Dennis Avery threw some hope out to Canadian farmers last week. Then he attached a warning.
Avery is director of global food issues for the Hudson Institute, an American policy research organization that advocates a high tech farming model, which includes biotechnology and chemicals, as the path to agricultural sustainability.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the Manitoba Seed Growers’ Association, he predicted global farm output may have to triple within 50 years. The world population will have already peaked by then at somewhere between eight and nine billion people.
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By that time, Avery expects there will be more wealth around the globe than there is today. That will mean feeding a high quality diet to seven billion prosperous people instead of a billion, said Avery. Those seven billion people will also want quality food for their pets.
“When people get rich, they stop eating dogs and put them on leashes.”
He predicts farm trade will become more liberalized around the globe. Meanwhile, farm subsidies in the United States and European Union will drop due to the strain on treasuries.
“This is probably the most optimistic moment in history, not only for Canadian farmers, but for almost everybody in the world,” he said of the abundant wealth and diminished trade barriers he foresees.
But Avery’s optimistic outlook was coupled with a warning about the challenges to modern agriculture, especially biotechnology. He sees biotechnology as something that producers should ferociously defend from what he calls conservationists since it is needed to meet the growing global food demand.
“Organic farming won’t meet the challenge … Biotechnology is the only tool that looks capable of achieving that goal.”
Critics of biotechnology talk about the risks it may pose to the environment. Avery spoke of the environmental benefits the technology might provide.
He said increased crop production based on biotechnology could ease the pressure to tear up tropical rain forests and marginal land for crops.
“Much of the land saved from the plow would be tropical forest, which has far more biodiversity than the good cropland in places like the Great Plains of North America, the north China plain or the Argentine pampas.”
While lauding the technology, Avery did not dismiss the potential danger to the environment from “biotech escapes” into nature.
“That would argue for making biotech crops sterile, so they couldn’t escape.”
Avery said the industry has already lost $30 billion in equity value because of negative consumer perceptions about biotech foods.
