they are going to get that one is pretty obvious and it is not their worry for benefits everybody knows when we solve these best problems the producers will benefit it is the safety where they need assurance and it is the safety where you help us to convince this skeptical group there are also implications for policy particularly in Uganda the rule of power will benefit most from the GM crops and development and in Uganda we have policies and activities targeting the addressing the pro-poor issues but GMs usually are pushed out they are not part of them the GMs need to be brought on board as a pro-poor activity and we need to keep saying this to our policy makers to determine what we do in this priority also we are noting that by listening to the anti-GM containers and delaying the bio-safety and biotechnology law in Uganda the government has sided with the elites to deny the rule of power an option that will alleviate the severe food insecurity that they now face and our government needs to know this and we need to keep on repeating it to them because like this law which we don't have would have been passed long ago but they have different textures not passing then the last one the this group which is skeptical about the role GMs will play the 46 percent we need our communication our communication needs to target them because they are very influential in rural areas if we don't deal with them they will go there and negatively influence the rural producers before they accept these varieties we have a feeling that we need a strategy and a communication program to engage these 36 percent were skeptical so that we reduce that number and we get people who support what we are doing so that when they go in rural areas they talk and support rather than opposing what we do because they are influential and finally the rural people will listen to them that brings me to the end of the presentation these are the partners we work with the finding agencies in the government the SID and the Meribuna Gates Foundation and the Ruffian Foundation a list of partners we work with thank you very much well thank you that was just such a good high level but detailed overview of both what's happening and also the rationale but it reminds me of how difficult it must be to take this very very complicated topic and make it so clear and concise and that's part of the challenge with communicating about science because it's very complicated and it's hard to boil it down into really understandable messages with that I'd like to just turn to questions that I myself so no one has when I'll start out but I think what I will do is I'd like to bundle two to three questions at a time and ask you to please speak into the microphone give your name and affiliation as you speak so we're going to start over here Scott we're going to take you first and the gentleman in the blue suit will be next Scott Paul orders Scott thank you you consider this to be a choice I think we've sort of been talking about this in the conversation as GM adoption is a choice at 3% growth rates over the next 20 years if you attend a 15 year lead time the world in Uganda and Tanzania and Kenya is going to be very different in 20 years from now I just wondered what you were thinking about in terms of that long lead time that you're talking about in your research and how that's going to impact choice the gentleman right behind the on-systems you mentioned of course the production of bananas have declined due to pests and disease in the recent years there's a reason why you can't use the techniques you used to raise these crops before this decline as opposed to the reason transgenic bananas which contain insecticides fungicides and other toxins which is a problem if you use it again can I add to that Dr. Tush you gave the number of sort of 40 to 60% loss was that the result of an event or a set of pest or diseases or was that just sort of historically how much of a crop is lost and if you could take that set of questions right now that would be great yes if I can start with the last one we we did studies we had a project to analyze the losses the pests and diseases we are causing and actually it was a three-year study on farm and on station to quantify how much these pests and diseases we are causing and they were all lying between 40 and 60% so this is just the natural state of being yes natural state yes and the similar question as the earlier techniques of controlling these pests and diseases yes they are there but they are not effective in rural settings in fact for the only effective way to deal with a pest and disease in a rural setting is to deploy resistant varieties there are sanitation practices for instance for control of weevils and for control of bacterial wilt and they are being tried but the crop has continued going despite these practices being promoted because somehow farmers don't use them farmers have so many other things to do and the cultural practices are so labor consuming nobody has time to do them instead what they would prefer is to change from that crop to another one which doesn't require them and in the process they end up changing from crops which are giving them food security to ones which they are not used to handling and then they they fail and I think I didn't get yours correctly if you can elaborate so if they're growing at 3% so you mentioned the country you're focusing on is growing at 3.2% I think almost all the other countries in this study are growing right about 3% can you talk about a 10 to 15 year lead time 15 years from now that country is going to be very different and have so many more people that has to feed I'm just wondering how much longer it's going to be a choice to adopt or not adopt Jim especially if you're talking about the yield loss that you were describing yeah that makes the technology even more important because we need to control these losses it's like now we're going to lose even 60% that we don't have but time will come when we need to save all the potential that our crops give to be able to feed the population and that won't be long so for us I think this technology is very very critical because it will fix the problem that we are heading to in