Tom Daschle: Don’t forget the world’s food gap

Feb 16th, 2010 11:10 AM UTC
By Chris Scott

Former Senate majority leader and ONE Vote ’08 co-chair Tom Daschle has a piece in Politico today looking at the challenge of feeding an ever-growing population.

In it, he sets out four key pillars to meeting that challenge:

First, we must support scientific and technological innovation in agriculture. In the past 25 years alone, farmers in the United States have boosted corn production by more than 40 percent. And products in the ag pipeline offer the promise of nutritional outputs that will improve products and boost yields. In order to realize these new technologies, we must foster innovation by incentivizing and encouraging investment in biotech and broader agricultural research and development.

Second, we must facilitate an open, competitive marketplace. The most significant scientific achievements occur when we combine the best of competition and collaboration. The ability of multiple companies to offer differentiated products and services in an open marketplace promotes agriculture productivity, accelerates innovation and increases choice. One way to achieve this is through strengthened legal and legislative safeguards designed to encourage innovation while protecting intellectual property rights in agriculture. Within this regulatory structure, facilitation of American agricultural exports is key; global regulatory barriers to market entry must be removed.

Third, we must collaborate to innovate. In order to face 21st-century food demands in a way that promotes health and protects the environment, innovation in science and competition must be accompanied by collaboration among parties who have traditionally been somewhat divided. This will require collaboration between companies, environmental groups, farmers, NGOs and governments to ensure that efforts are not mutually exclusive. For example, we must move past old illusions about food vs. fuel. Advances in agricultural innovation can help to both feed and fuel the world. In the face of climate change and national security threats, we must continue to innovate so that the agriculture industry can meet the demand for both food and fuel in the coming decades.

Finally, we must empower farmers worldwide with the tools necessary to meet this growing demand. Partnerships must be forged between governmental leaders and local farmers in the developing world to facilitate the ability of these countries to increase their crop yields, enhance resistance to pests and improve crop performance in challenging climates.

Read the full article here.

TAGS: ONE, Sen. Tom Daschle