"Feeding the World"
Biotech Industry's Mantra
Monsanto ran the following advertisement as part of a $1.6 Million 1998 European Media Campaign

Worrying About Starving Future Generations Won't Feed Them.
Food Biotechnology Will.

The world's population is growing rapidly, adding the equivalent of a China to the globe every 10 years. To feed these billion more mouths, we can try extending our farming land or squeezing greater harvests out of existing cultivation. With the planet set to double in numbers around 2030, this heavy dependency on land can only become heavier. Soil erosion and mineral depletion will exhaust the ground. Lands such as rainforests will be forced into cultivation. Fertilizer, insecticide, and herbicide use will increase globally.

At Monsanto, we now believe food biotechnology is a better way forward. Our biotech seeds have naturally occurring beneficial genes inserted into their genetic structure to produce, say, insect or pest-resistant crops.

The implications for the sustainable development of food production are massive: Less chemical use in farming, saving scarce resources. More productive yields. Disease-resistant crops. While we'd never claim to have solved world hunger at a stroke, biotechnology provides one means to feed the world more effectively.

Of course, we are primarily a business. We aim to make profits, acknowledging that there are other views of biotechnology than ours. That said, 20 government regulatory agencies around the world have approved crops grown from our seeds as safe.'