The world needs to breed new varieties of crop seeds resistant to climate change or risk food shortages far worse than the current crisis, a leading expert said on Thursday. "Failure to act ... would make what is happening today look like the calm before the storm," Cary Fowler, head of the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Fund, told Reuters on the sidelines of a June 3-5 U.N. food summit. "We will need totally different plant varieties" to confront climate change for crops such as rice, wheat, maize or sugar, he said. The Fund opened a "doomsday" vault in the Norwegian Arctic in February, seeking to store away all crop seed varieties.
The world needs to breed new varieties of crop seeds resistant to climate change or risk food shortages far worse than the current crisis, a leading expert said on Thursday.
"Failure to act ... would make what is happening today look like the calm before the storm," Cary Fowler, head of the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Fund, told Reuters on the sidelines of a June 3-5 U.N. food summit.
"We will need totally different plant varieties" to confront climate change for crops such as rice, wheat, maize or sugar, he said. The Fund opened a "doomsday" vault in the Norwegian Arctic in February, seeking to store away all crop seed varieties.
IHT: Monsanto pledges to lift food supply
Monsanto, the leader in agricultural biotechnology, pledged Wednesday to develop seeds that would double the yields of corn, soybeans and cotton by 2030 and would require 30 percent less water, land and energy to grow. The announcement, coming as world leaders are meeting in Rome to discuss rising food prices and growing food shortages, appeared to be aimed at least in part at winning acceptance of genetically modified crops by showing that they could play a major role in feeding the world. Much of what is in the commitment are things the company was doing anyway, though it now becomes a formal goal.
Monsanto, the leader in agricultural biotechnology, pledged Wednesday to develop seeds that would double the yields of corn, soybeans and cotton by 2030 and would require 30 percent less water, land and energy to grow.
The announcement, coming as world leaders are meeting in Rome to discuss rising food prices and growing food shortages, appeared to be aimed at least in part at winning acceptance of genetically modified crops by showing that they could play a major role in feeding the world.
Much of what is in the commitment are things the company was doing anyway, though it now becomes a formal goal.
Promises of moral behaviour from the likes of Monsanto aren't worth the air they're breathed upon. keep to the Fen Causeway
Mon$, and GM enthusiasts, have always used the "we will feed the world" language. But there won't be miracles. There are limits to what plants can yield per hectare, and traditional cross-breeding has already gone a long way towards those limits. What genes can make a maize or soy plant produce twice as much as before, except maize or soy genes? If maize or soy genes permit this, why can't it be done by traditional crossing?
Even if it were possible, it would be necessary to increase polluting inputs. The plant types produced, in monoculture situations, would be at constant risk of destruction by epidemics; since Mon$'s reign would be accompanied by destruction of diversity, the resulting system would be fragile. Sustainable, not. When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
corn, soybeans and cotton
Great, so ethanol, lattes and clothing are safe. Now what about wheat and beef? WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Would it have to do with the Vault being funded, apart from the Rockefeller Foundation, by Bill "Gatekeeper" Gates, Syngenta (GM crops), Dupont/Pioneer Hi-Bred (GM crops)... with a rumoured Mon$anto connection that seems however hard to establish evidence for? When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
Finance me! I'm important! Finance me!
