We can continue to modify plants, - Obama

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Obama, like Bush, may be ag biotech allyPHILIP BRASHERDes Moines Register, 23 November 2008http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20081123/BUSINESS01/811230309/1029/BUSINESS Washington, D.C. - The agricultural biotechnology business could hardly have had a better friend than George W. Bush. His

administration challenged the European Union's anti-biotech regulations

and avoided imposing rules domestically that would hinder the

industry's growth, with the exception of the most controversial

products, such as pharmaceutical crops. But there are clues

President-elect Barack Obama could be an ally of the industry, too,

especially in the effort to put biotech crops into widespread use in

Africa. These hints come from both statements of policy and the type of

people from whom he's taking advice. Consider: *Obama

explicitly endorsed genetically engineered crops in an answer to a

candidate questionnaire initiated by the American Association for the

Advancement of Science and other scientific groups. He said biotech

crops "have provided enormous benefits" to farmers and expressed

confidence "that we can continue to modify plants safely." *His

top scientific advisers during the campaign included Sharon Long, a

former board member of the biotech giant Monsanto Co., and Harold

Varmus, a Nobel laureate who co-chaired a key study of genetically

engineered crops by the National Academy of Sciences back in 2000. *Obama

has endorsed the idea of a second Green Revolution, a concept

understood to include biotechnology, to feed the world's growing

population. In an exchange of letters last June with Norman Borlaug,

the Iowa-born plant breeder who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for

the first Green Revolution, Obama said he was "deeply committed to

greater agriculture research and global agricultural development." *Former

Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, an outspoken proponent of agricultural

biotechnology, is considered a leading candidate to become Obama's

agriculture secretary. The Biotechnology Industry Organization named

him its governor of the year in 2001. *Obama has called for

doubling foreign development aid to $50 billion and establishing a

special initiative to provide farmers in poor countries with affordable

fertilizer and "improved seeds." Obama's official statements

on development are "pretty strong on agricultural science," said Robert

Paarlberg, author of the recent book "Starved for Science: How

Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa.I certainly haven't seen any sense of opposition to technology." Obama's

administration will be closely watched to see whether he follows

through. Public and congressional interest in boosting world food

production could wane, given the recent plunge in commodity prices and

the global economic slowdown. "We need an across-the-board revival of our agricultural development work," said Paarlberg, a Wellesley College professor. A

doubling of government spending on agricultural research over five

years could lift more than 280 million people out of poverty in

sub-Saharan Africa, according to the International Food Policy Research

Institute. However, U.S. spending on foreign agricultural

research has fallen dramatically since the 1980s. And even though

Congress inserted $150 million in agricultural development assistance

in an emergency spending bill this year at a time when food prices were

soaring worldwide, that extra money only compensated for a cut that

lawmakers had made earlier in the aid budget. Paarlberg says U.S. agricultural aid is needed to help African scientists to do their own modification of food crops. "Let them get comfortable with the technology, and let them sell it to their governments," he said. In

the long run, he says, that would make biotechnology more acceptable in

Africa than continuing to push the biotech products from U.S. seed

companies like Monsanto and Johnston-based Pioneer Hi-Bred. Africa

is home to more than 900 million people, or 14 percent of the world's

population. Regardless of how it's done, the U.S. industry would surely

count any president a friend who opens that continent to biotechnology.

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