Colleagues, As you already know, the winner of the 2002 National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) Corn Yield Contest is again Francis Childs of Manchester, Iowa, USA who turned in a record yield of 442.14 bushels per acre (27,633.75 kg/ha) using a Pioneer hybrid containing the YieldGard1 gene for resistance to European corn borer. See http://www.pioneer.com/pioneer_news/press_releases/products/ncga_national_results.htm

Compare that to farmers in Oaxaca, Mexico, who may be the most admired of all by the anti-biotech activist contingent. These farmers use organic methods, native biodiverse landraces and ancestral wisdom to produce around 200 kilograms of maize per hectare (that's about 3 bushels per acre). The average poor Mexican eats (or would like to eat) some 200 kilograms of maize per year, equal to the entire output of one hectare under 'traditional' cultivation. See http://www.jamesroe.com/rural/rural.htm

In 1995, Mexico had one acre (0.4 hectare) of arable land per capita. If Mexico were to use only much-beloved 'traditional' methods to produce its maize, Mexico's total arable land could only supply maize to 40 percent of its population. And to do that, it would have to cultivate no other crops and raise no animals. This simplistic hectare-per-person approach ignores, however, the fact that only 25 percent of Mexico's arable land is actually put to agricultural use. So feeding 40 percent of the population in this primitive way would actually require a quadrupling of land put to the plow. See http://ag.arizona.edu/arec/pubs/azson/chpt_3.pdf

Compare Iowa to Oaxaca. Compare modern to ancient technologies. It doesn't look like using organic methods, native biodiverse landraces and ancestral wisdom is doing Mexico any favors, nor are those who want Mexican agriculture to be mired in primitivism.

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