Impacto Ambiental y Económico de la Liberalización de Maíz Genéticamente Modificado (GM) en Chile

J. Díaz Osorio, R. Jara-Rojas and F. Moya. 2012. Environmental and economic impact to the liberalization of genetic modified maize in Chile. Currently, about 125 million of hectares of GM crops are grown in 25 countries. Some authors establish that GM crops have contributed to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture and reduce the use of machinery and chemicals. In Chile, seed production of GM crops is only allowed for export purposes; however, it cannot be used as input for commercial purposes. On the other hand, Chile allows imports of GM products from other countries. The adoption of GM is not only a farmer’s decision, but requires an agreement of many government agencies of the country. This research analyzes the possibility of grown GM crops in Chile for commercial purposes and examines the environmental impact that this decision would have. Besides, different scenarios were created for production of GM corn using information from Chilean farmers, experts and international experience. The results indicate that farmers could increase incomes in 20-76 dollars per hectare. Also, GM Corn provides substantial environmental benefits as it would reduce consumption to 16 liters of diesel. Thus, it is possible to reduce 42.5 kilograms of CO2 for each hectare. Roundup Ready does not reduce the kilograms of active ingredient applied, but Bt and Bt + RR reduce 37.6% and 40.2% of kilograms of active ingredient, respectively. More investigation is needed to analyze the potential impacts of GM seeds on local biodiversity.