Posted on 06/19/2013 4:41:28 PM PDT by Toddsterpatriot
For the first time in its 27-year history, a prestigious award for enhancing the global food supply has gone to a creator of genetically modified crops, a top scientist at Monsanto. The choice is likely to add more heat to an intense debate about the role biotechnology can play in combating world hunger. Robert T. Fraley, Monsanto’s executive vice president and chief technology officer, will share the $250,000 World Food Prize with two other scientists who helped devise how to insert foreign genes into plants: Marc Van Montagu of Belgium and Mary-Dell Chilton of the United States.
The announcement was made in Washington on Wednesday, accompanied by a speech from Secretary of State John Kerry.
The prize was started in 1987 by Norman E. Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for bringing about the Green Revolution, which vastly increased grain output, and who thought there should be a Nobel Prize for agriculture. The award is given to those who improve the “quality, quantity or availability” of food in the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
As for propping up the food industry, I think they'll do okay without the $5,000,000.
Oh please.
World Food Prize is an Iowa State University thing started by Norman Borlaug and trucking magnate John Ruan.
Heck, they spent $30 million just renovating the old Des Moines Public Library building to move WFP organization from the ISU campus. Most of it got spent on bad art.
It’s no different from Hollywood funding Academy Awards or any other industry group handing out awards in their industry.
All that is well and good, and I encourage everyone who can and want to, to do the same.
But even you know that you're not in the business of feeding others, only your own family. Try feeding 150 other people, and then get back to us.
Those who feed the others as a livelyhood could not possibly do so using your methods, no matter how much they were paid. The worlds population would need to be thinned, through starvation or some other method.
I'm a champion of Monsanto, and the hundreds of other like companies, even though my only connection with them has been using their products to provide food for others.
"This statement is supported by 81 Councillors of the World Future Council,
… The choice of the 2013 World Food Prize is an affront to the growing international consensus on safe, ecological farming practices that have been scientifically proven to promote nutrition and sustainability. Many governments have rejected GMOs, and as many as two million citizens in 52 countries recently marched in oppositionto GMOs and Monsanto. In living democracies, discounting this knowledge and these many voices is not acceptable.
… While profitable to the few companies producing them, GMO seeds reinforce a model of farming that undermines sustainability of cash-poor farmers, who make up most of the world'shungry. GMO seeds continuefarmers' dependency on purchased seed and chemical inputs. The most dramaticimpact of such dependency isinIndia, where 270,000 farmers, many trapped indebt for buying seedsand chemicals, committed suicide between1995 and 2012.
LOL! More like the World Past Council.
as many as two million citizens in 52 countries recently marched in opposition to GMOs and Monsanto.
As many as 6 billion citizens did not march.
GMO seeds reinforce a model of farming that undermines sustainability of cash-poor farmers, who make up most of the world's hungry.
It's true, higher yield farming makes it tough for low yield farming.
GMO seeds continue farmers' dependency on purchased seed and chemical inputs.
It's a good thing the higher yields pay for the higher costs.
The most dramatic impact of such dependency is in India, where 270,000 farmers, many trapped in debt for buying seeds and chemicals, committed suicide between 1995 and 2012.
I heard it was 270,000,000.
Hehe! Thanks.
“I heard it was 270,000,000” Chuckle.
Few?
Every successful seed company in the world is either producing them, or has sucontracted out to have them produced for them.
Do these clowns realize how silly they sound?
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