Text: Nobel Laureate Borlaug on Food Security, Biotechnology

("Battle to ensure food security ... is far from won.") (5410)

Nobel Laureate Norman E. Borlaug, known to many as "the Father of the
Green Revolution," warned March 7 at Kasetsart University in Thailand
that despite the success Asian farmers have had in tripling cereal
production since 1961, "the battle to ensure food security for
hundreds of million miserably poor Asian people is far from won."

"Mushrooming populations and inadequate poverty intervention programs
have eaten up many of the gains of the Green Revolution," Borlaug
stressed during a presentation at the "Gene Technology Forum"
organized by Kasetsart University. He said biotechnology could help
mankind meet its future food and fiber needs in the coming centuries
-- but only "if science is permitted to work as it should be."

"There seems to be a growing fear of science, per se, as the pace of
technological change increases," Borlaug lamented. He criticized
"misinformed environmentalists" in the more developed nations for
creating a backlash against science, technology and industry.

"While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt elitist
positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called 'natural'
[nonbiotech] methods," he said, "the one billion chronically
undernourished people of the low-income, food-deficit nations cannot.
... It is access to new technology that will be the salvation of the
poor...."

Borlaug, who won the Nobel Prize in 1970, discussed the many
challenges facing Asia's food supply in the next century, including a
shrinking land base, increased urbanization leading to scarce
agricultural labor, and changes in dietary patterns due to
urbanization and higher incomes. Of particular concern to Borlaug was
increased pressure on the world's limited accessible fresh water.

"The inevitable conclusion is that humankind in the 21st Century will
need to bring about a 'Blue Revolution -- more crop for every drop' to
complement the so-called "Green Revolution" of the 20th Century," he
said.

"I now say that the world has the technology -- either available or
well advanced in the research pipeline -- to feed a population of 10
billion people," Borlaug insisted. "The more pertinent question today
is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new
technology?"

Following is the text of Borlaug's presentation as submitted to the
forum:

(begin text)

GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY:
HARNESSING SCIENCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Gene Technology Forum, Kasetsart University, Thailand
March 7, 2000

Norman E. Borlaug 1/ and Christopher Dowswell 2/

Introduction

It is a pleasure to visit Southeast Asia again, to participate with
scientists and national policy makers in discussions about the
prospects and future of biotechnology in Thailand and the Philippines.
The majority of agricultural scientists -- myself included --
anticipate great benefits from biotechnology in the coming decades to
help meet our future food and fiber needs. Indeed, the commercial
adoption by farmers of transgenic crops has been one of the most rapid
cases of technology diffusion in the history of agriculture. Between
1996 and 1999, the area planted commercially to transgenic crops has
increased from 1.7 to 39.9 million hectares (James, 1999).

I am now in my 56th year of continuous involvement in agricultural
research and production in the low-income, food-deficit developing
countries. I have worked with many colleagues, political leaders, and
farmers to transform lower-yielding food production systems into
higher-yielding ones.

Great progress has been achieved in Asian agriculture since the early
1960s (FAOSTAT, 1998). Between 1961 and 1998, cereal production in
Developing Asia has increased more than three-fold, due largely to the
widespread adoption during the 1960s and 1970s of high-yielding rice
and wheat production technology (and later in maize and other crops).
The core technological components were management-responsive
varieties, fertilizers, and irrigation.

Poverty Still Haunts Asia

Despite the successes of smallholder Asian farmers in applying Green
Revolution technologies to triple cereal production since 1961, the
battle to ensure food security for hundreds of million miserably poor
Asian people is far from won, especially in South Asia. Of the roughly
1.3 billion people in this sub-region, 500 million live on less than
US$ 1 per day, 400 million are illiterate adults, 264 million lack
access to health services, 230 million to safe drinking water, and 80
million children under 4 are malnourished (Eliminating World Poverty.
UK White Paper, 1997). Mushrooming populations and inadequate poverty
intervention programs have eaten up many of the gains of the Green
Revolution.

These statistics point out two key problems of feeding the world's
people. The first is the complex task of producing sufficient
quantities of the desired foods to satisfy needs, and to accomplish
this Herculean feat in environmentally and economically sustainable
ways. The second task, equally or even more daunting, is to distribute
food equitably. Poverty is the main impediment to equitable food
distribution, which, in turn, is made more severe by rapid population
growth.