the future great okay let me see okay woman right here and then man in the blue shirt in the back we'll take those two questions next oh here okay thank you thank you I'm fascinated by the implication about communication that rural farmers more likely to be receptive to GMs the urban elites but then further that you think that foreigners westerners are the ones to do the education of those elites and I would have thought that the westerners would be associated with the private companies trying to push their technology and that it would be most important for Ugandan's like yourself to be propagating this with the elites so can you talk a little more about why you think westerners will be heard by your elites more than your own elites good question man in the blue shirt the international public institute what do you see the role of civil society organizations I mean you got it in East Africa in this conversation between the farmers and the government researchers sorry I civil society civil society why don't we take those questions now yes the first one the every time I'm talking to these elites of ours I see the questions they keep asking number one their concern is safety and they recognize that it's recently when we started learning how to apply the technology and the technology comes from the north and they I can say we don't effectively convince them about safety something still remains you explain and they say we can't be convinced because even you without if you fully know because you are applying the technology but I have a feeling they shouldn't people from you shouldn't lead the communication but you should participate in the communication to help us assure the our elites that the product is safe they are concerning that biotechnology is safe and they are not convinced that we we can analyze effectively its safety after all they know that when we come to bioseft evaluations we contract people outside to do it we don't do them ourselves we subcontract people laboratories in the in the USA to do our evaluations so if you participated in talking about their safety I think it would be helpful but you've kept quiet we are there trying to explain and getting these questions and trying to answer them and they are waiting to hear from the science here and everybody is quiet you've just informed this entire group who I think almost all feels that the US should take a quiet supportive role rather than a vocal one so this is a piece of information I think everyone is going to think about a very different approach particularly talking about the safety you talk about it better than as you have more authority on the safety of products than ourselves and these are educated people who want to hear it from authorities you are more authoritative in that way it's something we food for thought very interesting then you said the law of civil society that one has been a mixed bug there are some civil societies who are real supportive the local NGOs which have not been influenced which support what we are doing in fact they are part of our communication program they help us to go out and do the communication but then there are some which are linked particularly to NGOs from Europe and they are very well find it and they are doing a lot of the campaigning of what we are doing and we need to counter their negative propaganda and we are not doing much I think they are to do us in a by a huge percentage we need to do a lot to catch up with them let me just put a point of information and I'll take these three questions the survey data you have is really interesting and I should mention at the beginning I mentioned that we are part of a 14 project set of activity and a number of those projects are collecting survey data they are talking with farmers in Uganda and Kenya and Tanzania and other places to ask them about not just what is your attitude what do you think about this stuff but also what is important to you in cooking what traits are important as you are cooking and eating your bananas over the next six to eight months we should have a set of 13 more studies and reports that are going to shed more light and I think more data on to this set of discussion so I think those will be very interesting and I think Patrick those will be on the B4FA website and that is biosciences for farming in Africa 14 summaries who are interested in the program supported by Johnston the number 4 dot org and most of the summaries are there and in the form of time results of some of the surveys which are needed with the small-holder community so these will be very helpful compliments gentlemen right there and then Mitzi and then a woman right behind you could you stand up so we can hear you I was on a resumption in the third subject of the Kingdom Diplomat Group expressed a resentment that this technology was being forested by Western monopolies that came with the past and he's adjusted that we somehow have to revisit in order to convince Africa and the rest of the world about the good components of this technology that we somehow have to revisit and possibly send to the pattern rights that enable a few companies and create a wider disbursement among the more multiplicity companies he also suggested much greater transparency to long-term studies by credible scientists and also perhaps return to the precautionary and I think with is a very good question in terms of property ownership or the intellectual property which you can address Mitzi Mitzi Wertheim no microphone just stand up and say who you are and your question I just want to suggest I've been interested in energy for a long time and all of a sudden we got fracking and all the engineers want to get in and do it and say it's terrific and New York City says hey wait a minute you may ruin our water so it gets better and it gets worse and it gets worse water so it gets back to the safety issue and holding the engineers back before they try to push it on all of us and sort of destroy our livelihood I mean I think that's a genuine concern I was in Germany I think I'm going to stop you there but your point is basically you got scientists or engineers moving forward how do you make sure the public discussion follows along in