Letters to the Editor: We Can Win the War Against Hunger
I am responding to the Dec. 21 Letter to the Editor from Anuradha Mittal and Peter Rosset commenting on Norman Borlaug's Dec. 6 editorial-page essay "We Need Biotech to Feed the World":</br></br>It is disingenuous on the part of critics of biotechnology to keep saying that there is enough food in the world and thus argue against scientific advances such as biotechnology to improve food production. Sure, there are plenty of food grains in the world, but most of them are in the West and much of them fed to animals: 70% of corn produced in the U.S. is fed to livestock. Perhaps we can solve all the hunger in the world by asking everyone to become vegetarians in the West and then just ask Iowa farmers to donate their grains to the developing world. Export of food from developing countries accounts for only a small percentage of the global food trade, and much of it is in high-value tropical commodities that provide badly needed foreign-exchange for these countries.</br></br>How does one improve access and distribution of food to the rural poor dependent on farming? By improving farm productivity and by enhancing the infrastructure and policies that promote free trade. In South Asia and Africa, where much of the poor in the world live, the large majority of the people are involved in farming. Technologies such as genetically modified crops will help these people not only to produce more food, but also to increase their income. Increased prosperity of the rural sector would clearly help in reducing hunger and in narrowing the inequity between urban and rural people. It is the local production of food and greater income from farm products that can help the rural poor, and biotechnology will help them to reduce the chemical inputs on the farm, reduce labor and fuel, cut down farming costs, produce more nutritious food and improve the overall productivity.</br></br>Can Messrs. Mittal and Rosset offer any alternative sustainable solutions to global hunger and poverty, or solutions for improving access and distribution of food other than "distributing the surplus among those who desperately need it"?</br></br>India is also home to me, as it is to Mr. Mittal: India has increased food-grain production fourfold since independence in 1947, and a higher percentage of Indians are better fed today than ever before thanks to the "Green Revolution." And this has happened while the population has also increased threefold due to medical advances.