Future Food Demand

IFPRI's 2020 projections indicate that Asian cereal demand (for food
and feed) will increase considerably, both because of expected
population growth and rising incomes (Rosegrant, et. al., 1995).

Most Asian societies today are still primarily rural, with more than
half their labor forces engaged in agriculture. But the region is
urbanizing rapidly, at roughly twice the rate of national population
growth. In a number of countries non-farm employment (rural and urban)
already exceeds agricultural employment. By the year 2020 most Asian
countries are likely to have more people living in urban centers than
in rural areas.

Higher incomes and urbanization are leading to major changes in
dietary patterns. While per capita rice consumption is declining wheat
consumption is increasing in most Asian countries, an indication of
rising incomes and westernization of diets (Pingali and Rosegrant,
1998). Per capita consumption of fish, poultry and meat products is on
the rise, and this expanding poultry and livestock demand will, in
turn, require growing quantities of high quality feeds to supply its
needs.

The migration of rural Asians to urban areas will affect farm
production in several ways. First, with an out-migration of labor,
more farm activities will have to be mechanized to replace
labor-intensive practices of an earlier day. Second, large urban
populations, generally close to the sea, are likely to increasingly
buy food from the lowest-price producer, which for certain crops may
very well mean importing from abroad. Domestic producers, therefore,
will have to compete --in price and quality -- with these imported
foodstuffs.

Production Potential

Total cereal production (milled rice equivalent used) in the
developing Asian nations has increased from 248 to 795 million tonnes
between 1961 and 1998. During this period, most Asian countries
achieved -- or nearly achieved -- food self-sufficiency in the basic
grains. During the next 20 years, Asian farmers will have to meet this
current level of production plus produce several hundred million
additional tonnes of cereals more than they do today. Even with
significant new production growth, Asian wheat imports, for example,
are likely to increase from 30 to 75 million tonnes by 2020 (Pingali
and Rosegrant, 1998).

Over the past 35 years, FAO reports that in Developing Asia the
irrigated area has nearly doubled -- to 169 million hectares, and
fertilizer consumption has increased more than 30-fold over, and now
stands at about 70 million tonnes of nutrients. During the next
century, Asia's food supply will be produced on a shrinking land base.
While there are still opportunities to bring irrigation to some new
lands, rainfed agriculture will become increasingly more important for
expanding future supplies of cereals. Here, the spread of modern
varieties in rainfed areas has begun is growing rapidly. (Morris and
Byerlee, 1998).

Most Asian farmers have adopted modern varieties. HYVs already cover
almost all of the irrigated rice and wheat areas, and a fair portion
of the rainfed areas. But varietal replacement is too slow, with
farmers often only changing varieties (with the exception of India)
every 10 years or so. There are important gains to be made from more
rapid varietal replacement, in which farmers have early access to the
newer varieties with higher yield potential and resistance to a
greater range of biotic and abiotic stresses.

There is still considerable scope to increase cereal yields,
especially in rainfed areas but also in many irrigated areas as well.
Significant increases in 'technical efficiency' are possible by using
more purchased inputs and capital to substitute for increasingly
scarce land and labor (Byerlee, 1992). Among the growing proportion of
farmers who already have achieved high cereal yields, the interest is
in using more precise information and management skills to improve the
efficiency of input use, mainly to reduce production costs.

Future Crop Research Challenges

Agricultural researchers and farmers in Asia face the challenge during
the next 25 years of developing and applying technology that can
increase the cereal yields by 50-75 percent, and to do so in ways that
are economically and environmentally sustainable. Much of the
near-term yield gains will come from applying technology "already on
the shelf". But there will also be new research
breakthroughs-especially in plant breeding to improve yield stability
and, hopefully, maximize genetic yield potential -- if science is
permitted to work as it should be.

Genetic improvement -- continued genetic improvement of food crops --
using both conventional as well as biotechnology research tools is
needed to shift the yield frontier higher and to increase stability of
yield. In rice and wheat, three distinct, but inter-related strategies
are being pursued to increase genetic yield potential: changes in
plant architecture, hybridization, and wider genetic resource
utilization (Rajaram and Borlaug, 1996; Pingali and Rajaram, 1997).
Significant progress has been made in all three areas. IRRI remains
optimistic that it will be successful in developing the new "super
rice," with fewer -- but highly productive -- tillers. While still
probably 10-12 years away from widespread impact on farmers' fields,
IRRI claims that this new plant type, in association with direct
seeding, could increase rice yield potential by 20-25 percent (Khush,
1995).