the interest of time close your question to continue to go ahead with your question what I can talk about like politics in Africa politics and what we are talking about is the same so what we need to do is we local organizations focus on agriculture the first time working on soil in the western Kenya they are not generally modified but we are looking for the same technology but we don't have funding for that as local organization how do we participate because we are the people to give the message to the local rural people what the the problems the goodness of the food that we are going to grow because if we don't explain them we can translate in our local languages the message communication as he has said that communication is what the local people don't understand we want to fight poverty how do we fight poverty how do we grow every day so they have to learn to understand through capacity building training and you can work with us to train them translate the literature to tell them this is good for the people because at the end of the day when there is hunger they will run to America America will take them the food Europe will take them the food and we can still do that in our own countries to fight poverty how do we work with you thank you John I may ask you to jump in on the communication side okay so a couple of things first I would be curious what specifically what technologies specifically your diplomat friend would be thinking that are being forced upon the Kenyans of the technologies out there okay yeah I think it was a general comment sorry I mean because aside from cotton in which the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute is a whole willing partner who wants to bring that to their cotton farmers everything is freely licensed available to put in the public domain like everything else so without getting the specifics it's tough to answer that on the long term studies I've been referring a lot of people to this to this site it's called Genera where they've basically cataloged hundreds and hundreds of safety assessments of peer-reviewed papers conducted by independent researchers university types, academics including long term studies basically replicating the same information that was produced by maybe the Saralini study that influenced your question the last part about on IP redistribution I can't fully address that I think that might be outside the scope in this particular issue on the on the holding back of innovations and I'm not very much of an expert on fracking for sure but I would at least know from the case of agricultural technologies the people who have been working on this for for four decades feel pretty held back as far as doing assessments on the same technologies the same genes over and over and over and over and over again to the point of to the point of ridiculousness so I'll stop there Dr. Tush the the I wanted to address the the point to start with the point she was raising but I'm not sure whether I picked you where whether I picked her where you can interpret this for me Mitzi's question I think was how do you how do you make sure that science runs in parallel with the public dialogue and I think in Uganda if I can answer for a minute for you what we found unlike the other two countries in Uganda the public dialogue and the science his act and the regulatory process has kind of moved along all together the science community and the policy community and the public are kind of on board with the idea that we need new solutions for food security and that this is one of them and your survey result tracked very much with what we heard in our interviews and conversations that there is a lot of trust in the public research system there's a lot of trust in the government and if the government has declared a particular crop safe or a particular variety or particular new product that farmers tend to be comfortable and confident what the government says and that seems to track with what you have said in your slide let me take another round of questions go ahead Ellen and then I'm going to skip you because we already had you and people who haven't spoken right Andy right in the back and then light blue shirt just stand up and I do a lot of different work as a consultant in this field one of the questions I have is there was a lot of work going on just in the African Union to try to come up with bio safety evaluations that would take place above and beyond country by country because one of the difficulties for countries and Kamesa had looked at this country by country it's hard to conduct the risk assessments and all of that and I'm just wondering how helpful would that be not only to move forward in your work but also in terms of getting greater credibility about the concept of the risk assessments and the safety issues and do you see any institutions that are African institutions so not just necessarily country specific that pull that together I don't know if it's a fora or whatever that could play that role and be a voice to bring those experts and the technology to the people in a better way so both of those kinds of questions great and Andy you had a question and comment and events with the international information council and foundation there's been quite a lot of talk about multi-sectoral engagement international engagement or local engagement and I see kind of two communications tracks emerging from most of the discussions one going to the farm community and requiring the assurances of safety and credibility from the government and at the same time our communications going out to cultural opinion they're the same cultural elite of the country and the debate do we need international input is that welcome or is that going to push the issue backwards instead of forwards should issues be local should there be international interest and something that came up much earlier which I think is important to this is the role of media somebody suggested earlier possibilities of recruiting the media encouraging and incentivizing them as a source of values the process so that's what channel I would suggest and I would suggest that maybe we do need both we shouldn't choose between the local approach or the