At the same time, biotechnology can help farmers produce more nutritious crops, while sustaining the land's ability to support continued farming. By developing crops that more efficiently absorb nutrients from the soil, biotechnology can help farmers produce more on land already under cultivation, and may reduce the need for costly inputs such as fertilizer and non-renewable resources, such as oil and natural gas. A Mexican scientist, Luis Herrera Estrella, has shown that by using biotechnology tropical crops can be modified to tolerate aluminum and acid soils to significantly increase the productivity of corn, rice, and papaya. Biotech crops that require less tilling may help to decrease soil erosion. And the development of plants that can grow in tough conditions, such as drought, or dry or poor soil, may make it easier to farm marginal lands, helping to keep fragile soils such as wetlands and rainforests out of food production.
Biotechnology holds tremendous promise for the developing world.
The new rice, being developed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, holds promise to help hundreds of thousands of children who suffer from life-threatening diseases and blindness related to vitamin A deficiency. The company, which recently completed a map of all the genes in rice, also is making that research available to other researchers worldwide. There are many other examples of industry collaboration with governments and public institutions. The science academies do not put all the responsibility on private industry. They point out that after World War II, the public sector and charitable foundations financed crop research that led to doubling or tripling of crop yields in Asia and Latin America, along with employment gains and improved nutrition.