Organic Farming

By Ramesh Akkineni

Norman E Borlaug on organic farming

Talking about the pest-resistant Bt cotton, Borlaug said this was being grown on about nine million hectares by some six million farmers all over the world.

It was estimated that the Bt technology had helped reduce insecticide consumption by whopping 25000 tonnes, besides curbing cases of pesticides poisoning.

Borlaug also ridiculed the proponents of organic farming and said it was “nonsense” to think that you could feed the world without the use of chemical fertilisers.

Despite the impressive increase in food production due to seed-fertiliser-irrigation based technology, several million people still went to bed hungry. “You need to double the food output by 2050 to feed them”, Borlaug said and maintained that it was not possible even if all the organic matter available in the world was used for this purpose.

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