Readers from rural areas anywhere in the world likely have had similar experiences. Modern biotechnology has dramatically improved on traditional crossbreeding by permitting a much more targeted approach to genetic modification. It offers solutions to longstanding problems, such as pest damage, that rely on more precise approaches. Biotech allows minute genetic changes that can make a plant unappealing to a specific pest, for example, and may render unnecessary broad spectrum pesticides that negatively affect both water and soil, and even damage the health of people who work on farms. Corn and soybean varieties produced with the help of modern biotechnology already are permitting reduced use of herbicides and pesticides, with important benefits to the environment.
Biotechnology has the potential to make agriculture much more productive.
This is an immensely important consideration in a world where millions die of starvation, where population growth continues to place great stress on food production capacity, where there is a pressing need to avoid cultivation of environmentally fragile land, and where many families still rely on farming for their livelihood. Biotechnology agriculture is also therefore a useful tool in our efforts to fight hunger and poverty. Scientists believe that biotech has the potential to increase crop yields by 20 percent or more with no greater use of natural resources, even on small farms. Developing country farmers and consumers should have access to the same agricultural choices and benefits that the rest of the world does. This promising beginning has been marred already by Europe's refusal to permit imports of biotech corn varieties approved by competent European authorities.