05/19/05 Biotech; cornucopia or niche?

05/19/05 Biotech; cornucopia or niche?

Farm and Ranch May 19, 2005 A report with an analysis of the factors that will shape the use of biotechnology in the future has been released by the USDA. Idaho producer Duane Grant is a member of the USDA's Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture which developed the report. He says they prepared three separate scenarios for the possible future of biotech. One is called Cornucopia, where biotechnology is widely accepted, all consumer objections are overcome and biotechnology flourishes. Grant: "Under that scenario farmers rather than being limited to the four main biotech crops that we have access to today, instead would have many different possible crops to plant, ranging from traditional food and feed products to more exotic products such as pharmaceuticals, energy crops and so on." At the opposite end of the spectrum was a scenario called Biotech goes Niche where Grant says consumer caution about biotechnology continues to grow and foreign customers continue to prefer conventional crops. Grant: "And biotechnology slowly withers away to where it is used only for production of crops that will be consumed domestically." . Grant, who was recently reappointed to the advisory committee, says the panel's job was to give the USDA a sense of what could happen so it can then craft policies and strategies to respond to whatever future evolves. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
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