Uncontrolled weeds are a major contributor to world hunger, says Leonard Gianessi, consultant to The CropLife Foundation based in Washington D.C, at a Mississippi State University conference, “The Importance of Pesticides for Feeding the World.”
“Do something about that, and you will take a major step toward alleviating this problem.” And he says, that’s why herbicides, insecticides, and GMO crops will be vital to meeting the needs of another two billion people on planet Earth by the year 2020.
China, the largest country in the world in terms of population with 1.3 billion people, is rapidly changing from a rural, agrarian society to urban, he says, and will add another 700 million people by 2050.
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“The Chinese have grown rice for centuries, and with a predominantly rural population, they could enough people in the fields to chop out weeds by hand. To accomplish adequate weeding of rice by hand today would take the equivalent of every person in the country spending a day of labor just weeding. In today’s industrialized China, that is no longer possible.
Read the full, original article: Ag chemicals, GMOs critical to increase world food output
