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Biotech, competition, collaboration keys to feeding world in the future

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Farming and Your Freedom

At long last, the political conclusion is being reached: Biotech is the key to growing food. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, recently became an advisor to DuPont, parent company to Pioneer H-Bred. Politico, an online commentary, published his Feb. 16 release outlining what he sees as needed to increase global food production. At the top of the list is use of biotechnology.

Daschle has called for, according to Politico, "strengthened legal and legislative safeguards" that encourage innovation, more corporate collaboration and cooperation between companies, governments and farmers worldwide for renewed research and development into ways technology can help increase food growth around the globe.

Daschle told Politico that in order to feed a global population boom of nine billion (yes, billion) people by 2050, there will be a need to more than double current levels of food production. How? By developing innovative strategies to combat global hunger, and related nutritional issues. (The United Nations has said that world food output will need to grow by 70 percent by 2050.)

Daschle told Politico, "First, we must support scientific and technological innovation in agriculture.' New technologies are poised to reach those twin goals. "We must foster innovation by encouraging investment in biotechnology and board agricultural research and development," Daschle said.

Reaching the goals by 2050 will require an open, competitive market place, the former senator noted, with a combination of competition and collaboration between companies. "From collaboration comes innovation. We must collaborate to innovate."

That's a tall order, given the intense competition out there between giant agricultural supply companies such as DuPont and Monsanto. Setting aside competitive instincts in order to collaborate won't come easy, which is why Daschle supports a system that would allow collaboration while protecting intellectual property rights of individual companies.

In addition to all of the above. Daschle sees empowerment of individual farmers around the world as important, as well. They need to be given the tools to meet the growing demand of the world's nine billion mouths.

He said governments must form partnerships with local farmers, wherever they are in the developing world, to "increase crop yields, enhance resistance to pests, and improve performance." All of that must be done while meeting the challenges caused by changing climate around the globe.

Not addressed in the Politico piece, but certainly needing to be addressed as agriculture moves forward to meet the 2050 challenge, is the cost of farming -- whether it be power production cropping, livestock operations or small farms in far-flung places. As we move toward heightened technology, we will have to address this growing problem of prohibitive inputs. You can't have it both ways.

I'll see ya.



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© 2010 The Decorah Journal Decorah, Iowa. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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