Borlaug and Carter on WSJ: Food for Thought

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The Wall Street Journal

COMMENTARY

Food for Thought

By NORMAN BORLAUG and JIMMY CARTER
October 14, 2005; Page A10

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It took around 10,000 years for the world's farmers to reach their current production of nearly six billion gross tons of food, consumed virtually in its entirety by 6.4 billion people annually. Within 50 years, we will have to increase this amount by at least another 50% -- to nine billion tons. Most likely we will have to achieve this feat on a shrinking agricultural land base, and with most of the production increases occurring in those countries where it is to be consumed.

However, agricultural science is increasingly under attack by groups and individuals who, for political rather than scientific reasons, are campaigning to limit advances, especially in new fields such as genetic modification (GM) through biotechnology. Despite this opposition, it is likely that 250 million acres will be planted to GM crops in 2005. Most of this acreage is in the industrialized world, although the area in middle-income developing countries is expanding rapidly. However, the debate over biotechnology in the industrialized countries continues to impede its acceptance in most poor, food-insecure countries.

More than half of the world's 800 million hungry people are small-scale farmers who cultivate marginal lands. New science and biotechnology have the power to address the agro-climatic extremes. Their use lies at the core of extending the Green Revolution to these difficult farming areas. Because there are so many hungry and suffering people, particularly in Africa, attacks on science and biotechnology are especially pernicious. Africa is facing a pandemic scourge of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, a 30-year period of continuous degradation in soil fertility, frequent droughts and a burgeoning population.

This set of converging circumstances can lead to a human catastrophe in Africa on a scale the world has never seen. We know it is coming. We have the knowledge to avert it. If we put it off, solving it later will mean the acute suffering -- and even death -- of millions of innocents who could have been spared such a tragedy.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112925672577868494.htm (subscription)

Messrs. Borlaug and Carter, Nobel Peace laureates for 1970 and 2002, respectively, are members of the Council of Advisors for the World Food Prize, which was awarded yesterday in Des Moines, Iowa.