MANILA, Philippines – Dr. Randy Hautea, a biotechnology expert, says the only hope for the country to increase food production is to rely on higher-yielding and more durable crops.
As Southeast Asian director and global coordinator of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), Hautea warns that the demand for food is so great that it will be necessary to double the total world output in the succeeding decades to satisfy the requirement.
He cited the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) security report of October 2010 to illustrate just how imperative it is to work on biotech crops.
Hautea said the report showed that one in six people is hungry worldwide, a finding that is all the more serious since the total number of hungry people is higher than in the 1960s.
Curiously, the same trend is seen in the Philippines since the Social Weather Stations (SWS) reported that the number of hungry people in the country has increased by November 2010 in spite of the claims that the Arroyo government had achieved economic growth for nine years.
With the hunger rate running at 32 percent or higher, the demand for food would rise exponentially, the scientist warned.
The facts show that more Filipinos will be feeding from a hectare of land in the future, and Hautea believes the only way to satisfy the demand is to produce more crops in every hectare of arable land.
If we do not do this, Hautea said, “Where would we get the food? We cannot keep on importing forever. We need to produce for ourselves. Where will we get it? It has to come from the same area of land.”
He added that cutting forests to expand land for cultivation is not sustainable for the environment.
“We need to encourage and coax and inspire maybe our limited lands to produce more. And that is where technology can help, together with all other management interventions…The challenge is too big, that there is no single solution. Technology is just one of the solutions or one of the tools. And biotechnology is even only one of the technology solutions. So biotechnology is not the solution. It can be a contribution, together with agronomic improvements," Hautea said.
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