Planting the future

A non-technical summary of Planting the future: opportunities and challenges for using crop genetic improvement technologies for sustainable agriculture, a report by the European Academies Science Advisory Council Foreword With a burgeoning population, a finite supply of land and the prospect of climate change, this century will see world agriculture placed under ever greater pressure as it struggles to increase food production sustainably. Agricultural biotechnology is among the tools by which the challenge can be met. But one of biotechnology's most promising achievements, the creation of new plant varieties by genetic modification, continues to arouse suspicion, and nowhere more so than in Europe. This EASAC report reviews the economic, scientific and social consequences of current European Union policy on genetic modification and other techniques, and argues that Europe and the rest of the world have much to gain by reassessing and revising it in the light of the accumulated evidence. A billion people on this planet experience hunger; another billion eat a diet lacking in essential vitamins and minerals. The world's population continues to grow and, over the next 40 years, agricultural production will have to increase by some 60%. Meanwhile a quarter of all agricultural land has already suffered degradation, and there is a deepening awareness of the long term consequences of a loss of biodiversity. The global pattern of food consumption too is