We can get major advances.
What you're looking at in this picture is a transplanted gene from a species of rice
that is able to tolerate being underwater for several days and still survive.
To the kinds of rice that are normally grown in Bangladesh, in India,
in Pakistan or other parts of Asia, that don't have that submergence trait.
Turns out, wonderfully, taking that gene for
submergence and putting it into popular, high yield traits for
rice, has led to high yield, submergence-tolerant
rice a wonderful breakthrough for farmers in
Bangladesh that suffer repeated episodes of submergence
of their rice.
Those who say don't even go that way
with technology aren't thinking, in my opinion, clearly
enough about the needs of that farm family
in Bangladesh to have this kind of variety.
We shouldn't dismiss a whole class of technology, because while it may pose
risks those risks are controllable, monitorable and
the technology itself can offer important breakthroughs.
Now, relatedly is a second step of what can be done.
And this is to make crop varieties more nutritious.
Not only to grow better in harsh
conditions, but to express more nutrients and
this is the idea that you're looking at, in this picture of so-called Golden Rice.
This is a, a crop that has been
developed by the International Rice Research, Rice Research
Institute, in Los Banos, Philippines the Rice Research
Institute that helped bring the Green Revolution in rice.
Now what scientists at IRRI, I-R-R-I, are doing is to
put in genes that express beta carotene, a precursor for vitamin A.
So the children who eat this rice, and you see how it's golden or looks more red, a
little bit more like a carrot carrot color then
have the vitamin A that they need for health.
And we've already identified that vitamin A deficiency
is one of the key kinds of hidden hunger.
How wonderful it will be if a nutritious rice that provides a basis
for vitamin A can successfully be diffused
and taken up by populations of rice eaters around the world.
A third direction for us, absolutely essential
is known as precision farming or information rich farming.
This is already being used in high income countries by relatively
wealthy farmers who can afford high tech approaches.
But in coming years, because of the declining costs of information technology,
it will increasingly be used by by poor farmers as well.
What precision farming means is having a
much more precise application of fertilizer, for example.
Just in the places where the soils require it.
Not in the places where it's not used and just in
the amounts that can be taken up by the plants without
experiencing the harmful side effects of the massive run off or
loss of that fertilizer, both into the waterways and into the atmosphere.
Precision agriculture depends on information technologies, on detailed
mapping of soil types, often on on global
positioning systems that can tell a farmer exactly where that farmer
is in the field, and what's happening in the soil in that part of the farm.
That relates more to, to a more general category of, better
nutrient management through better soil testing,
soil mapping using a, a local chemistry.
Even reading the qualities of the soil on handheld devices.
Or from satellite, it will be possible to
get a much more detailed resolution of soil needs.
What needs to be added here, what needs to be added
there, where's fertilizer not needed or needed only in very small amounts?
And that sort of nutrient management of
the soils offers places with soil nutrient depletion
a massive potential boost in yields, Africa
being number one in the line for that.
It also offers the chances for places that use far too much fertilizer, [COUGH]
like China, to cut down very, very sharply on the fertilizer use.