Bio Tech Takes Over US Agri

The modern biotech industry is the product of a 60-year evolution of science, 40 years of research, and 30 years of business. (Watson & Crick worked out the DNA molecule’s structure in the spring of 1953; Cohen & Boyer produced the first ‘recombinant’ DNA cell in 1972; medical biotechnology launched commercially in 1982 with insulin produced by genetically engineered E. coli; and the agricultural biotechnology of the sort referenced in the law with the 1994 sale of a since-discontinued tomato known as the ‘Flavr Saver.’) The U.S. biotech industry has by now grown to 147,000 researchers and (by the OECD’s count), 8,974 companies responsible for 66 percent of developed-world biotech research. Results include about 150 biotech medicines covering about 322 conditions (using a private-sector source for the total approvals and the FDA for the conditions); 140 biotech plant applications; and two species of aquarium fish.

As to farming and food products: American farmers now grow eight biotech crops, including alfalfa, canola, corn, cotton, papaya, soybeans, summer squash, and sugar beets. By the count of a pro-biotech research group, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), planting has risen from 4 million acres in 1995 to 175 million acres in 2013. Three ways to put this in perspective:

World planting: The U.S. is the largest biotech producer, accounting for about a third of world biotech planting. Latin American countries - Brazil and Argentina in particular - combine for about half of the world’s acreage; Canada, India, and China are also large biotech producers. ISAAA’s worldwide estimate for 2013 has 18 million farmers in 27 countries planting 430 million acres of land (converting from their 175 million hectares) with biotech crops in 2013. This is up from 17 countries and 167 million acres in 2003. Using the World Bank’s figure for agricultural land (including livestock, crops, and fallow), this would mean biotech crops are grown on about 9% of the world’s farmland.