VICTORIAN farmers must embrace new technology, including genetically modified crops, to battle the effects of climate change and increased global competition, Premier John Brumby has warned. The plan, called Future Farming: Productive, Competitive and Sustainable and flagged in yesterday’s Age, will spend more than $100 million on developing new farm technology such as crops and grasses resistant to drought, salt and the cold. [...] And some of that innovation, he said, such as allergy-resistant feed grasses, would involve GM crops in a bid to increase productivity. ”Last year, in this (Horsham) region most farmers wouldn’t have got through without the new (non-GM) wheat varieties,” he said.