The key theme is sustainable agriculture, which is to be based on "principles of permanence" and "internal resources" rather than on short-run profitability and purchased inputs from outside the agriculture system. Biotechnology will make this possible by creating new plant varieties uniquely suited to the hostile ecological environments cultivated by the 230 million farmers that, according to Wolf, have not seen improvement in their yields or incomes from modern agricultural technology. But he argues that most biotechnology research is controlled by the private sector, which has no incentive to work on the problems of poor farmers in the Third World. Hence substantial increases in public funding are needed, but only if the research strategy incorporates the lessons of sustainable agriculture observed in traditional farming techniques, such as the slash-and-burn and intercropping practices of some farmers in Africa.
Unfortunately, the call for a new agricultural development strategy that will solve simultaneously ...
