Posted: October 30th, 2009 - 7:51pm
Source: The Australian

Agricultural technology company Monsanto hopes to double crop yields by 2030 as well as reduce the amount of fertilisers, chemicals and water used by a third, by combining conventional plant breeding with genetically modified lines.
Harvey Glick, Monsanto's senior director of scientific affairs, said gains made by conventional breeding have slowed down and argues the next step will be "the gene revolution", a combination of conventional plant breeding with biotechnology.
Global shortages of grain last year led to price hikes, food riots and more hunger.
The UN has warned global food production will have to increase by 70 per cent by 2050.
The world population is expected to reach 9billion by 2050, up from 6.8billion today.
The last great leap in food production was the "green revolution", which doubled cereal production between 1970 and 1995, while increasing the area by less than 5 per cent.
The green revolution introduced high-yielding cereals into developing countries, along with modern agricultural techniques.
The father of the green revolution, Norman Borlaug, is credited with saving more than a billion people from starvation.
Dr Glick said that, for seven of the past eight years, "we have been consuming more of our (grain) stocks than we're producing, so we're in a very precarious situation".