Genetically Modified Crops Necessary To Feed The World

One of the more enjoyable and interesting aspects of my job is getting out each summer to the various seed companies’ trials of new varieties. What’s not to like? Walking through sun-splashed fields and talking with the plant breeders, bright people who know a lot about their subject and are always eager to share their knowledge.

Occasionally, the conversation will turn to the future of variety development, and the breeder will invariably say that agricultural biotechnology — genetic modification — will play a critical role. But just as invariably, the breeder will say his or her comments are “off the record,” for fear of consumer backlash against genetically modified vegetables. It’s incredibly frustrating for me, as an information provider, not to be able to share these keen insights into the future. After all, they will have a very real impact on your business.

That’s why it was so gratifying to read recently that a prominent research team recommends that we must make major changes in the way we produce food and fiber, and that those changes include the implementation of biotechnology. It wasn’t just what the team said that caught my eye, but its composition. After all, much of the opposition to biotech has leaned to the left of the political spectrum in the form of so-called environmentalists who believe that we shouldn’t interfere with nature. Just as an aside, I wonder how many of these folks would care for a “natural” tomato. If you’ve never seen pictures, before plant breeders went to work on them, tomatoes were like little green rocks.

Enough Anti-GMO Bias

This research team could also be said to be leaning left, if anything, though in a perfect world no respected scientist would let politics be a factor. It is led by Nina Federoff, science and technology adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Federoff got right to the heart of the problem, saying there is a “critical need to get beyond popular biases against the use of agricultural biotechnology,” in a piece titled, “Radically Rethinking Agriculture for the 21st Century” in the Feb. 12 issue of the journal Science.

Specifically, the scientists recommend that efforts aimed at increasing agricultural productivity and eliminating global hunger should be focused on re-evaluating restrictive regulatory policies that now govern the use of genetically modified crops and establishing a public facility within USDA for safety-testing genetically modified crops.

In so doing we could proceed confidently into a future guided not by some fuzzy belief in what is natural, but by a touchstone rooted in sound science. You folks could do what you do best — feeding the world in the most efficient possible way. And those seed breeders? After sharing their vision, they would turn to me and conclude: “And you can quote me on that.”