In wheat, new plants with an architecture similar to the "super rices"
(larger heads, more grains, fewer tillers) could lead to an increase
in yield potential of 10-15% above the spring x winter Veery
descendants (Rajaram and Borlaug, 1997). Introducing genes from
related wild species into cultivated wheat can introduce important
sources of resistance for several biotic and abiotic stresses, and
perhaps for higher yield potential as well, especially if the
synthetic wheats are used as parent material in the production of
hybrid wheats (Kazi and Hettel, 1995).

The success of hybrid rice in China (now covering more than 50 percent
of the irrigated area) has led to a renewed interest in hybrid wheat,
when most research had been discontinued for various reason, mainly
low heterosis which trying to exploit cytoplasmic male sterility, and
high seed production costs. However, recent improvements in chemical
hybridization agents, advances in biotechnology, and the emergence of
the new wheat plant type have made an assessment of hybrids
worthwhile. With better heterosis and increased grain filling, the
yield frontier of the new plant material could be 25-30 percent above
the current germplasm base.

Maize production has really begun to take off in many Asia countries,
especially China. It now has the highest average yield of all the
cereals in Asia, with much of the genetic yield potential yet to be
exploited. Moreover, recent developments with high-yielding quality
protein maize (QPM) varieties and hybrids stand to improve the
nutritional quality of the grain without sacrificing yields. This
achievement -- which was delayed nearly a decade because of inadequate
funding -- offers important nutritional benefits for livestock and
humans. With biotechnology tools, it is likely that we see a range of
nutritional "quality" improvements incorporated into the cereals in
years to come.

There is growing evidence that genetic variation exists within most
cereal crop species for genotypes that are more efficient in the use
of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other plant nutrients than are the
currently available in the best varieties and hybrids. In addition,
there is good evidence that further heat and drought tolerance can be
built into high-yielding germplasm.

Crop management -- Crop productivity depends both on the yield
potential of the varieties and the crop management employed to enhance
input and output efficiency. Crop management productivity gains can be
made all along the line -- in tillage, water use, fertilization, weed
and pest control, and harvesting.

An outstanding example of new Green/Blue Revolution technology in
wheat production is the "bed planting system," which has multiple
advantages over conventional planting systems. Plant height and
lodging are reduced, leading to 5-10 percent increase in yields and
better grain quality. Water use is reduced 15-20 percent, a
spectacular savings! Input efficiency (fertilizers and crop protection
chemicals) is also greatly improved, which permits total input
reduction by 25 percent. After growing acceptance in Mexico and other
countries, Shandong Province and other parts of China are now
preparing to extend this technology rapidly (personal communications,
Prof. Xu Huisan, President, Shandong Academy of Agricultural Science,
July 7, 1999). Think of the water use and water quality implications
of such technology!

Conservation tillage (no-tillage, minimum tillage) is spreading
rapidly in the agricultural world. The Monsanto Company estimated that
there were 75.3 million ha using conservation tillage in 1996 and this
area is projected to grow to 95.5 million ha by the year 2000 (1997
Annual Report).

Conservation tillage offers many benefits. By reducing and/or
eliminating the tillage operations, turnaround time on lands that are
double- and triple-cropped annually can be significantly reduced,
especially rotations like rice/wheat and cotton/wheat. This leads to
higher production and lower production costs. Conservation tillage
also controls weed populations and greatly reduces the time that
small-scale farm families must devote to this backbreaking work.
Finally, the mulch left on the ground reduces soil erosion, increases
moisture conservation, and builds up the organic matter in the soil --
all very important factors in natural resource conservation.

Water Resource Development

Water covers about 70 percent of the Earth's surface. Of this total,
only about 2.5 percent is fresh water. Most of the Earth's fresh water
is frozen in the ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland, in soil
moisture, or in deep aquifers not readily accessible for human use.
Indeed, less than 1 percent of the world's freshwater -- that found in
lakes, rivers, reservoirs, and underground aquifers shallow enough to
be tapped economically -- is readily available for direct human use
(World Meteorological Organization, 1997). This only represents about
0.007 percent of all the water on Earth!

Agriculture accounts for 93 percent of the global consumptive use of
water (rainfall and irrigation). Rainfed agriculture, covering 83
percent of the world's farmland, accounts for about 60 percent of
global food production. Irrigated agriculture -- which accounts for 70
percent of global water withdrawals -- covers some 17 percent of
cultivated land (about 270 million ha) and contributes nearly 40
percent of world food production.

