Richard Manning

About the author: Richard Manning is an environmental writer who has written six books, one of which is Food's Frontier: The Next Green Revolution.

In developing countries such as India, where subsistence farming is prevalent and new protein-rich crops are desperately needed, genetic food modification is a promising alternative. Instead of allowing profit-oriented biotech corporations to control their agriculture, sophisticated native public-sector scientists are developing new disease-resistant and pest-resistant biotech crops for their countries. Using biotechnology, new food strains can be developed in half the time of traditional plant-breeding techniques, and these crops can be more resistant to potentially devastating insects. This technology is of life and death importance in countries where food shortages are urgent and failed crops have contributed to farmers taking their lives rather than facing the hunger of...