What if you knew that companies that fashion GM seeds maintain that GM crops hold the greatest hope for adequately feeding our rapidly expanding world population?
Biotech spokespersons have argued that, while the industry is indeed concerned about the bottom line, it is primarily driven by research and innovation. Their argument is straightforward: Innovation is the only way to meet the world's burgeoning needs for food and medicines in a rapidly shrinking and increasingly scarred natural environment. Innovation requires costly and time-consuming research and testing, which will only happen if it's paid for. The best way to ensure it's paid for is through intellectual property protection. Patents should operate worldwide, they maintain, because markets are increasingly global in nature.
The result of this innovation will be GM crops that will offer our best chance to adequately address the challenge of feeding the estimated six billion people who, in as few as 50 years by some estimates, will join the six billion of us already here. GM crop farming holds out greater promise than conventional farming of boosting production on the same amount of ground, adherents say, and of raising crops where none could grow before, such as on salt-laden land. In increasing yields and making marginal lands productive, GM promoters insist, lie our only means of staving off widespread famine in developing countries in the coming decades.
"The possibility that (biotech) crops could make a substantial contribution to providing sufficient food for an expanding world is, on its own, a solid reason for engaging in the research that underlies their development."
--The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 1999 Report [28]
"Since there is no option in population-rich and land-hungry countries but to produce more per units of land, water, and labor, there is need for technologies which can promote and sustain an ever-green revolution rooted in the principles of ecology, economics, and social and gender equity. It is obvious that the challenge can be met only by integrating recent advances in molecular genetics and genetic engineering, information and space technologies, renewable energy technologies, and management science with traditional technologies and ecological wisdom, resulting in appropriate ecotechnologies. There should be no relaxation of yield-enhancing research, since there is no other way of meeting global food needs."
--Professor M.S. Swaminathan, agronomist and father of India's Green Revolution [29]
"'Solid scientific evidence' has been all too lacking in this debate [over GM foods] -- a war of words and slogans, not ideas and initiatives. Let us suggest some facts that must not be forgotten. Without dramatic improvements in crop yields, people will starve; they will suffer disease and death from malnutrition. The world's wildlife, habitats, endangered species, and entire ecosystems will be put at risk as we are forced to draw more agricultural land into production. Pest resistance, which we now know can be bred precisely into plants, will be supplanted by wider use of chemical pesticides. The promise of improving the nutritional value of indigenous crops in the developing world may be lost for a generation. Is this what the [anti-GM] radicals want? Surely not. Those of us in affluent societies have the luxury of pondering such questions. We have an obligation to give the benefit of the doubt to innovations in science and technology that will aid those who are less fortunate than ourselves."
--Jack Kemp, former U.S. representative and distinguished fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. [30]
References:
28: Quoted in "Why Biotechnology Matters," www.biotechbasics.com.
29: "ICRISAT in the 21st Century: Towards Sustainable Food Security," Environmental Awareness, Vol. 20 No. 4, October-December 1997.
30: "Poorest Nations Lose in Attacks on Bioengineered Food," op-ed piece in The Boston Globe, 12/10/99.
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