OMG! A GMO! NO WAY!

January 29th, 2009 – Professor Pamela Ronald from the University of California-Davis has presented to the world a new strain of flood-resistant rice crop. Very few news outlets have even mentionned this revolutionary breakthrough but I certainly will and I hope you will agree it was important enough for your consideration.

Professor Ronald and her team spent the last 13 years genetically modifying rice crops, splicing in a gene that would make them much more resistant to water. After a three-year test in India and Bangladesh, the new crop was found to survive 5-6 times longer than conventional rice plants underwater and thus the farmers ultimately harvested 3-5 times more rice than usual. This highly successful experiment and test will mean that tens of millions of Asian and African and South-American inhabitants will not succumb to famine this year.

Mainstream media have largely ignored this achievement even though professor Ronald’s team has tried to inform the population. A more sensible and politically correct commentator might say that they were busy with the Superbowl, what type of shoes Michelle Obama was wearing and how much more money automobile companies will need before we want to buy their luxury cars again. I for one will be very blunt : the media and the liberal/leftist elites of North America have purposely ignored or sidelined this type of agricultural innovation for decades.

This new rice is not bio, it uses chemicals and pesticides and it is the very definition of a genetically-modified organism (GMO). Health nuts aside, Americans have constantly been told by do-gooders to eat certain product made from certain farms that meet a certain certification and ultimately that all-natural food will be healthier and more tasty. Because they firmy believe the benefits of their bio foods and because it has become a multi-billion dollar industry, the proponents of ‘health food’ or ‘all-natural’ products have spent countless millions in advertisement, popular polls and shifty research that demonize all GMOs. In the case I am citing and in many more in the past, it would sort of be arrogant and stupid of them to protest the feeding of the hungry and the preventing of famine; alhough if you take them to the letter and only grow ‘organic’ food as our ancestors did, our planet could only grow food for about 3 billion people (Who’s gonna tell the other 3.5 that they will now be shot in the head to save the culinary whims of the Western World?). This is why they simply ignored these types of innovation and convinced most media and most of the population to do the same. Case and point, I present to you Mr. Norman Borlaug.

Mr. Borlaug still works today at the age of 94 and although very little people have heard of him, he has probably had more positive impact on the planet and saved more people than Mother Teresa, Ghandi, Superman, Xenu and Jesus combined. Official and academic organisations have roughly calculated Mr. Borlaug’s impact on world society as ‘saving over a billion people from starvation’. How can I possibly not know about this man you might ask. My above explaination is the only theory that fits in my opinion (combined with the sad fact that the Western World rarely cares about the death of millions in Africa and Asia).

Norman Borlaug could have stayed in Minnesota where he received his PhD in 1942 but he went straight to Mexico and in a short decade, began a what researchers call ‘the Green Revolution’ worldwide. Being one of the first specialist of plant genetics, Borlaug developped high-yield and disease-resistant crops for Mexico, Pakistan and India. The result? In 1943 Mexico imported only half of the necessary wheat to feed its people, in 1956 they were self-sufficient and in 1964, Mexico was exporting half a ton of wheat every year. Today, he continues to improve crop genetics for sub-saharan Africa and South-East Asia, as if he hasen’t done enough.

In case you may think I made him up, you can check Mr. Borlaug’s profile by searching for the awards he was discerned including some of America’s greatest honours (the Presidential medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal), India’s top award for a non-citizen (Padma Vibhushan) and the freakin’ Nobel Peace Prize of 1970.

I like to think I did my part today : I will have spread the information of this great breakthrough to a few more people that would have never heard of it. I also subverted the hypocritical and egotistical designs of liberal/I know what’s best/bio food lobbies and finally I have taught a few people about Norman Borlaug, by many standards the greatest human being to have ever lived.

Here’s hoping that professor Ronald will also be okay with the inevitable shunning and obscurity she will have to toil with for the rest of her career.

(Pictured: Norman Borlaug with a few kids that definitely don't care that the only food they have was genetically engineered - Over half the world depend on rice as a primary source of food and living.)

End.