Today is World Water Day, a day set aside annually on March 22 as a means to focus attention on the importance of freshwater and to encourage people everywhere to sustainably use water resources. It’s also a day to think about the role agricultural biotechnology can play in helping people who most rely on water for their livelihood - our farmers.

Water in the form of irrigation and rainfall is essential for all food production. And agriculture accounts for about 70% of global freshwater usage, according to the United Nations, and as much as 90% in some fast-growing economies.

Fresh in our memory is last summer’s record drought, the worst experienced in the United States since 1988. About 87 percent of the nation’s corn crop and 85 percent of soybeans experienced drought conditions last July and August, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The result was lower corn, soybean and other crop yields across the Midwest and South, generating less income for farmers and farm communities.

Amidst last year’s drought, there was hope offered by new biotechnology technologies that can help farmers cope with drought. Farmers who planted new varieties of drought-tolerant corn last year found these crops to be more resilient to drought conditions than other varieties. There are other promising biotech seed varieties in the research and development pipeline that will help farmers get “more crop per drop” of precious water.

For farmers, the reality is that every day is World Water Day, because crops will always need water. But any technology that enables plants to use it more efficiently can give our farmers an edge - even a small one - to grow the food we need to feed America and export to others around the world.

On National Agriculture Day, it’s good to remember the large, positive impact that agricultural biotechnology has had on the farm economy of the United States. Farmers in the United States and around the world have embraced crops enhanced through biotechnology because they provide value and solve real problems.

U.S. farmers in particular have taken advantage of biotechnology. The USDA estimates that in 2012, farmers in the United States planted biotech varieties of soybeans, corn and cotton on 168 million acres of land. This includes:

• 93 percent of all soybeans planted, on 71 million acres;
• 88 percent of all corn planted, on 85 million acres;
• 94 percent of all upland cotton planted, on 12 million acres.

These crops are very valuable. It’s estimated that the sale value of biotech corn, soybeans, and cotton crops in the U.S. in 2012 was around $113 billion.

Biotechnology improves yields and allows farmers to raise crops with fewer inputs such as insecticides and weedkillers. The cost savings have been substantial since biotech crops were first commercialized in the 1990s. According to economists Graham Brookes and Peter Barfoot of PG Economics, from 1996 to 2010, U.S. farmers saw a positive impact on their earnings of $35 billion attributable to biotechnology. READ MORE »

For the first time since the introduction of biotech crops almost two decades ago, developing countries grew biotech crops on more land than in industrialized countries in 2012, according to a report released on February 20 by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA).

Developing nations planted 52% of the global biotech crops in 2012, up from 50% a year earlier and higher than the 48% that industrial countries grew last year. Last year, the growth rate for biotech crops was more than three times as fast and five times as large in developing countries - 11% or 8.7 million hectares (21.5 million acres) in developing countries, versus 3% or 1.6 million hectares, (3.95 million acres) in industrial countries.

“This year’s ISAAA report adds increasing evidence that agricultural biotechnology is a key component in sustainable crop production,” said Dr. Cathleen Enright, executive director of the Council for Biotechnology Information. “When you look at the rising number of acres of biotech crops planted each year, it can’t be denied that biotech crops are delivering value to more and more growers around the world.”

Other highlights of the ISAAA report include:

• Last year marked an unprecedented 100-fold increase in total biotech crop hectarage to 170 million hectares, up from 1.7 million in 1996 - when biotech crops were first commercialized.

• In 2012, a record 17.3 million farmers around the world grew biotech crops. This was an increase of 600,000 from 2011. Over 90%, or over 15 million farmers, were small resource-poor farmers in developing countries.

• China, India, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa, which together represent approximately 40% of the global population, grew 78.2 million hectares (or 46%) of global biotech crops in 2012. The United States continued to be the lead country with 69.5 million hectares, with an average of 90% adoption across all crops.

