As a guest blogger on Dr. Pamela Ronald’s Tomorrow’s Table, Dr. Kent J. Bradford, Professor of Plant Sciences and Academic Director of the Seed Biotechnology Center at UC Davis and member of the CBI’s Experts List, discusses the role biotechnology plays in sustainability. Bradford cites a Keystone Center study that found that corn, cotton, and soybeans all improved in their level of sustainability between 1997 and 2007, a period during which GE varieties became dominant in these crops.

“The results from 13 years of commercial GE crops are clear,” Bradford says. “If CUESA (The Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture) and other groups are serious about advancing agricultural sustainability, they should encourage producers to use GE crops rather than avoid them. And if they want to educate urban consumers about sustainable agriculture, there is a great story to tell about biotechnology FOR sustainability.”

The entire article can be found here.  

Please share your thoughts on biotechnology’s role in achieving sustainable agriculture.

Maywa Montenegro writes about the upcoming COP15 Summit in Copenhagen and the need for global leaders to be more mindful of the current tenuous state of global agriculture and the  role biotechnology will play in meeting these challenges.

“Investing in biotechnology laboratories and training biotechnology-capable scientists is a big deal,” says Dr. Nina Fedoroff. “It’s expensive, it needs to be done everywhere, it’s a huge investment. So getting over this distaste for modern science because people don’t realize how long we’ve been changing plants to suit our needs is a really critical step.”

The entire article can be read here.

Please share your thoughts on the current state of global agriculture and the role of biotechnology in helping to address some of these problems.