According to Brussels-based CropLife International, the area of biotech crops grown around the world continues to increase. The agency estimates that some 13.3m farmers across 25 countries grew 125m hectares of GM crops in 2008. Three countries grew the crops for the first time - Bolivia, Burkina Faso and Egypt - and other countries, including Malawi, New Zealand and Uganda, approved field trials.
Incredibly, given continuing public hostility to the GM crops in Britain, 107,719 hectares were grown in Europe - 21% more than in 2007. Most of the increase was in countries like Poland, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and the EU approved the importation of a biotech hybrid maize, two soya varieties and one cotton hybrid.
Does this mean UK farmers will soon be allowed to grow GM crops? Are politicians and public alike getting ready to concede fears were falsely based and unscientific? Will food processors and retailers - who never believed the rhetoric against GM crops but went along with it rather than lose trade - soon stock and sell GM-based products?
I hope so. Not because I want to enrich the multinational companies who market GM seeds. Indeed I share some of the concerns expressed regarding potential monopolies on seed stocks. That is why it is vital competition exists between biotech companies. It is equally vital publicly-funded research continues to ensure minority crops with less profit potential for the big boys are not neglected.
My main hopes for GM technology are both personal and general. They will enable me to grow crops profitably at prices affordable to consumers. For instance, if I could grow GM sugar beet tolerant to herbicides, I could cut chemical costs by two-thirds and be better able to compete with sugar producers around the world consumers, of course should benefit from lower prices.
Strange as it may seem, altruistically, I also care about the future of the world (especially the part my children and grandchildren will grow up in) and its ability to produce commodities in sufficient quantity to feed and clothe them.
I believe the broad spectrum of biotechnology contains elements that are crucial to providing for that future crops that can tolerate drought and saline conditions crops and livestock that can be engineered to have health giving qualities better growth rates and bigger yields and other benefits which I cannot conceive.
I have believed this since, in the mid 1990s, I was a member of a small group that introduced GM tomato juice to Sainsbury's and Safeway supermarkets.
We took great care to educate key members of the press and get their approval before the launch and it was so successful that stocks lasted only a few months.
Then BSE blew up in our faces, science lost credibility and Monsanto, insensitive to public opinion, messed it up for all of us. I hope we are on the verge of another important breakthrough.