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Today, more than one billion people in the world live on less than $1 per day — with a total of 2.7 billion people struggling to survive on less than $2 a day. The majority of the poor and malnourished in the world depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods — making it essential for subsistence farmers in developing countries to become more productive.  For these individuals, losing a crop to a drought or a crop-destroying insect can be the difference between life and death.

"800 million people, all together, do not know where their next meal is coming from," says Dr. Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Professor of Applied Economics at Cornell University, 2001 World Food Prize Laureate and catalyst behind the 2020 Vision Initiative.  "If we don't apply science to solve poor people's problems, we're going to end up with scientific apartheid — meaning science is for us, the non-poor.  And, for the poor, science is too complicated, too sophisticated.  That is not true.  But to a considerable extent, that is what's happening today."

A vocal advocate for increased research to support food production and policy surrounding it, Dr. Pinstrup-Andersen supports farming technology and the advantages of genetic engineering of food crops that can contribute to poverty alleviation by increasing yields, improving nutrition and generating income among resource-poor, subsistence farmers in developing countries.

Since the technology is delivered in the seed and often requires less labor and fewer inputs, GM crops have a superior fit in subsistence farming operations.  "You know, a 24-row combine harvester requires a big farm.  But, the transgenic seed doesn't really have the same characteristics. The technological advantages of transgenic crops are contained in the seed," says Dr. C. Ford Runge, economist, professor and director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy who has conducted research on the economic aspects of agricultural biotechnology.

A report summarizing adoption and benefit statistics on genetically modified crops reports that, of the 12 million farmers who planted biotech crops in 23 countries in 2007, 90 percent were resource-poor, subsistence farmers from 11 developing countries including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Columbia, Honduras, India, Mexico, Paraguay, Philippines, South Africa and Uruguay.  These farmers are benefiting from increased yields, reduced production costs, or both in some instances to create significantly improved net economic returns. 

"Here is a technology that is not only scale neutral, but delivers more benefits to the poor," says Dr. Clive James, chairman of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), an organization focused on the importance of agriculture in developing countries.  "For example, in the U.S., you would expect, on average, to increase productivity by five percent.  If you use Bt maize … in the Philippines, that increase is 40 percent."

While GM crops are currently being grown in South Africa, subsistence farmers across the rest of the continent cannot yet grow GM crops — yet more than 40 percent of Africans do not even have the ability to obtain sufficient food on a day-to-day basis.  Declining soil fertility and land degradation have led to a 23 percent decrease in food production per capita in the last 25 years.  

"It is incumbent on our government and on our scientists … to bring a technology, which can address a small-scale farmer," says Dr. Ruth Oniang’o, a member of the Parliament of Kenya, professor at Jomo Kenyatta University, and founder of Rural Outreach Program — a not-for-profit organization that undertakes development activities aimed at improving livelihoods of the rural poor in Kenya, more than 55 percent of whom live below the poverty line.  "I don't know of any country, which developed without using science and technology."

Research does indicate that highly productive agriculture has the potential to benefit whole economies — increasing income and improving the economics of family farms, creating jobs and improving livelihoods for farm families.  "What they typically require is a kind of an empowering tool, which allows them to reduce uncertainties, get greater incomes, and also to be able to invest more in their own households, as well as on the farm.  What biotechnology enables them is precisely this," says Dr. Laveesh Bhandari, economist and director of Indicus Analytics in India, who recently studied the impact of this new technology in farming on households and communities in India. 

"Take any place on the planet that was once extremely poor and is now either developed or on its way to becoming a developed economy, you'll find almost inevitably an agricultural revolution at the start of that … — a big rise in productivity, in the amount of food grown per hectare of land," says Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute and United Nations Millennium Project, who for more than 20 years has been involved in identifying challenges to, and solutions for, poverty and hunger alleviation in developing countries. "Getting those technologies to the poorest farmers is absolutely one of the keys to making the breakthrough out of extreme poverty."

© 2007 Monsanto Company. All rights reserved. The copyright holder consents to the use of this material and the images in the published context only and solely for the purpose of promoting the benefits of agricultural biotechnology.