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Posted on 01/22/2003 5:03:13 AM PST by SJackson
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:47:57 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
MEXICO CITY -- In 2000, I served on a joint U.S.-European Union Biotechnology Consultative Forum -- appointed by President Clinton and Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission -- to look at the full range of issues that have polarized thinking about biotechnology, especially in food and agriculture, on both sides of the Atlantic.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
For more information, here is a great article about him.:
But Borlaug and his team were already engaged in the kind of crash program that Ehrlich declared wouldn't work. Their dwarf wheat varieties resisted a wide spectrum of plant pests and diseases and produced two to three times more grain than the traditional varieties. In 1965, they had begun a massive campaign to ship the miracle wheat to Pakistan and India and teach local farmers how to cultivate it properly. By 1968, when Ehrlich's book appeared, the U.S. Agency for International Development had already hailed Borlaug's achievement as a "Green Revolution."
In Pakistan, wheat yields rose from 4.6 million tons in 1965 to 8.4 million in 1970. In India, they rose from 12.3 million tons to 20 million. And the yields continue to increase. Last year, India harvested a record 73.5 million tons of wheat, up 11.5 percent from 1998. Since Ehrlich's dire predictions in 1968, India's population has more than doubled, its wheat production has more than tripled, and its economy has grown nine-fold. Soon after Borlaug's success with wheat, his colleagues at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research developed high-yield rice varieties that quickly spread the Green Revolution through most of Asia.
Contrary to Ehrlich's bold pronouncements, hundreds of millions didn't die in massive famines. India fed far more than 200 million more people, and it was close enough to self-sufficiency in food production by 1971 that Ehrlich discreetly omitted his prediction about that from later editions of The Population Bomb. The last four decades have seen a "progress explosion" that has handily outmatched any "population explosion."
Borlaug, who unfortunately is far less well-known than doom-sayer Ehrlich, is responsible for much of the progress humanity has made against hunger. Despite occasional local famines caused by armed conflicts or political mischief, food is more abundant and cheaper today than ever before in history, due in large part to the work of Borlaug and his colleagues.
Marxist are Capitalist with power as their profit motive.
All envirowhackos form up in the Kaczynski Brigade--you will be cast adrift on an ice floe where you will not be menaced by GM food ever again.
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