How can we continue to expand food production for a growing world
population within the parameters of likely water availability? The
inevitable conclusion is that humankind in the 21st Century will need
to bring about a "Blue Revolution -- more crop for every drop" to
complement the so-called "Green Revolution" of the 20th Century. Water
use productivity must be wedded to land use productivity. Science and
technology will be called upon to show the way.

The UN's 1997 Comprehensive Assessment of the Freshwater Resources of
the World estimates that, "about one third of the world's population
lives in countries that are experiencing moderate-to-high water
stress, resulting from increasing demands from a growing population
and human activity. By the year 2025, as much as two-thirds of the
world's population could be under stress conditions" (WMO, 1997).

"Water shortages and pollution are causing widespread public health
problems, limiting economic growth and agricultural development, and
harming a wide range of ecosystems. They may put global food supplies
in jeopardy, and lead to economic stagnation in many areas of the
world."
 
The world irrigated area -- much of it located in Asia -- doubled
between 1961 and 1996, from 139 to 268 million ha. In most of these
schemes, proper investments were not made in drainage systems to
maintain water tables from rising too high and to flush salts that
rise to the surface back down through the soil profile. We all know
the consequences -- serious salinization of many irrigated soils,
especially in drier areas, and waterlogging of irrigated soils in the
more humid area. In particular, many Asian irrigation schemes -- which
account for nearly two-thirds of the total global irrigated area --
are seriously affected by both problems. The result is that most of
the funds going into irrigation end up being used for stopgap
maintenance expenditures for poorly designed systems, rather than for
new irrigation projects. Government must invest in drainage systems in
ongoing irrigation schemes, so that the current process of
salinization and waterlogging is arrested. In new irrigation schemes,
water drainage and removal systems should be included in the budget
from the start of the project. Unfortunately, adding such costs to the
original project often will result in a poor return on investment.
Society then will have to decide how much it is willing to subsidize
new irrigation development.

There are many technologies for reducing water use. Wastewater can be
treated and used for irrigation. This could be an especially important
source of water for peri-urban agriculture, which is growing rapidly
around many of the world's mega-cities. Water can be delivered much
more efficiently to the plants and in ways to avoid soil waterlogging
and salinization. Changing to new crops requiring less water (and/or
new improved varieties), together with more efficient crop sequencing
and timely planting, can also achieve significant savings in water
use.

Proven technologies, such as drip irrigation, which saves water and
reduces soil salinity, are suitable for a much larger area than
currently used. Various new precision irrigation systems are also on
the horizon, which will supply water to plants only when they need it.
There is also a range of improved small-scale and supplemental
irrigation systems to increase the productivity of rainfed areas,
which offer much promise for smallholder farmers.

Clearly, we need to rethink our attitudes about water, and move away
from thinking of it as nearly a free good, and a God-given right.
Pricing water delivery closer to its real costs is a necessary step to
improving use efficiency. Farmers and irrigation officials (and urban
consumers) will need incentives to save water. Moreover, management of
water distribution networks, except for the primary canals, should be
decentralized and turned over to the farmers. Farmers' water user
associations in the Yaqui valley in northwest Mexico, for example,
have done a much better job of managing the irrigation districts than
did the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources
previously.

What Can We Expect from Biotechnology?

During the 20th Century, conventional breeding has produced a vast
number of varieties and hybrids that have contributed immensely to
higher grain yield, stability of harvests, and farm income. There has
been, however, important improvements in resistance to diseases and
insects, and in tolerance to a range of abiotic stresses, especially
soil toxicities, but we also must persist in efforts to raise maximum
genetic potential, if we are to meet with the projected food demand
challenges before us.

What began as a biotechnology bandwagon nearly 20 years ago has
developed invaluable new scientific methodologies and products which
need active financial and organizational support to bring them to
fruition in food and fiber production systems. So far, biotechnology
has had the greatest impact in medicine and public health. However,
there are a number of fascinating developments that are approaching
commercial applications in agriculture. In animal biotechnology, we
have Bovine somatatropin (BST) now widely used to increase milk
production, and Porcine somatatropin (PST) waiting in the wings for
approval.

