Columns:: Worth repeating

since 12/15/98

Columns::October 20, 2003

Worth repeating

Dennis T. Avery, director of Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute, spoke about the challenges facing high-yield agriculture at the 28th D.W. Brooks lecture on Oct. 6. Some excerpts:
“America’s agricultural research leadership fostered the high-yield Green Revolution in the Third World. That Green Revolution saved billions of people from starving in Asia and Latin America and preserved huge amounts of wild lands from being cleared for low-yield crops. My peer-reviewed estimate is that with 1950s’ crop yield, the world would have needed another 12 million square miles of crop land to produce the 1992 food supply. . . .
“America’s agricultural leadership should be one of this country’s proudest achievements. The stark reality is that this proud tradition may be ending. . . . Well-fed urban Americans are convinced that modern, high-yield agriculture is too risky to their health and the environment. . . . U.S. agriculture cannot get public approval for biotechnology and every other element of high-yield agriculture is under regulatory threat as well.
“High-yield agriculture’s first task is to convey to the urban public the massive benefits of high yields that have saved billions of people, millions of pets and millions of square miles of wildlife.”

--Cat Holmes

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