The adoption of new technologies, including GM, may be crucial in making agriculture more sustainable, a leading food policy expert has claimed.

Jack Bobo, chief communications officer for US biotech company Intrexon, said agriculture is having the most negative impact on the planet and yet there is nothing more critical to human survival.

Resolving this contradiction was perhaps the greatest challenge of the age, he said.

Mr Bobo is due to speak at a conference on food sustainability organised by the Agricultural Science Association (ASA) in Kilkenny on Friday.

While the use of GM technology remains controversial in Europe, Mr Bobo, who previously worked as an adviser to the US government, said Europe was already highly reliant on the technology.

Labelling

"The reality is that much of the beer, wine and cheese in Europe is produced with GMOs, it's just that Europe's labelling laws don't require it to be labelled," he told The Irish Times.

Population growth alone will require global food output to double by 2050. Mr Bobo believes this cannot be done in a sustainable fashion without the adoption of new technologies, including GM.

“If we’re going to double the amount of food and keep the footprint of agriculture the same or smaller, that’s going to require more intensive agriculture. And you can’t grow twice the amount of food on the same footprint without technology.”

Deforestation

He noted that the country sending the most food to Europe is Brazil, which is also responsible for the lion's share of deforestation.

“So if Europe is the food market for Brazil and 80 per cent of deforestation in Brazil is caused by agriculture... it’s hard to escape the fact that European choices about how to produce food are driving Brazilian choices about how to produce food.”

Aiden Connolly, chief innovation officer with US animal nutrition firm Alltech, is also due to address the conference on the concept of the "prosumer".

“Consumers are increasingly pro-active in their choices about food. So they’re making specific choices based on their values and their ethics.”

He said people were moving from simply saying “does it taste good? is it cheap? and can I get it easily?” to asking if it reflects their values.

This means producers have to look beyond “piling it high and selling it cheap”, he said.