Summary:
Ed Schafer (US Agriculture Secretary) and others at UN Food Summit calling for biotechnology, including genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), to help produce more food by raising yields and producing crops in developing nations that are resistant to disease, pests and environmental damage due to climate change. (Published: 03/06/08)
Notes:
- summit on seeking ways to combat high food prices when climate change may aggravate shortages
- Schafer: "Biotechnology is one of the most promising tools for improving the productivity of agriculture and increasing the incomes of the rural poor. We are convinced of the benefits it offers to developing countries and small farmers"
- green groups and Frankenfoods
- green groups say genetically-engineered crops threaten biodiversity
- many European consumers are wary of eating products dubbed by critics as "Frankenfoods"
- Schafer: biotechnology, including genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), could help produce more food by raising yields and producing crops in developing nations that are resistant to disease and pests
- Philippine Agriculture Minister Arthur Yap:
- "Genetic engineering offers long-term solutions to some of our major crop production problems"
- But: not a panacea for all of his country's agricultural problems.
- Progress being made in the Philippines included research into rice and coconuts resistant to disease
- "We're also working on virus-resistant papaya, papaya hybrids with a longer shelf life that should be ready for market in 2009"
- U.N. Climate Panel:
- Climate change could aggravate production around the world with more droughts, floods, disruptions to monsoons and rising sea levels
- In Africa alone, 250 million people could face extra stress on water supplies by 2020.
- Burkina Faso Agriculture Minister Laurent Sedogo
- country has worked with U.S. agriculture group Monsanto to battle pests that blighted the cotton crop
- "We are about to plant 15,000 hectares" of a new crop that was resistant to pests
- would also cut down on the use of pesticides that could damage the health of farmers
- World Bank and aid agencies
- estimate that soaring food prices could push as many as 100 million more people into hunger.
- About 850 million are already hungry.
- C.S. Karim, an adviser to Bangladesh's agriculture ministry
- A cyclone last year "is a wake-up call for all of us. It shows the vulnerability of Bangladesh. "
- Bangladesh is going ahead with efforts to make crops able to survive floods and more salinity in the soil
