An abbreviated version of the below interview appeared in the April 2023 issue of Gaftaworld.
Q & A with Emily Rees, President and CEO of CropLife International
Congratulations, first of all to you Emily, on your new role as President and CEO of CropLife International. Gafta is delighted that someone with such a strong background in trade has been appointed to this important role. We look forward to working with you in the years ahead, as we tackle the problems of food insecurity, poor nutrition, climate change and biodiversity loss at a time of geopolitical upheaval, with the aim of achieving the UN Sustainability Goals by 2030.
1. As you start your new role, could you tell us about your previous roles and career to date?
First, allow me to thank Gafta for the very generous welcome – I look forward to strengthening our collaboration! So how did I get here? An economist by training, I started my career at the Community Plant Variety Office, the European Commission's agency that delivers intellectual property rights for new plant varieties. My passion for policy at the intersection of trade, agriculture and climate grew from there. A Franco-British national, I seized the opportunity to serve France's economic diplomacy agenda as Trade Attaché to Brazil. Discovering Latin America was an eye-opener, I fell in love with the region's tropical landscapes, cultural diversity. and gastronomic traditions. One experience leading to another, I was privileged to be called by the Brazilian Government to lead the national trade and investment agency's relations to the European Union. This came at a crucial time as the EU and Mercosur were relaunching trade negotiations, and agricultural access and standards were becoming the focus of heated debate. When the core of the trade deal was concluded, I decided to dedicate my energy to building bridges between Europe and Latin America as a Senior Fellow at the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) in Brussels. Many of the trade irritants that impact the EU-Mercosur relationship centre around agriculture, climate and biodiversity, and I hope to leverage this experience now at the helm of CropLife International.
2. What are your main priorities as you take the helm at CropLife?
As a first step, I'm going to listen.
Listen to the exceptional team of experts that form CropLife International, appreciate best practice in our activities, and identify areas for improvement.
Listen to our members, to understand how we may deliver on our mission to advance innovation in agriculture for a sustainable future, whether that's through trade-friendly advocacy and science-based regulatory policies or by ensuring safer use of plant science technologies.
Listen to our network of national and regional associations to gain better understanding of challenges at the local level, identify opportunities for global engagement and appreciate how we, as CropLife International, can provide support in a tangible and meaningful way.
Listen to our stakeholders – from governments and multilateral bodies to NGOs and farmers – to ensure all voices are heard and all solutions are explored.
Perhaps the second step will be best addressed in a new feature in a couple of months!
3. Developments in DNA sequencing have made huge strides in recent years. Do you see possibilities for some major breakthroughs in plant breeding innovation over the next 5-10 years? What are the priorities in this area?
Do we have the choice? Climate change mitigation and adaptation requires us to move faster to achieve those breakthroughs in plant science. That's why the agronomists, biologists, chemists, data scientists, engineers and researchers at our member companies dedicate huge R&D efforts to drive the innovations that can transform our food systems. The revolution in DNA sequencing is being met with similar advancements in the tools available to integrate this knowledge into breeding programmes, especially in the rapid expansion and refinement of genome editing tools and technologies. For this research and innovation to thrive, we need to foster a policy environment conducive to facilitating open and fair trade for agricultural innovations, including regulatory pathways to bring the products resulting from R&D to market. Our priority is supporting an international environment that enables these scientific advancements to benefit not only researchers but also growers!
4. One of Gafta's principal roles is to facilitate trade in commodities worldwide. Internationally recognised SPS standards are vital for trade to operate economically and efficiently. CropLife has already cooperated with Gafta in this area, and we should be grateful if you could explain your views on how to ensure agricultural crop products move from areas of surplus to areas in need as smoothly as possible.
We identify the same challenge. How do we ensure fluidity in moving agricultural commodities from producing areas to the countries that depend on them? Reliance on imports is soaring, with many countries unable to produce sufficiently to ensure nutrition for rising populations. Food today is produced along global value chains – one third of agricultural commodities cross borders at least twice. We need trade policies that enable and facilitate trade, including internationally consistent and non-discriminative enforcement of Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs) for pesticides and import tolerances based on risk-assessment. MRLs are becoming a major point of contention amongst trading nations and a multilateral approach is required in the run-up to MC13. In that sense, I trust our cooperation with Gafta will be reinforced in promoting a rules-based trading system that ensures market access for agricultural products. Similarly, CropLife International works with stakeholders across the value chain to promote practical approaches to managing Low Level Presence (LLP) of plant biotechnology products. Specifically, we serve as the Secretariat for the Global Alliance for Ag Biotech Trade (GAABT), a broad coalition working towards these same goals, and under which we've collaborated with Gafta for more than a decade.
