Pro-Biotech Propagandists Challenge Organic Community

High Yield Conservation Group Challenges Organic Industry

Urges Wildlife Supporters to Ask Multi-Billion Industry to Drop Opposition
To Land Saving Practices

CHURCHVILLE, Va., March 5 /PRNewswire/ -- The Hudson Institute's Center for
Global Food Issues (CGFI) today urged the National Wildlife Federation (NWF)
to use its newly announced partnership with the Organic Trade Association to
embrace high-yield farming practices which help conserve natural resources
and protect nature. Calling the organic industry announcement "misleading,"
CGFI urged NWF to use its new influence with the multi-billion dollar
organic industry to act responsibly.

"Growing more per acre saves more land for nature," stressed Alex Avery,
Director of Research and Education for CGFI. "Current organic practices and
policies are counter to the safe and proven technologies such as
biotechnology and no-till farming that are what's needed for the
conservation of land and resources essential to protecting our environment
for future generations. Best practices, not misleading marketing which plays
to consumer fears, should drive how we grow the food we need while
protecting our precious natural resources."

CGFI's High Yield Conservation program, which promotes such practices, has
been endorsed by Nobel Laureates, U.S. Senators George McGovern and Rudy
Boschwitz, leading conservationists and the founder of Greenpeace. It calls
for embracing practices in agriculture and forestry which have been proven
to increase yields and lower inputs and other costs which burden our
environment.

Endorsing the CGFI campaign, Eugene Lapoint, President of the World
Conservation Trust stated, "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."

Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, added, "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."

Avery added, "Dr. Conrad Lichtenstein, Professor of Molecular Biology at the
University of London writes this month in the Journal Nature that 'Organic
farming is less productive and requires more land, but (bio)technology
offers organic farmers the opportunity to increase their productivity
organically, that is without the need to spray pesticides. Future benefits
include crop production on marginal lands, high in salt or low in water.
Thus the rejection of (biotechnology), an intrinsically organic process, by
the organic movement is puzzling. They are biting the very hand that could
feed them.' We think the multi-billion dollar organic industry should
reconsider its opposition to biotechnology and we urge the National Wildlife
Federation to help promote responsible and truly sustainable agriculture to
protect nature."

To view a list of those endorsing High Yield Conservation and for more
information please visit www.highyieldconservation.org.
SOURCE Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues