USDA Agro-research Czar Advocates Agricultural Technologies

Director of the USDA's National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Roger Beachy, expressed his strong belief on the power of agricultural technology in attaining food security. In an interview, he said that every country must implement their own strategies for fostering agricultural technology.

"China largely now has multinational seed companies and a burgeoning domestic company—and seed policies that are favorable to both. In India there's a strong sense of local ownership and every new variety of seed that comes in the country then has to work within their system, and I think that makes for healthy competition. Hopefully all the governments of other developing economies will invest more in this terribly important sector of food security and agriculture economy," said Beachy.

Beachy is a famous expert in plant viruses and sowed one of the first genetically modified food crops-GM tomato with resistance to mosaic virus.

Read more about Roger Beachy in the current issue of Scientific American at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=food-fight.