World Food Summit Endorses Biotechnology
June 18, 2002
CHURCHVILLE, VA—In a stunning defeat for the global Green movement, the World Food Summit on June 11 formally endorsed biotechnology as a potentially-important factor in conquering world hunger. The Summit rejected activist demands for organic farming, in favor of the higher, more stable crop yields from modern conventional farming–and the enormous potential of genetic engineering to help double global food output to feed a peak population of 8-9 billion mostly-affluent people in 2050.
The Summit’s Declaration says, “We are committed to study, share and facilitate the responsible use of biotechnology in addressing development needs.” The Declaration also presses for more agricultural research, including biotechnology.
The UN Food and Agricultural Organization, which is hosting the Summit, announced, “The appropriate use of biotechnology offers considerable potential to improve food security,” noting particularly tissue culture and molecular markers, and “continuing research in drought-resistant and salt-tolerant crops.”
The 1997 World Food Summit set a goal of cutting the world’s human hunger in half by 2002. Unfortunately, the world still has some 800 million people without adequate food, and the numbers of hungry people are declining only slowly.
Nevertheless, thousands of activists had worked the UN system for at least the past two years, claiming that biotech crops were “too risky,” and pushing for more support of lower-yielding organic and traditional farms. In Rome, however, they found themselves out-organized and outgunned by the mostly-elected governments of 188 Summit nations.
The high-yield contingent was led by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Anne Veneman, who told the Summit the U.S. Agency for International Development will launch a 10-year $100 million Collaborative Agriculture Biotechnology Initiative to research better crop varieties for the often-difficult growing conditions in Third World countries. Ms. Veneman also announced the U.S. would hold a ministerial-level science and technology conference next year, aimed at helping meet rising food demands in developing countries.
The activists were also up against a group of developing nations which know all too well the low, uncertain yields, grinding poverty and wildlife habitat losses imposed by organic and traditional farming. Leading agronomists from China, India and Kenya shared the Summit podium to make pro-biotech statements along with Dr. Norman Borlaug. (Borlaug won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for the high-yield wheat varieties which helped touch off the Green Revolution, tripling crop yields across much of the world in the 1960s.)
The developing countries trying to rise above subsistence farming and get into biotech also include Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, Egypt, Bangladesh and the Philippines, among others.
Dr. Borlaug wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal that high-yield farming has not only saved a billion people from starving, but has also prevented the plow-down of at least 12 million square miles of wildlife habitat to grow today’s food supply with low yields. (That’s uncomfortably close to the world’s total forest area of 16 million square miles.)
Biotechnology has recently developed crops that are not only salt-tolerant, but actually cleanse crop-poisoning salts from the soil. Researchers at the University of Califoronia/Davis turned on a natural gene in both tomatoes and canola, which directs the plants to store salt in their leaves, so it can be harvested and removed. Thus, 40 percent of the world’s food supply, produced under irrigation, can be made fully sustainable for the first time.
The case for organic farming was also undercut by a long-term Swiss organic test published in Science on May 31. Switzerland’s Research Institute of Organic Agriculture produced only 4 tons of wheat per hectare, far less than the Swiss national average of 6-7 tons.
Some organic spokesmen say they’d have higher yields if they’d had bigger research budgets, but organic farmers have prided themselves on rejecting most recent advances in farming science—including biotechnology.
This Rome food summit marks the first time that the world’s food and farming mainstream has girded itself to block the activists’ demands for a return to antique farming. However, it is too soon to say that the threats of low-yield farming, hunger and wildlands plow-down have been banished from the 21st century.
Ultimately, the urban consumers who dominate politics in the affluent countries will dictate against any farming systems that offend them—and so far the activists have been far more adept at communicating with the urbanites than farmers and agribusiness. Agriculture could still be forced backward by public policies, until food shortages and wildlife extinctions force First World consumers to recognize the humanitarian and environmental importance of high yields.
DENNIS T. AVERY is a senior fellow for Hudson Institute in Indianapolis and the Director of the Center for Global Food Issues. He was formerly a senior policy analyst for the U.S. Department of State. Readers may write him at Post Office Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421
This article was published by Knight Ridder Tribune
Dennis T. Avery is based in Churchville, Va., and is director of global food issues for the Hudson Institute of Indianapolis.
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