• While 28 countries planted commercialized biotech crops in 2012, an additional 31 countries totaling 59 have granted regulatory approvals for biotech crops for import, food and feed use and for release into the environment since 1996.

For more information on this year’s report, visit www.isaaa.org.

By Richard L. Lobb, Managing Director
Council for Biotechnology Information

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jose Fernandez has strongly reaffirmed the government’s support of agricultural biotechnology as a way to produce the food needed by a growing world population. Biotech can help “produce more food using less land, less water, less fertilizer and less pesticide,” he says.

“Agricultural biotechnology has already shown it can increase crop yields dramatically,” Fernandez says. “Just to give you an idea of how dramatically: Over the past 15 years, agricultural biotechnology has enabled the production of 229 million more tons of food, feed, and fiber.”

In a video released by the State Department, where he is in charge of economic and business affairs, Fernandez said the nations of the world will need to increase global food production 70 percent by the year 2050.

READ MORE »

Dr. Terry Etherton, Distinguished Professor of Animal Nutrition for the Department of Dairy and Animal Science at The Pennsylvania State University, writes a guest blog discussing the role of agricultural biotechnology in helping to feed a growing world population.

By Terry Etherton

The public discussion about the need for adequate food is a luxury that well-fed people in developed countries can afford.   But in developing countries where the population is growing while the supply of farmland shrinks, people are grappling with a much thornier - and higher-stakes - dilemma.  Unless they can grow more food on less land, they may not have enough to eat.  The scale of this is already daunting - more than 1 billion individuals in the world go to bed each night hungry.

Agricultural biotechnology is helping to solve this by making it possible to grow more and healthier food in conditions and places where it could not be grown before. The new agricultural biotechnologies offer great promise for producing enough food for the growing world population.  The world’s population is expected to increase to 9 to 10 billion individuals by 2050, with more than 60% of the growth occurring in Africa, Southern Asia, and Eastern Asia.  This increase in population translates to a projected increase in annual global food production from 9.9 trillion pounds to about 14.3 trillion pounds in 2050 (see: Terry Etherton Blog on Biotechnology at:  http://blogs.das.psu.edu/tetherton/).

Some may be amazed at the extent to which plant biotechnology is being adopted in agriculture.  The rate is accelerating impressively.  For example, in 2010, the accumulated acreage planted during the past 15 years (i.e., from 1996 to 2010), exceeded one billion hectares for the first time.  This is equivalent to more than 10% of the total land area of the USA or China.   This translates to an 87-fold increase in acreage planted to GM crops between 1996 and 2010, making biotech crops the fastest adopted crop technology in the history of modern agriculture.

It is important to appreciate that feeding the growing world population will be a challenge.  As farmers in developing nations clear-cut more land and consume more natural resources to grow the food their mounting populations need to survive, the world faces an environmental dilemma in addition to a humanitarian one.  I don’t think we want to continue to destroy more wildlife habit or tropical rainforest to plant more soybeans.  What is the answer?  One important answer is to invest in science to develop future generations of technology that improve productive efficiency of plant and animal agriculture.  (Food productive efficiency is an increase in the quantity of food produced per acre for crops, and the quantity of meat or milk produced per unit of food consumed by animals.) 

Opponents of ag biotechnology contend (incorrectly) that many consumers are opposed to modern biotechnology.  However, the science-based consumer survey evidence clearly shows that the majority of Americans have accepted the benefits of the new food biotechnologies (see: Terry Etherton Blog on Biotechnology at:  http://blogs.das.psu.edu/tetherton/).

There are many compelling reasons to support and promote ag and food biotechnology for the global village.  These “biotechnologies” contribute importantly to alleviating some of the major challenges facing global society, including: food security and self-sufficiency, sustainability, alleviation of poverty and hunger, and help in mitigating some of the challenges associated with climate change and global warming.  We are fortunate that we are traversing an era where there is so much science that is being applied to pressing societal issues.  Let us celebrate the many positive contributions that ag biotechnology has made to the world, and will make in the future!