By 2050, the world population will surge to 9 Billion, and feeding that growing population is a challenge that drives the global biotech community every day. In a world where already 1 Billion people suffer from hunger, we cannot let up in our efforts to develop and implement new, more sustainable agricultural practices.

Check out this video highlighting how biotech can help us feed the world.

If you are concerned about the coming global food crisis – and you should be! – you don’t want to miss today’s op-ed in POLITICO by Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. He really hits the nail on the head when it comes to biotech innovation’s role in feeding a growing world population.

Here’s an excerpt from the piece, called “Don’t forget the world’s food gap”:

Late last month, leaders from around the world convened in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum’s annual conference of international leaders to address shared global challenges. While efforts to restore stability and prosperity to our financial system rightfully framed the conference agenda, I was most encouraged by the forum’s consideration of a topic even more fundamental to the survival of people around the globe but one that has received far less attention in the press and among policymakers: In order to feed a global population boom of 9 billion people by 2050, we will need to more than double our current levels of food production and develop a set of innovative strategies to combat a host of global-hunger-related and nutritional issues.

The urgency of this challenge cannot be understated. Indeed, the United Nations has said that world food output needs to grow by 70 percent by 2050 to address this dramatic increase in global population. Today, malnutrition is associated with half of all deaths in children under the age of 5 each year, and more than 1 billion people currently suffer from hunger and poverty. These numbers can be expected only to grow as our population increases by one-third over the next four decades.

Great challenges demand even better solutions, and better solutions can come only from the collaboration and competition of those willing to advance new ideas and technologies. Recently, I agreed to chair the new DuPont Advisory Committee on Agricultural Innovation and Productivity for the 21st Century, which seeks to do just that, by exploring how agricultural innovation can help us meet the food, feed, fiber and fuel demands of the coming decades. Innovation will lie at the heart of the agricultural revolution necessary to accomplish our goal of feeding the world by 2050 without increasing pressure on our world’s already strained and limited resources. In fact, innovation in agriculture won’t just provide more; it can also provide “better” — growing crops with nutritional benefits and developing seed that increases yield worldwide…

Read the rest of the op-ed HERE.

How will we feed 9 billion people in 2050?
Will there be enough water for a thirsty world?
How can we improve the livelihood of our world’s 2.5 billion farmers?

For decades, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug worked tirelessly to answer these questions and provide resource-poor farmers with the tools needed to improve farming techniques and feed billions.

How can we continue his legacy and ensure food security for a growing world population?

Join leading agricultural experts in an international, “Town Hall 2.0” discussion on how to address challenges farmers and nations will face in the next century. Panelists will comment on Dr. Borlaug’s last published statement – featured in a new Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) report.

Join the discussion and make your voice heard on how agricultural policies can make a difference for the future.

Participate in-person or online via Webcast, Twitter, Facebook, and e-mail.

The challenges are daunting. We need solutions now. We need your support.

What: Now Serving: 9 Billion: Global Dialogue on Meeting Food Needs for the Next Generation
When: Friday, Feb. 12, 2010 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon EST
Where: The Newseum, Knight Broadcast Studio, 555 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C.
Live-streamed via Webcast at www.CropNewsNetwork.com
Who: Moderated by: Frank Sesno, George Washington University
Register: Please register online for free at: http://newseumcast.eventbrite.com/

Panelists will include:

Robert Paarlberg, Professor at Wellesley College and author of Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa

Nina Fedoroff, Science and Technology Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State and to the Administrator of USAID, author of Mendel in the Kitchen

Mark Cantley, former head of the European Commission’s “Concertation Unit for Biotechnology in Europe” and of OECD’s Biotechnology Unit

Calestous Juma, Pew award winner and Professor of Practice at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government

Gale Buchanan, lead author of the CAST report and former USDA Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics

To attend the event in-person or submit discussion questions, please contact
Event Coordinator Alexander Rinkus at arinkus[at]CropLifeFoundation.org
Follow the event online at www.CropNewsNetwork.com or on Twitter @CropLifeFdn and @AgBiotech
Or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/CropLife-Foundation/255237947060

This event is hosted by CropLife International, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and CAST.

Transgenic seed technology began to transform India’s cotton industry in 2002. Genetically modified cotton acreage has increased three-fold since that year, and the lives of millions of Indian families have been improved as cotton farmers income has increased by $124 million (USD). Indian farmers today represent some of the world’s most rapid adopters of biotech crops.

How will we feed 9 billion people in 2050?
Will there be enough water for a thirsty world?
How can we improve the livelihood of our world’s 2.5 billion farmers?

For decades, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug worked tirelessly to answer these questions and provide resource-poor farmers with the tools needed to improve farming techniques and feed billions.

How can we continue his legacy and ensure food security for a growing world population?

Join leading agricultural experts in an international, “Town Hall 2.0” discussion on how to address challenges farmers and nations will face in the next century. Panelists will comment on Dr. Borlaug’s last published statement – featured in a new Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) report.

