SASKATOON (Staff) – Crops and livestock improved through biotechnology will help feed the globe’s growing population, but long-term threats of overcrowding and environmental degradation will need other solutions, says a world authority on plant genetics.
Jozef Schell, head of genetic plant breeding at the Max-Planck Institute in Koln, Germany, told about 600 scientists at the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference here last week that the planet has little time to avoid the chaos that will follow from too many people and too little food.
“Our world is beginning to realize that it can’t continue to grow in an unlimited, uncontrolled fashion – you can’t count on technology to forever solve the problems of growth,” he said.
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“It is a world-wide problem that has to be attacked from several angles. Demography (population growth), environment, economic distribution of wealth. All those things have a role to play. But what is crucial is that biotechnology can give us the time so that those things can come to bear while we have the chance.”
He noted some people distrust the new science and some governments, including Germany’s, have tried to limit the introduction of agricultural products created by biotechnology.
But that’s the wrong attitude, he said.
The technology should have to justify itself socially and economically, but it is not intrinsically dangerous.
“We probably will discover problems we hadn’t thought about, but I don’t think they will be of the kind that we won’t be able to handle.”
Schell added that biotechnological research can’t be left to private enterprise to drive. The financial returns take far too long for most private investors so governments must put up money to sustain the work.
George Kidd, an adviser and strategist for agri-
business, agreed.
“The guy on Wall Street says ‘I want 35 percent compound rate of return,’ ” he said, adding that agribusiness involved in biotechnology isn’t that profitable.
“What has to happen is that someone has to step in and say we understand agriculture is different from computer software and needs to be financed and nurtured by a mechanism outside of Wall Street,” he said.
Money from governments will be vital. But Kidd expects pharmaceutical companies will eventually be the leaders in agricultural biotechnology, spinning expertise and profits from their drug sides into agriculture.
