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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, SEPTEMBER 16, 1986
PAGE 17
affected mainly the more developed countries, perhaps 40
percent of the world's arable land and one fourth of its
population. The plant genetics revolution is affecting 90
percent of the land, and 4.5 billion people. Seeds are better.
They are easier to develop. And farmers have little trouble
using them. In fact, the developing countries are getting more
effect from the new revolution than the affluent ones." As use
of these and other new techniques of biotechnology increases,
production capacity is expected to expand even faster.
For
example corn breeders are using recently developed tissue
culture techniques in which they subject cells from immature
corn kernels to toxic agents such as herbicides.
If a cell
mutates to become resistant to the herbicide it will keep
reproducing, and can ultimately be grown into plants that will
produce more kernels, or seeds, with that resistance••••
Dr. Nicholas M. Frey, director of biotechriical research at
Pioneer Hi-bred International, the world's largest developer of
seed corn•.•said researchers have also introduced into tomato
and other plants bacterial genes that produce a protein toxic
to insects. The technique involves inserting the desired gene
into the plant cells.
Now the plant's leaves produce the
protein; insects that feed on them die. ["Killer tomatoes"?]
Scientists also are gaining greater understanding of the
biology of soils, particularly in tropical and semitropical
regions.
They are working with breeders to design crops for
specific areas .••• Varieties of corn developed to resist cool
weather and mature three weeks earlier than conventional
hybrids have allowed Argentina's farmers to begin planting
large corn fields c:loser to the South Pole. These varieties
have pushed the North American corn belt 250 miles north in the
last decade••••
Roughly 55 percent of the world's rice lands � � planted
with high-yielding varieties developed by the International
Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and first introduced
in Asia in the mid-1960s.
The new varieties helped China's
agricultual production to soar 50 percent since 1978•... Nearly
half the planet's wheat acreage is planted in high-yielding
varieties••••
The abundance comes only seven years after population experts
and crop specialists, at a United Nations conference in Rome,
speculated about which continent would starve first••••
Still•.•authorities on international agriculture worry that the
planet's food surpluses could vanish within months if
persistent bad weather
Q£
crop failures occurred
in
one o� the
world's important farming regions.
"Food abundance is a
slippery concept," said G. Edwad Schuh, director of Agriculture
and Rural Development for the World Bank. "It's going to be
hard to convince me this
is
� permanent concIIETon. My
main
concern is that we don't all of a sudden get the idea that we
have the problem solved."