“We cannot choose between feeding malnourished children and saving endangered wild species. Without higher yields, peasant farmers will destroy the wildlands and species to keep their children from starving. Sustainably higher yields of crops and trees are the only visible way to save both.”

Misconceptions

According to Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, "There's a misconception that it would be better to go back to more primitive methods of agriculture because chemicals are bad or genetics is bad. This is not true. We need to use the science and technology we have developed in order to feed the world's population, a growing population. And the more yield we get per acre of land the less nature has to be destroyed to do that … It's simple arithmetic. The more people there are, the more forest has to be cleared to feed them, and the only way to offset that is to have more yield per acre.

Environmentalist fallacies

"The solutions that are being offered by the environmentalist movement are quite often in total opposition to the objectives that we are trying to achieve: protection of the environment and feeding people," said co-signer Eugène Lapointe, President of the World Conservation Trust. "Most environmentalist movements, most organizations, are not solution oriented -- they are drama, they are scandal oriented. The Center for Global Food Issues, in its initiative called High-yield Farming and Forestry, is probably the best example of how we can achieve true innovative and practical solutions. The major objective that all of us should have is feeding people while protecting the waters and the lands that we have."

Organic farming could lead to deforestation

"Two years ago in Britain, the Cooperative Wholesale Association, which farms both organically and conventionally, said they get 44% less wheat per acre from their organic fields. If that's the right number, Europe -- to feed itself, not to export, just to feed itself today -- would need additional crop land equal to all of the forest area in Germany, France, Denmark, and the UK," said Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues. Added Dr. Borlaug, "We aren't going to feed 6 billion people with organic fertilizer. If we tried to do it, we would level most of our forest and many of those lands would be productive only for a short period of time."

Other initial signers of the declaration included: