Smaller Footprints

Roger N. Beachy, president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri, offers this example of how the widespread adoption of transgenic technology has enabled producers to shrink their environmental footprints.

"As a result of these advances, farmers that produce these crops can do so without resorting to the use of the large amounts of chemical sprays that have been part of our highly productive agricultural practices for more than 40 years. It has been estimated, based on recent scientific data, that genetically modified potatoes that carry genes for resistance to Colorado potato beetle and for virus resistance nearly 3 million pounds; 1,500 tons) of chemical insecticides. The savings of insecticides in cotton and corn are far larger. If similar research efforts were undertaken on all of the major fruits and vegetables produced in this country, the reduction in the amount of pesticides used by the farmer that find their way into the soil, water, and air, and that can remain in some grocery produce, would be truly staggering."

Meanwhile, writing in the Sunday Times, Charles Pasternak, director of the Oxford International Biomedical Centre, believes genetically-modified herbicide-resistance isn’t that important to developed countries such as the UK, “which can indulge in their particular choice of agriculture: organic, conventional or GM.” But for many underdeveloped regions of the world, most notably drought-stressed Africa, the use of the technology boils down to a life or death proposition.

"Nowhere are herbicide-resistant crops, coupled with the use of cheap weedkillers, needed more than in sub-Saharan Africa, where 40,000 people — half of them children — are dying from malnutrition daily. We should be helping them by developing and promoting the relevant GM crops, not hindering their salvation by unjustified criticism of the technology."

Posted by Jim Langcuster at March 17, 2004 09:09 AM | TrackBack