Transgenic varieties and hybrids of cotton, maize, potatoes,
containing genes from Bacillus thuringiensis, which effectively
control a number of serious insect pests, are now being successfully
introduced commercially in the United States. The use of such
varieties will greatly reduce the need for insecticide sprays and
dusts. Considerable progress also has been made in the development of
transgenic plants of cotton, maize, oilseed rape, soybeans, sugar
beet, and wheat, with tolerance to a number of herbicides. This can
lead to a reduction in overall herbicide use through much more
specific interventions and dosages. Not only will this lower
production costs; it also has important environmental advantages.

Good progress has been made in developing cereal varieties with
greater tolerance for soil alkalinity, free aluminum, and iron
toxicities. These varieties will help to ameliorate the soil
degradation problems that have developed in many existing irrigation
systems. They will also allow agriculture to succeed into acid soil
areas, such as the Cerrados in Brazil and in central and southern
Africa, thus adding more arable land to the global production base.
Greater tolerance of abiotic extremes, such as drought, heat, and
cold, will benefit irrigated areas in several ways. First, we will be
able to achieve "more crop per drop" through designing plants with
reduced water requirements and adoption of between crop/water
management systems. Recombinant DNA techniques can speed up the
development process.

There are also hopeful signs that we will be able to improve
fertilizer use efficiency as well. Scientists from the University of
Florida and the Monsanto company have been working on the development
through genetic engineering of wheat and other crops that have high
levels of glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH). Transgenic wheats with high
GDH, for example, yielded up to 29 percent more with the same amount
of fertilizer than did the normal crop (Smil, 1999).

Transgenic plants that can control viral and fungal diseases are not
nearly so developed. Nevertheless, there are some promising examples
of specific virus coat genes in transgenic varieties of potatoes and
rice that confer considerable protection. Other promising genes for
disease resistance are being incorporated into other crop species
through transgenic manipulations.

Recently, IRRI scientists, in collaboration with other researchers,
have succeeded in transferring genes to increase the quantity of
Vitamin A, iron, and other micronutrients contained in rice. This
could have profound impact for millions of people with deficiencies of
Vitamin A and iron, causes of blindness and aenemia, respectively.

Since most of this research is being done by the private sector, which
patents its inventions, agricultural policy makers must face up to a
potentially serious problem. How will these resource-poor farmers of
the world be able to gain access to the products of biotechnology
research? How long, and under what terms, should patents be granted
for bio-engineered products? Further, the high cost of biotechnology
research is leading to a rapid consolidation in the ownership of
agricultural life science companies. Is this desirable? These issues
are matters for serious consideration by national, regional and global
governmental organizations.

National governments need to be prepared to work with -- and benefit
from -- the new breakthroughs in biotechnology. First and foremost,
government must establish a regulatory framework to guide the testing
and use of genetically modified crops. These rules and regulations
should be reasonable in terms of risk aversion and cost effective to
implement. Let's not tie science's hands through excessively
restrictive regulations. Since much of the biotechnology research is
underway in the private sector, the issue of intellectual property
rights must be addressed, and accorded adequate safeguards by national
governments.

Standing up to the Anti-Science Crowd

Science and technology are under growing attack in the affluent
nations where misinformed environmentalists claim that the consumer is
being poisoned out of existence by the current high-yielding systems
of agricultural production. While I contend this isn't so, I often ask
myself how it is that so many supposedly "educated" people are so
illiterate about science? There seems to be a growing fear of science,
per se, as the pace of technological change increases. The breaking of
the atom and the prospects of a nuclear holocaust added to people's
fear, and drove a bigger wedge between the scientist and the layman.
The world was becoming increasingly unnatural, and science, technology
and industry were seen as the culprits. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring,
published in 1962, reported that poisons were everywhere, killing the
birds first and then humans -- struck a very sensitive nerve.

Of course, this perception was not totally unfounded. By the mid 20th
century air and water quality had been seriously damaged through
wasteful industrial production systems that pushed effluents often
literally into "our own backyards." Over the past 30 years, we all owe
a debt of gratitude to environmental movements in the industrialized
nations, which has led to legislation to improve air and water
quality, protect wildlife, control the disposal of toxic wastes,
protect the soils, and reduce the loss of biodiversity.

Yet, in almost every environmental category far more progress is being
made than most in the media are willing to admit -- at least in the
industrialized world. Why? I believe that it's because "apocalypse
sells." Sadly, all too many scientists, many who should and do know
better, have jumped on the environmental bandwagon in search of
research funds.

