Science for the win: New wheat variety beats superbug, has higher yield

These reactions are exactly the kind Norman Broulag warned against:

I now say that the world has the technology – either available or well advanced in the research pipeline – to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology? While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt ultra low-risk positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called “organic” methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low income, food-deficit nations cannot

This work, specifically this work with rust resistant wheat was what he set up as his legacy project. There’s no indication anywhere that Montsanto or Conagra or any of the BigAg companies have anything to do with this. No indication that these are “terminator seeds” or that this development wont be given, free of charge, to those who want it. It’s a purely academic effort to stop people from starving and build stronger more resistant staple crops just as Bourlag wanted.

While the chattering classes in the first world were going on and on about the evils of factory farming and Bourlag spent his entire career in the field in places like Mexico, Africa, India and South America developing higher yield crops and teaching local farmers how to cultivate them and use fertilizers. He was directly responsible for preventing nearly 1 billion people from starving to death

Some of the environmental lobbyists of the western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they would be crying out for tractors, and fertilizer, and irrigation canals, and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things

Its kind of ironic to see such stunning ignorance on display here.

reply to post by SirMike

You know what India uses for fertilizer? Human waste, and quite effectively, as other countries with mass population could do. The thing is, anytime agriculture is brought into a new area, the organic methods are not used because any efforts to 'help' will include a profit driven heavy fertilizer/pesticide program.
I understand that this particular wheat development may not fall under the same categorization as the negative Big Agra tactics, but as you can tell, being in the minority here(0 flags), the gmo issue strikes a nerve with us, hence the "stunning amount of ignorance displayed."
It is sad though, as I mentioned, that trust has gone out the window, and we may not even be able to distinguish right from wrong, because we rarely get the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth anymore.

spec

Ignorance ? And we try so hard to deny it here, don't we ?

There is a difference between "ideally" and "reality". Sure, maybe Broulag had good intentions. Maybe it is possible.
But remember what was said.
"Scientists can only do so much. We need to see national governments making the investments
in seed systems development."

Our government and half of the world has been conned into "investing" in Monsanto to "save the world !"
Their lobbyists abound. Yet now they sue farmers on a regular basis and try to make natural seed unlawful.

Natural seed . . . unlawful ? You've got to be kidding me ! WTF are these people ?

When it comes time for investment and committment to fight this wheat rust, do you really think Monsanto will
be left out of the picture ? This is what we are concerned about.

The only way to produce better crops is to provide the crop with better conditions. Humans constantly degrade the soils by taking crops out and not putting back in what is gone. If human manure from a healthy person person was used, along with magnesium or blood and bone and ash, the topsoils wouldn't be destroyed. Not to mention the soil bacteria would have non-pathogenic bacteria to consume...ie less disease DNA. I think Monsanto needs to look into producing humanure compost on an epic scale, not round-up.