[Nasional-e] Let science sow seeds of peace

[Ambon]

Let science sow seeds of peace

By NORMAN E. BORLAUG
Special to The Japan Times

While there has been a marked decrease in the rate of global population
growth since the early 1990s, it is still rising rapidly, especially in
developing countries. Medium-term projections for world population are
approximately 8.3 billion by 2030 and 9.3 billion by 2050, before hopefully
stabilizing at about 10-11 billion toward the end of the 21st century.
To feed this population, global agricultural production must double, perhaps
triple, from 2000's 5.23 billion tons. Meeting this demand implies two key
challenges. First, developing an environmentally and economically
sustainable method to produce this additional quantity of food. Second, and
even more daunting, distributing food equitably.
Over the past 40 years, technological breakthroughs have facilitated
increases in food production "pari passu" with global population growth. The
result is that now per-capita world food supplies are 23 percent higher and
real prices are 65 percent lower than in 1961. Global rice and wheat
production has increased from 127 million tons to 762 million tons. In the
second half of the 1960s, the use of new types of wheat and rice and new
farm management practices, which made up the "Green Revolution," were often
depicted as the wholesale transfer of technology from high-yield
agricultural systems to Third World farmers. To me, however, this revolution
signified a new era in which agricultural science was used to produce
technologies appropriate to conditions in the developing world.
The potential for further expansion of agriculture to new arable land areas
is limited for most regions of the world, particularly for densely populated
Asia and Europe. The International Food Policy Research Institute estimates
that more than 85 percent of future growth in cereal production must come
from increasing yields on lands already in production. Such productivity
improvements will require crop varieties with higher genetic yield potential
and greater tolerance of drought, insects and diseases. To achieve these
genetic gains requires advances in both conventional and biotechnological
farming methods. Clearly, we also need to rethink our attitudes about water,
and move away from thinking of it as nearly a free good.
The rapidly spreading use of biotechnology offers great promise for
improving the yield potential, yield dependability and nutritional quality
of our food and feed crops. Commercial adoption by farmers of the new
varieties has been one of the most rapid cases of technology diffusion in
the history of agriculture. Between 1996 and 2001, the area planted
commercially to transgenic crops has increased 30-fold. The arguments of the
opposition, however, cannot be ignored and Third World nations must put into
place regulatory frameworks to guide the development, testing and use of
genetically modified organisms, both to protect people and the environment.
In addition, the intellectual property rights of private companies also need
to be safeguarded to ensure fair returns to past investments and to
encourage greater investments in the future.
The current backlash against agricultural science and technology, evident in
some industrialized countries, however, is hard for me to comprehend. How
quickly urbanites become detached from the soil and how quickly some
environmentalists are to brand farmers and ranchers as natural-resource
plunderers rather than the stewards that they really are.
By increasing yields on lands best suited to agriculture, farmers have been
able to leave untouched vast areas for other purposes. For example, had the
1950 average global cereal-grain yield per hectare still prevailed in 1998,
instead of the 600 million hectares used for production, nearly 1.8 billion
hectares of land would have been needed to produce that year's global
harvest.
More than any other region of the world, food production south of the Sahara
is in crisis. High rates of population growth and little application of
improved production technology have resulted in declining per-capita food
production, escalating food deficits, and deteriorating nutritional levels,
especially among the rural poor.
Almost certainly, the first essential component of social justice is
adequate food. And yet there are upwards of 1 billion people who go to bed
every night hungry. Particularly disheartening are the 300 million young
children who go hungry each day, with this undernourishment leading to
often-irreversible damage to their bodies and minds.
When I received my Nobel Peace Prize 31 years ago, I stated that the "Green
Revolution" had won only a temporary success in man's war against hunger,
and warned that unless the frightening power of human reproduction was
curbed, the success of the Green Revolution would be ephemeral.
I now say that the world has the technology -- either currently available or
well advanced in the research pipeline -- to improve crop productivity and
feed a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today is
whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology.
Extremists in the environmental movement from the rich nations seem to be
doing everything they can to stop scientific progress in its tracks. This
small, but vociferous and well-funded, antiscience and antitechnology group
is highly effective. They are denying the small-scale farmers of the Third
World -- and especially those in sub-Saharan Africa -- access to the
improved seeds, fertilizers and crop protection chemicals, and hence both
justice and economic development.
The result of these trends bodes ill for Africa and the world. As Lord John
Boyd Orr, the first director general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization, stated, "you cannot build peace on empty stomachs."
Norman E. Borlaug is an American agricultural scientist and 1970 Nobel Peace
Prize winner. This article is based on his speech made Tuesday at the 4th U
Thant Lecture, United Nations University in Tokyo.
The Japan Times: Oct. 4, 2002
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