With a growing global population and expanding affluence in the middle class, American farmers and food processors should see increased demand for their products.
One of the tools that will help feed that demand are genetically modified crops, economist and futurist Jay Lehr told a group of several hundred Thursday at the Midwest Food Processors Association's annual meeting in Green Bay.
"We will double our yields there alone by improving our grains and making them more and more resistant to disease and able to grow in arid, high-heat, low-moisture areas," said Lehr, a featured speaker at the three-day convention at KI Convention Center.
Genetically modified crops have come under fire from some sectors for potential safety, environmental and economic concerns.
Others like Lehr say they are safe after years of testing and regulation and are a way to meet the growing global demand for food.
"When a new genetically modified grain, plant or seed goes to market, it has taken 10 years and $100 million to jump through the hoops," he said. "It is safe … and it will allow a tremendous increase in our food supply around the world."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has considered about 100 petitions for genetically engineered or modified crops.
Those that have drawn the most attention have been engineered to withstand certain weed killers, but among those the agency has approved are tomatoes altered to ripen more slowly — the first genetically modified crop approved in the U.S. in 1992 — and plums that resist a specific virus.
"In the next 30 years we're going to have to double the world's food supply," Lehr said. "We can, and we will, find better and better ways to make healthier and healthier food and make it available at a low cost to the public."
Lehr is science director at The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank.
Lehr also took aim at the Environmental Protection Agency, contending it hasn't done much to protect the environment in the last 30 years, and said he wants to see it abolished; called human-induced global warming one the biggest scams ever perpetrated; and said water quality and supply is better and more abundant than some government agencies lead people to believe.
He urged audience members to resist "over regulation" in water matters and green practices "where you can and invest in it if you have to."
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