According to Walter Simon, the county’s CLA president, GMs should be considered as one of a range of technologies that could help boost food production.
He is calling on the Welsh Assembly Government to remain involved in discussions about GMOs.
“This is a new technology and unless we start using it we will never know what can be achieved,” he said.
“When we started using medicines, it was a new technology - but now we can’t live without them.
“As long as GMs are used sensibly, I cannot see a problem. We need to keep talking about GM technology and about conventional tools such as pesticides and agrochemicals because if we don’t we will be even less able to feed ourselves.”
Global factors had already seen the price of wheat jump from £90 a tonne to £150 in just three months.
That was an indication of what could happen and GMs could bring opportunities to breed crops to survive in adverse conditions such as drought or salinity.
He also said he foresaw problems with Wales wanting to remain GM free and imposing such strict cross compliance conditions on plantings.
EU proposals for individual member states to make their own decisions on GMO cultivation in their territory would be a “nightmare” in terms of trade within the EU.
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