5. International standards are very important to Gafta members trading huge volumes of grains and oilseeds, thinking particularly of Codex setting internationally agreed MRLs based on sound science provided by independent international risk assessment bodies. Do you see this being watered down in years to come with more focus on other legitimate factors such as environmental concerns?
We should all be concerned when the international standards upheld by Codex are undermined. The transparent science- and risk-based standards developed by governments are relied upon by farmers, and traders, around the world to ensure an equitable and non-discriminatory trading system. MRLs, including import tolerances, are established SPS measures intended to protect consumer health and promote fair practices in food trade. The objective of the international community should be to ensure MRLs are set in a transparent, predictable and science-based manner and to prevent them from being arbitrary and unjustified SPS measures. The recent EU proposal to lower MRLs based on an environmental factor – outside of the EU – greatly deviates from the global consensus to date that has seen countries sovereign over their own environmental risk assessment and risk management. A practical consequence is that MRLs are expected to be pushed out of the SPS Committee of the WTO, where they were traditionally addressed, to be tackled under Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). The TBT Agreement stipulates that such 'technical' regulations shall not be more trade-restrictive than necessary to fulfil a legitimate objective. Our view is that biodiversity and environmental protection are far too important to be misused for protectionist or ideological purposes.
6. After decades of safe use, the acceptance of GM crops remains a problem in many importing countries. Crops that are improved through biotechnology have brought many economic and environmental benefits to farmers, consumers and others involved in producing and processing food. The extension of the ban on imports of GM crops due to court action in Kenya is a recent backward step, while we see progress in China on GM approvals for both imports and cultivation. Is the asynchronicity of GM approvals an issue for CropLife as its members progress the development of new cultivars?
The introduction of GM crops more than 25 years ago heralded a new era of longer-lasting, more nutritious foods that needed fewer natural resources to grow; however, regulatory and commercialization constraints around the world have prevented biotech crops from reaching their full potential. The imminent threat of climate change, with more water stress, unpredictable calamities and changes to distribution and intensity of pests, is resulting in a renewed interest in innovation. Again, as is the case of MRLs, to tackle global challenges we must avoid regulatory decisions being taken based on ideological or protectionist motives and start trusting science more. While some decisions, such as in the case of Mexico, are disheartening and generate unnecessary trade tensions, I like to focus on the positive, including the first cultivation approvals in China and simplified approaches to clearing GM products for trade in Nigeria. CropLife International continues to advocate for an open, predictable trade environment to ensure more farmers can capitalize on the rich potential of scientific innovation.
7. With your considerable experience in South America, do you see this part of the world becoming an increasingly important supplier of crop products onto the world market?
Latin America plays, and is expected to continue to play, a critical role in supplying food to the world. With conflict raging in one of the world's most historical breadbaskets, countries see the need to have diversified trading relationships to build resilience. Brazil, a country where I spent many years, was once a net food importer grappling with widespread food insecurity, but, thanks to agricultural innovations matched with smart public policies, is now a leading actor in feeding the world. That journey was not easy, but many lessons can be learned from countries like Brazil with rich traditions of tropical agriculture and ample productive land. I have the most profound respect for the Latin American women and men, most often family farmers, that work tirelessly to produce food for the world. With climate change creating growing instability and unpredictability in our food supply, we must look for all solutions and all regions of the globe to ensure the open and free movement of crop products.
8. What is CropLife's main strategy with regard to climate change and biodiversity loss?
Farmers increasingly face the immense challenge to produce more nutritious food using fewer resources and under less predictable growing conditions. Plant science technologies including innovative crop protection, digital and precision agriculture, and plant biotechnology support farmers to mitigate and adapt to climate change while protecting natural resources and improving productivity. For example, genome editing can increase carbon capture efficiency in plants, provide resistance to pests and pathogens and even accelerate the domestication of new crop species. Other innovations in seed technology, like herbicide tolerance and improved weed control, have resulted in over 300 million tonnes of CO2 sequestration from reductions in tillage over the past 25 years. Despite these demonstrated benefits, a recent study found it now takes longer than it did 10 years ago for a GM trait to get to market (16.5 years vs. 13.1).
CropLife International's members remain committed to researching and developing technologies that support climate-smart agriculture to maximize agriculture's potential to contribute to carbon neutrality, reduce and avoid emissions, and increase carbon sequestration on a pathway to keep 1.5C within reach. Our members are also committed to nature-positive solutions that safeguard biodiversity and minimize the environmental impacts of crop production, for example, by developing technologies that enable farmers to increase yields without encroaching on non-cultivated land.
However, for the technologies of tomorrow to deliver on their promise, it is critical to have a stable and predictable regulatory environment that encourages both public and private sector investment in new plant science technologies and digital innovation, all of which will play a key role in addressing climate change and promoting biodiversity.