When scientists align themselves with anti-science political
movements, like the anti-biotechnology crowd, what are we to think?
When scientists lend their names to unscientific propositions, what
are we to think? Is it any wonder that science is losing its
constituency? We must be on guard against politically opportunistic,
pseudo-scientists like T.D. Lysenko, whose bizarre ideas and vicious
persecution of anyone who disagreed with him, contributed greatly to
the collapse of the former USSR.

I often ask the critics of modern agricultural technology what the
world would have been like without the technological advances that
have occurred? For those whose main concern is protecting the
"environment," let's look at the positive impact that the application
of science-based technology has had on the land.

Had Asia's 1961 average cereal yields (930 kg/ha) still prevailed
today, nearly 600 million ha of additional land -- of the same quality
-- would have been needed to equal the 1997 cereal harvest (milled
rice adjusted) (Figure 1). Obviously, such a surplus of land was not
available in populous Asia. Moreover, even if it were available, think
of soil erosion, loss of forests and grasslands, wildlife species that
would have ensured had we tried to produce these larger harvests with
the low-input technology!

In his writings, Professor Robert Paarlberg, who teaches at Wellesley
College and Harvard University in the United States, has sounded the
alarm about the consequences of the debilitating debate between
agriculturalists and environmentalists over what constitutes so-called
"sustainable agriculture" in the Third World. This debate has confused
-- if not paralyzed -- many in the international donor community who,
afraid of antagonizing powerful environmental lobbying groups, have
turned away from supporting science-based agricultural modernization
projects still needed in much of smallholder Asia, sub-Saharan Africa,
and Latin America. This deadlock must be broken. We cannot lose sight
of the enormous job before us to feed 10-11 billion people, many --
indeed probably most -- of whom will begin life in abject poverty.
Only through dynamic agricultural development will there be any hope
to alleviate poverty and improve human health and productivity.

Farmers need to be motivated to adopt many of the desired improvements
in input use efficiency (irrigation water, fertilizers, crop
protection chemicals). This will require a two-pronged-strategy, in
which reductions in subsidies are linked to aggressive and effective
extension education programs to increase the efficiency of input use.
Many agricultural research and extension organizations need to be
decentralized, more strongly farmer-oriented, and more closely linked
within the technology-generation and dissemination process. Universal
primary education in rural areas -- for both boys and girls -- is
imperative and must be given the highest priority. Ways must also be
found to improve access to information by less-educated
farmers-because of equity reasons and also to facilitate accelerated
adoption of the newer knowledge-intensive technologies.

Closing Comments

Thirty years ago, in my acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, I
said that the Green Revolution had won a temporary success in man's
war against hunger, which if fully implemented, could provide
sufficient food for humankind through the end of the 20th century. But
I warned that unless the frightening power of human reproduction was
curbed, the success of the Green Revolution would only be ephemeral.

I now say that the world has the technology -- either available or
well advanced in the research pipeline -- to feed a population of 10
billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers
and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology?

Extreme environmental elitists seem to be doing everything they can to
stop scientific progress in its tracks. Small, well-financed,
vociferous, and anti-science groups are threatening the development
and application of new technology, whether it is developed from
biotechnology or more conventional methods of agricultural science.

I agree fully with a petition written by Professor C.S. Prakash of
Tuskegee University, and now signed by several thousand scientists
worldwide, in support of agricultural biotechnology, which states that
"no food products, whether produced with recombinant DNA techniques or
more traditional methods, are totally without risk. The risks posed by
foods are a function of the biological characteristics of those foods
and the specific genes that have been used, not of the processes
employed in their development."
 
While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt elitist
positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called "natural"
methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the
low-income, food-deficit nations cannot. It is access to new
technology that will be the salvation of the poor, and not, as some
would have us believe, maintaining them wedded to outdated,
low-yielding, and more costly production technology.

Most certainly, agricultural scientists and leaders have a moral
obligation to warn the political, educational, and religious leaders
about the magnitude and seriousness of the arable land, food and
population problems that lie ahead, even with breakthroughs in
biotechnology. If we fail to do so, we will be negligent in our duty
and inadvertently may be contributing to the pending chaos of
incalculable millions of deaths by starvation. But we must also speak
to policy makers -- unequivocally and convincingly -- that global food
insecurity will not disappear without new technology; to ignore this
reality will make future solutions all the more difficult to achieve.

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1/ Distinguished Professor of International Agriculture, Texas A&M
University
2/ Director for Program Coordination, Sasakawa Africa Association

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