Mr. Spencer received a copy of a recent ISAAA
report showing that in 2008 125 million hectares of biotech crops were
grown in 25 countries around the world. Also, in 2008, the number of farmers
planting biotech crops surged past 13 million and more than 90 percent of these
are small, resource-poor farmers from the developing world.
Mr. Spencer commented that, ‘Biotechnology is being used widely and is
helping to increase global food security and lessen the impact that agriculture
has on the environment. I hope that Japan takes note of agricultural biotechnology’s
widespread and growing use around the world.’
Background Information on Agricultural Biotechnology for the United States and
Japan:
Biotechnology is a strategic group of technologies that make possible a range
of exciting new medical, industrial, and agricultural products.
- Agricultural biotechnology is a tool that allows plant breeders to select
genes that produce desired traits and move them from one plant to another. This
creates opportunities to introduce genetic traits that advance food production,
the environment, and human health.
- Biotechnology provides farmers with new production tools. Some biotechnology
crops withstand herbicides, which makes weed control simpler and more efficient.
Other crops are resistant to plant diseases and insect pests, leading to
a decreased use of synthetic pesticides. New crops with drought tolerance
and nutritional enhancements are now being reviewed in the United States
and Japan.
- Per capita, Japan is the world’s largest importer of biotech crops.
- The Untied States views agricultural biotechnology as being critical to
meeting the growing demand for food, feed, and fuel.
- The
U.S. Census Bureau predicts that the world population will grow from 6 billion
in 1999 to 9 billion by 2042. This will complete a tripling of the earth’s
population in less than a century.
- Major
increases are foreseen in per capita consumption of fish, meat and milk
products, especially in Asia. World cereal demand could double by 2050.
- How will these people be fed? One estimate is that without an increase
in farm productivity, an additional 1.6 billion hectares of arable land
will need to come under the plow by 2050. This could have catastrophic
consequences for environmentally sensitive and as yet unexploited areas
of the world.
- Biotechnology is not just a tool that contributes to global food security,
it is a tool that mankind can use to help minimize our environmental footprint.
- The
United States is the world’s largest producer of biotech crops. The biotech
crops exported from the Untied States are the same as those eaten every day by
300 million Americans.
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