Australia’s agriculture minister on Thursday hailed genetically modified crops as a means to help farmers combat climate change, as data showed 2007 was the country’s sixth hottest year on record. Agriculture Minister Tony Burke said Australia’s farmers needed to face up to climate change, foreshadowing major changes to drought relief payments worth billions of dollars. Burke said Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s recently-elected government wanted to improve farmers’ ability to deal with climate change, rather than simply propping them up as they struggled through the worst drought in a century.