Replies to post #115413 on Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

The Limits of Farming

[This is an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe. The prologue of #msg-60259277 has links to several related items.]

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/09/04/the_limits_of_farming/

›By Gareth Cook
September 4, 2011

By the year 2050, Earth will be home to another 2 or 3 billion more people. The most vexing question is: How will we feed them all? Not only will there be more people, but everyone will have more money to spend on food. Where, on this ever more crowded planet, will we grow all of it?

By 2050, the world’s farmers will need to supply almost twice as much food as they do today, according to an analysis by the World Wildlife Fund. Put another way, we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as have in the last 8,000.

Where will the food come from? Today, we use about a third of the planet’s land surface for agriculture, according to Jason Clay, a senior vice president at the fund who prepared the analysis. But when you subtract the areas that are already “taken’’ - deserts, mountains, lakes, rivers, cities, and highways - the figure rises to about 58 percent of the land. Take out the national parks and other protected areas, and food production already consumes 70 percent of available space. At current growth rates, Clay says, we will be nearing the planet’s capacity by 2050.

For every square inch of unclaimed land to be converted to farming would be an irreversible ecological disaster. But even if you are entirely deaf to green arguments, the problem is fundamental and unavoidable: At some point, the amount of land devoted to agriculture must stop expanding, because there is only so much land.

What we must do, then, is freeze the footprint of food – find a way to roughly double the productivity of farming, so that we can produce twice as much food on the same amount of land. It is a daunting technological and social challenge, and one that does not have a single solution, according to Clay’s report on the idea in a recent issue of Nature.

The most powerful tool is one that makes some environmentalists uncomfortable: genetics. The tools of modern biology have brought tremendous improvements in some crops, like corn, by breeding in traits like faster growth and increased resistance to drought and disease. But of the 10 crops that produce about three quarters of the world’s food, only one is on track to double production by 2050.

A consortium including the World Wildlife Fund and BGI, a genome research group based in China, will be working through a list of “orphan crops,’’ such as cassava, banana, and peanuts, which are widely used for food, but which have not had their DNA sequenced. Such information would make breeding useful traits faster and more efficient.

Without genetics, it is hard to see how the footprint of food will ever be frozen, or how we will avoid hitting the planet’s limited land capacity. For those who shudder at the very mention of genetics, remember that genetic manipulation is what created almost all the food we eat. Those delicious heirloom tomatoes you enjoy? They are the product of genetic engineering - albeit a cumbersome form of it - at the hands of farmers.

…The planet’s limited land area is a stark fact that changes how you look at farming. For example, from a long-term global perspective, organic farming is a problem. Organic generally takes more land to produce the same amount of food. Done on a vast scale, it could aggravate the conversion of wild land to agriculture.

There are many problems vying for our attention, but this is one we simply have to get a handle on: Farming must get better, or it will continue to expand—until it can’t.‹

[DewDiligence]

Emerging Markets Now Plant >50% of Worldwide Biotech Crops

[In 2010, the corresponding figure was 48%. Please see the embedded links in #msg-60259277 for related stories.]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/07/crops-biotech-idUSL2E8D79LN20120207

›By Carey Gillam

Feb 7 (Reuters) - Farmers in developing nations will sow more biotech crops than those in the industrialized world for the first time this year, with Brazil leading the charge, according to a report issued on Tuesday that showed steady growth in the use of genetically modified seeds.

Globally, the area planted with biotech crops rose 8 percent last year to a record 160 million hectares, or 395 million acres, slowing slightly from a 10 percent rise in 2010, said the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) in its annual report on biotech seed use.

Use in developing nations continued to grow faster than in the United States, still the biggest market by a wide margin. GMO area in developing countries rose by 11 percent or 8.2 million hectares. Growth in the United States, which grows about 43 percent of the world's GMO crops, slowed to 3 percent.

"Developing countries grew close to 50 percent (49.875 percent) of global biotech crops in 2011 and for the first time are expected to exceed industrial countries' hectarage in 2012," ISAAA said in the report.

"This is contrary to the prediction of critics who, prior to the commercialization of the technology in 1996, prematurely declared that biotech crops were only for industrial countries and would never be accepted and adopted by developing countries."

Biotech crops were planted by 16.7 million farmers in 29 countries, up from 15.4 million farmers in the same number of countries in 2010, according to the ISAAA.

"I was a little surprised that the growth was as strong as it is," said Clive James, chairman of the ISAAA board of directors. "Millions of farmers around the world in both industrial and developing countries are adopting the technology."

ISAAA is a not-for-profit organization aimed at promoting crop biotechnology applications, which are the subject of controversy, particularly in Europe, where they are largely banned.

Critics say there is evidence of human health dangers and environmental problems connected to genetically modified crops, though the technology companies that develop them and supporters say they are proven safe.

U.S. farmers have embraced the technology, and most of the U.S. corn and soybeans are genetically altered. Corporate biotech leaders, such as Monsanto, have crafted crops that tolerate dousings of herbicides, and crops that are designed to resist pests, effectively creating their own insecticide.

According to the ISAAA, U.S. farmers planted 69 million hectares, or 170.43 million acres, with biotech crops in 2011; followed by Brazil with 30.3 million hectares, (75 million acres) and Argentina with 23.7 million hectares (59 million acres).

While the United States boasts biotech corn, soybeans, cotton, canola, sugarbeet, alfalfa, papaya and squash, in Latin America biotech crops are so far limited to soybeans, corn and cotton [these three are by far the most important biotech crops in the US too].

India had 10.6 million hectares (26.2 million acres) planted to cotton in 2011 and Canada had 10.4 million hectares (25.7 million acres) planted to canola, corn, soybeans and sugarbeet.

All other countries had less than half that amount, with China having the next-largest planting area for biotech crops with 3.9 million hectares (9.6 million acres) planted in 2011.

While biotech crops remain controversial in Europe, six European Union countries -- Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Romania -- planted 114,490 hectares of biotech corn in 2011, up more than 25 percent over 2010.

Still, critics noted significant setbacks for biotech crops last year, notably a decision by the world's biggest chemical company, BASF, to halt development and commercialization of genetically modified crops in Europe due to the lack of acceptance for this technology in many parts of the continent.

Similarly, Monsanto said it would not sell its genetically modified maize in France in 2012 and beyond.

"The evidence against genetically modified crops continues to grow," said Mute Schimpf, a Friends of the Earth Europe spokesman. "Communities and nature are paying the price of the resulting pollution. The biotech system of farming is a dead-end and will fail to meet the needs of the future."

Biotech crops are accepted for import for food and feed use and for release into the environment in 60 countries, including major food-importing countries such as Japan that do not plant biotech crops, the ISAAA said.

The global value of biotech seed alone was $13.2 billion in 2011, with the end product of commercial grain from biotech maize, soybean grain and cotton valued at $160 billion or more per year, according to the ISAAA.‹

[DewDiligence]

Bullish for MON (and DE):

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323998604578568032388616700.html

Brazil's soybean crop is expected to reach a record 85 million metric tons in the 2013-2014 crop season, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The country's soybean output in the 2012-13 season rose 34% compared with five seasons ago, an increase largely fueled by China's more protein-focused diet.

Brazil's corn output increased 36% in the past five seasons, and it harvested its biggest crop on record last harvest, according to the USDA.

Higher prices have encouraged Brazilian growers to plant more. "In the last five years, we've increased our area about 40%. We still have some more growing to do," said Holt Shoaf, who farms soybeans and corn in the northeastern state of Piauí.