And we can produce food enough to meet increased needs through biotechnology. Increasing agricultural productivity by 1.4 percent a year over the next 60 years will do it. Without biotechnology, we won't. The flap over corn is a good example of the problem. The genetically modified corn not only produces much higher yields, it also protects itself from its biggest pest, the corn borer.
Farmers have to use only about one-third of the pesticides they used in the past.
Farm workers don't have to handle as much of the pesticides, which provide significant risks to them. Adler, writing in the journal of PERC, a Montana-based organization that advocates market solutions to environmental problems, cites several other examples of the precautionary principle going wrong. The subsequent outbreak of cholera in that country caused far more deaths than were ever at risk from chlorine-induced cancer. Yet victims of life-threatening diseases face more danger from their diseases than the side effects of new drugs. Yet molds produce some of the most potent carcinogens found in nature.