Join the discussion and make your voice heard on how agricultural policies can make a difference for the future.

Participate in-person or online via Webcast, Twitter, Facebook, and e-mail.

The challenges are daunting. We need solutions now. We need your support.

What: Now Serving: 9 Billion: Global Dialogue on Meeting Food Needs for the Next Generation
When: Friday, Feb. 12, 2010 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon EST
Where: The Newseum, Knight Broadcast Studio, 555 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C.
Live-streamed via Webcast at www.CropNewsNetwork.com
Who: Moderated by: Frank Sesno, George Washington University
Register: Please register online for free at: http://newseumcast.eventbrite.com/

Panelists will include:

Robert Paarlberg, Professor at Wellesley College and author of Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa

Nina Fedoroff, Science and Technology Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State and to the Administrator of USAID, author of Mendel in the Kitchen

Mark Cantley, former head of the European Commission’s “Concertation Unit for Biotechnology in Europe” and of OECD’s Biotechnology Unit

Calestous Juma, Pew award winner and Professor of Practice at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government

Gale Buchanan, lead author of the CAST report and former USDA Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics

To attend the event in-person or submit discussion questions, please contact
Event Coordinator Alexander Rinkus at arinkus[at]CropLifeFoundation.org
Follow the event online at www.CropNewsNetwork.com or on Twitter @CropLifeFdn and @AgBiotech
Or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/CropLife-Foundation/255237947060

This event is hosted by CropLife International, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and CAST.

In Governor McDonnell’s first “State of the Commonwealth” speech on January 18th, he spoke about the importance of investment in biotechnology. He noted that the biotech industry offers “high paying jobs and fast-growing career fields” and that “smart states look at this sector for future economic development.” Check out this video clip from the speech:

Dana Boyle, the Vice President of Business Development for Life Science Alley explains what Life Science Alley is, who their members are and how she became involved in biotechnology.

Men and women have long turned to nature to serve us.  Farmers have crossed seeds to produce beneficial plants, researchers going back to the early Chinese have taken bacteria to stimulate the immune system and fight disease, in early day vaccines.

Today’s researchers are looking to plants to create fuels for a planet that desperately needs cleaner, locally created alternatives.

Biofuels researchers are a creative lot.  Tomatoes, tuberculosis and chocolate have been used to create fuels.  But who would think to turn to tobacco?  Researchers at Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson University’s Biotechnology Foundation Laboratory report that they’ve modified a gene in tobacco resulting in a 20 fold increase in oil production.

Modification to two genes that control oil production in tobacco plants — diacyglycerol acytransferase (DGAT) gene and the LEAFY COTYLEDON 2 gene — makes the the plant’s oil production go into overdrive, with 20 times the standard amount of oil being produced in some cases. On average, genetically modified leaves produce twice the amount of oil as normal leaves.

The lab is headed by Hilary Koprowski, M.D., an internationally recognized research scientist who helped pioneer the oral polio and modern rabies vaccines. According to the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratory’s website, “Its talented staff of two dozen includes scientists trained in molecular biology, immunology, virology, and plant pathology. Many are professors, instructors or post-doctoral candidates at the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, where the foundation’s laboratories are located.”

Dr. Koprowski and her team don’t appear satisfied by using plants for fuel. They are also leaders in using plants to create vaccines.

The Technology Behind “Green” Vaccines

All vaccines work by establishing a small infection that triggers the body’s immune response, alerting antibodies and white blood cells to fight the intruding virus. When the body encounters the same virus again, the immune system recognizes it and immediately produces the “same learned response, effectively destroying the virus.

Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories has developed an ingenious method of using plant viruses to carry genetic material from human and animal viruses into plants. About two weeks after a plant is infected, the plant material is harvested and used for the production of vaccines and other biomedical materials. Using this core technology, the Laboratories has developed two approaches for production and delivery of these materials:

1. Purified extracts from the plants such as tobacco are used for immunization purposes.
2. Plants are left intact for consumption as “edible” vaccines and other biomedical products.

Testing of both approaches has indicated that laboratory animals can be immunized by injection with rabies and HIV vaccines and by feeding with spinach leaves carrying these vaccines.

High-Quality Vaccines at a Fraction of a Cost

Traditional injectable and oral vaccines are extremely expensive to make. Plant vaccines could save the healthcare community and world economies millions of dollars each year. Consider this comparison of the cost of traditional vaccines vs. the cost of our edible vaccines:

Cost of a single inoculation of traditional Hepatitis B vaccine………………………$47.00

Cost of a single dose of edible (tomato based*) Hepatitis B vaccine…………….$00.11

*based on the price of tomatoes grown in California

So the same research team and facility is using biotechnology applications to create plants that can provide an alternative fuel source, while creating other plants that can become edible vaccines.  The benefits to society are incredible here. Domestically grown fuel is not only in our nationally security interest, but it’s also more environmentally beneficial than shipping a non-renewable fuel from around the world.  And growing vaccines means that we can create medicine for such a low cost that could be game changers for treating patients in the developing world – and at home.