Could green benefits of biotech crops win over ‘ideological’ environmentalists?

A new study in Nature Sustainability reports that “[e]xtensive field data suggest that impacts on wild populations would be greatly reduced through boosting yields on existing farmland so as to spare remaining wild habitats.” Basically, producing more food on less land is really good for the environment because farmers will plow up fewer forests and prairies, thus leaving more land for nature.

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The Nature Sustainability study bolsters the analysis of Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station agronomist Paul Waggoner in his brilliantly perspicacious 1997 article, “How Much Land Can Ten Billion People Spare for Nature?” Waggoner concluded, “If during the next sixty to seventy years the world farmer reaches the average yield of today’s U.S. corn grower, the ten billion will need only half of today’s cropland while they eat today’s American calories.”

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One can hope that this Nature Sustainability article will help to persuade at least some ideological environmentalists who claim that they want to protect and preserve the natural world to drop their opposition to the use of modern farming technologies to produce more food on less land.

Read full, original article: High Yield Modern Farming Better for the Environment, Says Nature Study