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GERMANY: August 21, 2000 BERLIN - Governments must embrace high-tech farming and remove trade barriers so the Earth can feed its growing population, agricultural economists said at an international conference on Friday. "Both the land and the individual farmers can greatly profit from the two great future technologies - biotechnology and information technology," Joachim von Braun, the new president of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE), said in his concluding remarks at the IAAE's 24th congress. "But the politics must be right for that." The congress, attended by over 1,000 participants from more than 80 countries, focused on blueprints for the future development of global agriculture, with most experts agreeing that a radical shift from past patterns was needed. "Traditional breeding has already captured most of the (production) increase potential," Harald von Witzke, professor at Berlin's Humboldt University and chairman of the local organizing committee, told Reuters. He said that with the world's population expected to grow to well over 8.5 billion by the year 2025 from the current six billion, agriculture will need to find ways of feeding them from the same land base being used today. "There are no major land reserves left: the best land is already being farmed," Witzke said. "We need to increase food production...(but) we don't know how that's going to be possible." "We hope that gene technology is going to make a difference." Witzke also predicted an end to what he calls the "agricultural treadmill", the phonomenon whereby in the past 130 years food supply growth has continuously exceeded the growth in demand. "Farmers have run faster and faster (by becoming more productive) but economically they have not got anywhere because the income effect of productivity growth has been eroded by declining prices," he said, adding that population and per capita income growth in the future would reverse that trend. "In the decades ahead, agriculture will be a growth industry," he said. "And it will become a high-tech industry." But governments should also commit more resources to agricultural research, education and counselling, he said. In addition, poor countries need to be supported with technology transfer to help them keep pace with developments in a more capital-intensive and training-intensive industry. Witzke also warned that national food standards introduced in recent years in response to growing environmental and food safety concerns can easily be misused for protectionism. "We need innovations on the social science and political side," he said, but added that although scientists in Germany were beginning to get their message across, more immediate political concerns often prevailed in the European Union. "When push comes to shove, local farmers still have more lobbying power," he said. The IAAE conference in Berlin coincides with the five-day Crop Science Congress which started in Hamburg on Thursday. Its organisers aim to draft a declaration on genetically modified foods by August 22. Story by Denes Albert REUTERS _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Catch that? World population expected to grow to 8.5 Billion by 2025. Can you say "Malthus lives" boys and girls?
... I thought you could.
Tom |
