A new "conversation" with 14 globally recognized scientists, economists, and thought leaders discussing the use of genetically modified (GM) food crops over the last decade is now available on the Conversations about Plant Biotechnology Web site. The conversations highlight GM's proven safety, benefits to the environment, and contributions to the lives of third-world farm families and communities.

"Here we have a very versatile technology, which has the power and the capacity to contribute to a more effective, a more benign, a more sustainable agriculture," says Dr. Clive James, an agricultural scientist and founder of the not-for-profit International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).

"What's been amazing to many of us is that we've seen advances that even were beyond our wildest expectations," says Dr. Roger Beachy, researcher and founding president of the not-for-profit Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.

GM crops have also helped reduced the fuel, water and packaging that are used to manufacture, distribute and apply herbicides and pesticides. In addition, herbicide-tolerant crops have spurred the adoption of no till farming ù reducing or eliminating plowing to remove weeds.

GM food crops also assist in producing more food on the same amount of land, which reduces the need to clear additional land for cultivation. This results in less impact on prairies, wetlands, forests and other fragile ecosystems that might otherwise be converted for agricultural purposes.
Both small- and large-scale family farms worldwide are benefiting from increased yields, reduced production costs, or both in some instances to create significantly improved net economic returns as a result of GM food crops.

"If you look at the adoption of biotech crops since 1996, it's been on a significant upward curve in terms of the area planted," says Graham Brookes, agricultural economist and director of PG Economics in England. He says the primary driver of adoption has been the economic benefits that farmers receive ù US$28 billion worth of extra farm income to the farmers who have used the technology."

Of the 10.3 million farmers who planted biotech crops in 22 countries in 2006, 90 percent were small, resource-poor farmers from 11 developing countries including Argentina, Brazil, China, Columbia, Honduras, India, Mexico, Paraguay, Philippines, South Africa and Uruguay.

"If we give important technologies to grow more food in poor places ù better seed varieties, better ways to manage soil nutrients, better ways to manage plant pathogens ù it's going to create livelihoods. It's going to create income in the villages. It's going to convert what is now sub-subsistence agriculture into commercial farming," says Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute and of the United Nations Millennium Project.

The Conversations about Plant Biotechnology Web site is designed to "give a voice and a face to the farmers and families who grow biotech crops and the experts who research and study the technology." The site is maintained by Monsanto Company solely for the purpose of promoting the benefits of agricultural biotechnology.