CALGARY – The world is a few decades away from a global food crisis but agricultural biotechnology may offer a way to avert it, say promoters of the technology.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the combined growth of population and income is expected to double global food consumption in the next 30 years.
The Washington, D.C.-based policy think-tank warned that water scarcity will constrain the ability to expand food production.
But developers of genetically modified crops think they have a partial answer to the dilemma. A new trait they are working on will allow farmers to grow crops on what was previously nonarable land and to increase yields on existing farmland.
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All of the big players in agricultural biotechnology are developing their own versions of drought tolerant crops, the first of which are expected to be commercially available in the 2011-12 crop year.
Clive James, chair of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, said the best crop lines that conventional agriculture can offer when combined with the latest biotechnology traits offer the best promise of satiating the looming “population monster.”
“(Biotechnology) can make an essential contribution to feeding the world of tomorrow,” he said.
Florence Wambugu, chief executive officer of Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International, has a good grasp on how devastating drought can be, coming from a continent where one-quarter of its 800 million people go to bed hungry each night.
Africa’s agriculture industry is based on rain-fed production and when the rain stops, people die in droves.
“It’s a big, big issue,” said Wambugu.
That’s why she is thrilled that a Canadian biotechnology company, Performance Plants Inc., has donated its patented yield protection technology to her nonprofit humanitarian organization.
The gene protects plants against drought. North American field trials have demonstrated a boost in corn, canola and soybean yields of 15 to 26 percent over control varieties.
“The potential for this trait is great in Africa, more than anywhere else in the world,” said Wambugu, whose association is attempting to make Africa less reliant on food aid.
The plan is to introduce the trait into white maize, a staple food crop that is ground into flour or used as a whole grain in combination with beans in many parts of Africa.
Global corn yields average 9.9 tonnes per acre. In Africa, the average yield is less than half that amount. Wambugu is confident Performance Plants’ trait can boost output to 6.2 tonnes per acre, which will feed an extra 100 million people.
The group still has a lot of work to do. In addition to securing financial support to commercialize the trait, scientists need to be trained in the Performance Plant labs, field tests and regulatory studies have to be conducted and the agency has to win government support for commercialization of the drought tolerant crop.
Wambugu predicts that in five years they will have proof that the trait works in maize and in another three years it will be ready for commercialization.
“I believe our work will significantly improve white corn yields in sub-Saharan Africa,” said Wambugu.
James said the drought tolerance trait will also have significant appeal in Australia, an anti-GM country that has been ravaged by drought the last few years, and in every grain growing region of the world where water shortages lead to inconsistent production of important crops.
“This is a gene that virtually no farmer in the world can afford to be without,” he said.
