La Tekhné periódico digital del instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano, Medellín Colombia. editorial- 4405121

From: The New York Times

Gracias a que los precios de los alimentos siguen siendo muy caros en los países en desarrollo, las Naciones Unidas calculan que la cifra de gente que se muere de hambre alrededor del mundo podría aumentar a 100 millones en 2009 y pasar la marca de los mil millones. Debido a esto surgen preguntas como: ¿Qué impulsará la próxima Revolución Verde? ¿Son los alimentos genéticamente modificados la solución al hambre mundial? ¿Existen otros factores que harán la diferencia en la producción de alimentos? Para tener una idea global del asunto cinco expertos comentan sobre el tema.

With food prices remaining high in developing countries, the United Nations estimates that the number of hungry people around the world could increase by 100 million in 2009 and pass the one billion mark. A summit of world leaders in Rome scheduled for November will set an agenda for ways to reduce hunger and increase investment in agriculture development in poor countries.

What will drive the next Green Revolution? Is genetically modified food an answer to world hunger? Are there other factors that will make a difference in food production?
To talk about this subject five experts express their opinions.

Put Aside Prejudices
By Paul Collier

Paul Collier is a professor of economics at Oxford University and the director of the Center for the Study of African Economies. He is the author of "The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It."

The debate over genetically modified crops and food has been contaminated by political and aesthetic prejudices: hostility to U.S. corporations, fear of big science and romanticism about local, organic production.
Food supply is too important to be the plaything of these prejudices. If there is not enough food we know who will go hungry.

Genetic modification is analogous to nuclear power: nobody loves it, but climate change has made its adoption imperative. As Africa's climate deteriorates, it will need to accelerate crop adaptation. As population grows it will need to raise yields. Genetic modification offers both faster crop adaptation and a biological, rather than chemical, approach to yield increases.

The Failure of Gene-Altered Crops
By Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva is the founder of Navdanya, the movement of 500,000 seed keepers and organic farmers in India. She is author of numerous books, including "The Violence of the Green Revolution" and "Soil, Not Oil."
Food security over the next two decades will have to be built on ecological security and climate resilience. We need the real green revolution, not a second "Green Revolution" based on genetic engineering.

Genetic engineering has not increased yields. Recent research by Doug Gurian-Sherman of the Union of Concerned Scientists published as a study "Failure to Yield" has shown that in a nearly 20 year record, genetically engineered crops have not increased yields. The study did not find significantly increased yields from crops engineered for herbicide tolerance or crops engineered to be insect-resistant.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development carried out by 400 scientists over four years has also concluded that genetic engineering does not hold much promise. Instead, small farms based on principles of agri-ecology and sustainability produce more food.

A Green Revolution Done Right
By Per Pinstrup-Andersen

Per Pinstrup-Andersen is the H. E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy at Cornell University and the 2001 World Food Prize Laureate.

Helping farmers in developing countries produce more food without doing damage to natural resources is an essential component of the action needed to reduce existing poverty, hunger and malnutrition and to assure that future generations have access to the food they need at reasonable prices.

Science and technology combined with expanded use of plant nutrients and better plant protection and water management by highly motivated farmers produced the Green Revolution, which avoided mass starvation and helped millions out of poverty and hunger. However, the job is not done.
Many millions of people do not have access to sufficient calories and many more suffer from micronutrient deficiencies. Most of them are in rural areas and would benefit from productivity increases in agriculture. Furthermore, the world population will grow by more than two billion over the next 40 years.

When Cheap Water and Oil Disappear
By Raj Patel

Raj Patel is a fellow at the Institute for Food and Development Policy, and author of "Stuffed and Starved".
The U.S. leads the world in genetically modified agricultural technology, yet one in eight Americans is hungry. Last year, with bumper harvests, more than a billion people ate less than 1,900 calories per day. The cause of hunger today isn't a shortage of food - it's poverty.

Addressing that will require not new agricultural technology, but a political commitment to making food a human right.

We do, however, need to transform the way we farm. Today's industrial agriculture depends on fossil fuels and abundant water. The growing and processing of food for the average American every year takes the equivalent of more than 500 gallons of oil. The future will see both cheap water and oil disappear.

The Third Way
By Jonathan Foley

Jonathan Foley is the director of the new Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. His research is focused on global land use, agriculture and climate.
The future of agriculture must address several goals simultaneously. First, it now appears that we will have to double world food production in the next 40 years given continued population growth, increasing meat consumption and pressure from biofuels.

We will also have to dramatically reduce the environmental impacts of our farming practices, which have caused widespread damage to soils, ecosystems, watersheds and even the atmosphere. In fact, agriculture's impacts rival climate change as a top environmental concern.
We will also have to improve food security for the world's poor. While the Green Revolution of the 1960s made it possible to feed hundreds of millions more people than in earlier eras, the number of undernourished in the world has started to rise again.

Declining Yields on the Horizon
By Michael J. Roberts

Michael J. Roberts is an assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University. He is the writer of the Greed, Greens and Grains blog.

About 30 years ago Julian Simon, an economist, made a famous bet with Paul Ehrlich, the entomology professor and author of "The Population Bomb." The bet was about the future direction of resource prices.

Where Mr. Ehrlich saw population growth leading to scarcity in resources and higher prices, Mr. Simon saw an impending resource boom that would easily compensate for population growth. Mr. Simon handily won the bet.

Staple commodity prices - from food to oil to metals - have all trended flat or downward over the long run. Technological optimists point to this fact and believe resource scarcity is of little concern to our post-industrial society. In a sense, they're right. But what about the part of the world that isn't industrialized?

Vocabulario

Green Revolution: Revolución Verde, transformación en la agricultura que se dio a partir de 1945.
Crop: Cosecha, cultivo.
Resilience: Resistencia.
Yields: Rendimientos.
Undernourished: Desnutrido.
Impending: Inminiente