Hooray! - Milestone Two Billionth Acre of Biotech Crops Planted Last Year

Ronald Bailey | February 11, 2009

The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) has released its annual update of progress in adopting biotech crops around the world. The executive summary of this year's report notes that 25 countries (up 3 from 2007) now allow their farmers to plant biotech crops. In addition, ISAAA reports:

Notably, in 2008, accumulatively the second billionth acre (800 millionth hectare) of a biotech crop was planted - only 3 years after the first one-billionth acre of a biotech crop was planted in 2005. In 2008, developing countries out-numbered industrial countries by 15 to 10, and this trend is expected to continue in the future with 40 countries, or more, expected to adopt biotech crops by 2015, the final year of the second decade of commercialization....

In 2008, the number of farmers benefiting from biotech crops globally in 25 countries reached 13.3 million, an increase of 1.3 million over 2007. Of the global total of 13.3 million beneficiary biotech farmers in 2008, (up from 12 million in 2007), remarkably over 90% or 12.3 million (up from 11 million in 2007) were small and resource-poor farmers from developing countries; the balance of 1 million were large farmers from both industrial countries such as the USA and Canada and developing countries such as Argentina and Brazil.

Think how much faster the benefits of modern biotech crops would have spread had there been no anti-scientific campaigns such as this one and this particularly self-serving one. 

See whole ISAAA report here. 

Comments

|2.11.09 @ 11:46AM|#

One of the few bright spots for libertarians at the moment. The other being that we havn't passed another version of Smoot-Hawley yet.

Vines & Cattle|2.11.09 @ 11:47AM|#

And all without subsidizing it, who woulda thunk it!

Taktix®|2.11.09 @ 11:56AM|#

Dammit, I have nothing sarcastic and mildly humorous to say about good news.

It's been a while and I am out of practice...

|2.11.09 @ 11:59AM|#

The executive summary of this year's report notes that 25 countries (up 3 from 2007) now allow their farmers to plant biotech crops.

Of course, the fact that any country has the power to prohibit its farmers from planting any crop is pretty bad.

Still, I'll take my progress where I can get it.

And all without subsidizing it, who woulda thunk it!

Yeah, well those crops are going to be hauled to market on GOVERNMENT ROADS! Blargle Blargle libertoid hypocrite blargle corporate tool blargle.

|2.11.09 @ 12:05PM|#

Proposed headline -

Starving people and the farmers who serve them tell the well fed Greenpeace activists to fuck off.

|2.11.09 @ 12:07PM|#

Dammit, I have nothing sarcastic and mildly humorous to say about good news.

That (my previous) was for you, Taktix®.

|2.11.09 @ 12:09PM|#

biotech crops are just a speeding up of natrual selection and viral gene transfers. it is nothing that would not eventually happen in nature, for the most part. and it is fine, no different than eating any other fruit or veg, they are all genetically modified by humans for flavor taste size etc.

|2.11.09 @ 12:11PM|#

they are all genetically modified by humans for flavor taste size etc.
_________________________________
well, unless you wander into a forest or place that no humans have ever lived on/around. once you pick tomatoe A over tomatoe B and promote tomatoe A, you have indulged in genetic modification by keeping the cross you like, and discarding the genetic inferior.

Elemenope|2.11.09 @ 12:17PM|#

Yeah, well those crops are going to be hauled to market on GOVERNMENT ROADS!

Well, uh, yeah. They will.

People who can't tell the difference between infrastructure development and consumer production worry me.

Really, all the GOVERNMENT ROADS thing is really good for is making fun of Anarcho-capitalists. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Epi and libertymike.

jtuf|2.11.09 @ 12:25PM|#

J sub D | February 11, 2009, 12:05pm | #

Proposed headline -

Starving people and the farmers who serve them tell the well fed Greenpeace activists to fuck off.

Here here.

It makes sense that developing countries are more keen to use biotech crops. First, they don't have busybody irrational environmentalists to stop them. Second, farms in developing countries tend to be smaller and have less to invest in capital. Biotech crops are a relatively cheap way to improve yield compared to much more expensive farm equipment.

Taktix®|2.11.09 @ 12:33PM|#

Thnaks, J Sub,

I'm nearing 40 hours for the week and I can use all the help I can get..

|2.11.09 @ 1:44PM|#

Elemenope, the roads thing is an old joke. It is making fun of big government and Democrat-types who used to say "if we listened to you libertarians, we wouldn't even have any roads".

|2.11.09 @ 2:58PM|#

"And all without subsidizing it, who woulda thunk it!"

Not directly. But there's always The National Renewable Energy Lab funded by the Dept of Energy. Without them, there would not be the much of the technology in the first place.

nrel.gov

|2.11.09 @ 2:59PM|#

Oh and don't forget the NSF.

|2.11.09 @ 3:05PM|#

Sorry, I'm working on a system for producing large amounts of algae for feedstock in biofuels in a relatively small space (yield/acre). The lawyers are working on the patent. My ex physics professor is going to help me with a NSF grant, not for the money, necessarily, but for the credibility it will bring with it for venture capital. So, this hits close to home.

Kevin Carson|2.12.09 @ 3:01AM|#

OTOH, think how much more slowly they'd have spread if it weren't for government subsidies to the development of the technology, free market-repugnant patents on the technology, and government restrictions on commercial free speech! And think how many fewer acres would be planted with GM crops if peasants, evicted by feudal landlords in collusion with authoritarian governments and agribusiness interests, were back on much of the land this stuff is being grown on!

|2.12.09 @ 5:05AM|#

"if peasants, evicted by feudal landlords in collusion with authoritarian governments and agribusiness interests"

man if there's one thing I hate its people who support subsistance farming.

No famine has ever occured in a country that has industrialized agriculture, but rich white people think its cute when they see it. Presumably because its against "teh corpurayshuns"

Kevin Carson congrats

dumbest comment of the week

o another note anyone know the greenpeace stance on stem cell research?

I was wondering it they're just as luddite on that issue but can't find anything