international approach just local and international who is required to be all share the part of it and we really do need each other and there are extension programs to farm communities we had undertaken many years ago do you think the whole team developing countries in the eight to nine years ago helping train the local level so are there initiatives that way and do you have thoughts on how we could with an old collaborative approach great and then I'm going to young man in the light blue shirt and I'm going to make this the last question because we're running low on time and it doesn't want them to rule advocating against so I think I want to know what your feelings are on why activists against TMOs are using Africa as sort of the place of targeting anti-GMO activities and how successfully you think biotechnology can transform Africa to become the ICDU staff for Africa what ICT did okay great we'll stop there do final responses and then close up the first one on African institutions I'm not familiar with the work which was already being done by African Union but I know there are institutions like FARA which have programs and projects on biotechnology stewardship and and biosafety and they could they needed to continue doing what they are doing right now and we would finally get there if there are other institutions that can come in to help I think they could also come in but FARA could coordinate them I was going to speak to that point to your question Ellen I think certainly the African Union has had the long-standing effort through the model law which has been quite restrictive and not productive for those who want to utilize biotechnology I think commesa and to a smaller extent echo us they have put forward the exact model of biotechnology and we have a pooled risk assessment pool where you have somewhat standardized guidelines standardized assessments but the authority still delegates to the host country so it's not in a situation where every country in commesa has to agree on a product approval rather you can take that information pooled resources to get the best safety assessment you can make but then it's still the sovereign decision that we have to go this way unless we have kind of gridlock like we have in Europe where you need more of a consensus thing but commesa is definitely the furthest ahead to my knowledge the African Union hasn't really gone down that path very much other than some discussion about revising the model law then the question the issue on multi-sector engagements in a particularly communication I think I would agree with an approach where all sectors get involved in communication about biotechnology currently when you look at what is happening particularly in Uganda we've tried to move together but we could probably do better we don't have a kind of strategy that unites all of us each small group organizes the way they want and they go out and we could probably do it better as all sectors that are stakeholders being involved and well coordinated I hope I picked your question very well if I still I think that's great, thank you then the last one why that's a tough one when when you look at what's happening it's like the fight against the technology has now shifted to Africa and I have a feeling the reason that is is the people who are anti the technology are seeing the chances of the technology being taken up in Africa they are highest because that's where the demand for it is highest we are to the situation in our rural areas we need these technologies more than probably any people you can think of in Europe, in America they don't have they are not food insecure like us so the anti GMO activists have become very very active in Africa because of what they are seeing some successful launching of these technologies I think what we need to do probably if we can quickly have some of these products on the ground and people start using them the technology will be uncontrollable if it can go in the hands of the end users who need it right now we are only talking we haven't put anything in their hands it will no longer be controllable it is going to spread like wildfire some of them are very good technologies and farmers will use them whether some whether those educated people with their European counterparts want or not this is a good question to end on too because I think as we set out to undertake this study and where we concluded fell in the same place which is that it is pretty dangerous to look at GM technology as the answer but because there are so many investments needed in ag development and ag sector but there are two important pieces to look at one is that any investment in the pathways in the markets in seed systems in fertilizer and access to finance and in research all of those investments and all those efforts are very important whether it is GM technology or not and the second is that hybrid adoption is so very low that it is vital for farmers just to have better inputs and to have training and education on how to use them effectively because handing out new seeds whatever kind they are is a really important tool for problems that as you very carefully noted can't be addressed with conventional breeding or as just something that farmers want to use because they like it and they have access to it and they think it works well and their government has found it safe those are issues that really need attention and that I think we feel really lie with the host governments but what you have told us today is that we can't just let them lie with the host governments that the US and the European community all have to be part of the discussion because that's an important part of the debate and discussion so we should be engaged however carefully we might feel that we need to be but be engaged nonetheless it has been a distinct pleasure to have you here Dr. Tisham so pleased that you could make time to stop it has been so much better to hear from you than it would have been to hear from all of us and John thank you you have been such a great partner as we worked through the entire project and helped us to understand things so thank you for being with us and thank you all for joining us and let's give our folks a hand