About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

34 Cumb. L. Rev. 437 (2003-2004)
Relevance of Genetically Modified Crops to Developing Countries

handle is hein.journals/cumlr34 and id is 445 raw text is: RELEVANCE OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED CROPS TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES C.S. PRAKASH AND GREGORY CONKO' Today, most people around the world have access to a greater va- riety of nutritious and affordable foods than ever before, thanks mainly to developments in agricultural science and technology. The average human life span-arguably the most important indicator of quality of life-has increased steadily in the past century in almost every country. Even in many less developed countries, life spans have doubled over the past few decades. Despite massive population growth, from 3 billion to more than 6 billion people since 1950, the global malnutrition rate decreased in that period from 38 percent to 18 percent. India and China, two of the world's most populous and rap- idly industrializing countries, have quadrupled their grain production. The record of agricultural progress during the past century speaks for itself. Countries that embraced superior agricultural tech- nologies have brought unprecedented prosperity to their people, made food vastly more affordable and abundant, helped stabilize farm yields, and reduced the destruction of wild lands. The productivity gains from G.M. crops, as well as improved use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, allowed the world's farmers to double global food output during the last 50 years, on roughly the same amount of land, at a time when global population rose more than 80 percent. Without these improvements in plant and animal genetics and other scientific developments, known as the Green Revolution, we would today be farming on every square inch of arable land to produce the same amount of food, destroying hundreds of millions of acres of pristine wilderness in the process. Many less developed countries in Latin America and Asia bene- fited tremendously from the Green Revolution. Nevertheless, due to a variety of natural and human reasons, agricultural technologies were not spread equally across the globe. Many people in sub-Saharan Af- 1 C. S. Prakash is professor of plant biotechnology at Tuskegee University, Alabama and president of the AgBioWorld Foundation. Gregory Conko is director of Food Safety Pol- icy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. and vice president of the AgBioWorld Foundation. This article is adapted from an earlier article titled Technol- ogy That Will Save Billions From Starvation by the authors published in the The American Enterprise (Special Issue on 'Biotech Bounty'), March 2004; http://www.tae mag.com

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most