Tuesday, March 2, 2010

"A Farm is not just a clever crop"

There is a very short but interesting opinion piece, "Attack of the Really Quite Likable Tomatoes" in the Economist, reflecting on the latest statistics about biotech/GM crop adoption. In 2009, 14 million farmers planted 134 million hectares (the size of Peru!?) of ag biotech / GM crops in 25 countries. 90% of them were small and resource-poor farmers from developing countries.

But what I really like about this piece in the Economist is last paragraph, making the point that, in addition to biotech, there is a lot of other agricultural research that still needs doing. "A farm is not a just a clever crop: it is an ecosystem managed with intelligence. GM crops have a great role to play in that development, but they are only a part of the whole..."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

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