Thank you very much.
By way of introduction and providing a context, I'd like to give you a little bit about my background, because I think it will help you shape the information that I'm going to be presenting today.
I've been with the National Research Council for about three years. Before that I worked with Genome Prairie, which is a federally funded agency, and then I spent nine years in the private sector in a natural health products company, one of Saskatchewan's largest agri-value companies, which has grown up from regional crops. The primary marketplace for those was natural health products and organic foods. Before that I was a teacher, a farmer, and a research manager.
So I have multiple perspectives, and I think one of the things that brings to my background a unique perspective is that while I was working for a company in the private sector, at one given point in time I was developing an organic flax protein for market in the organic market and at the same time was managing a genetically engineered product that would see fish oils produced in plants.
So I've seen both sides. I've been actively involved in both sides of this, and I guess I have a firm belief that both sides can live and coexist peacefully. I think what we have to try to do is take the emotion out of the argument and look at what we are trying to achieve.
The objective and our need is to grow the world's food supply by double by 2050, by most estimates. We need to work together to do that. That is the big issue; that is the solution.
Canada is in a unique position to take a leadership role in responding to that need. Look at the kinds of things Canada can do. It was about a year ago now that we were celebrating the fact that we owned the podium at the Olympic Games. Well, I believe that feeding the world is a bigger game and a much more important game. I believe that by working together on a reasonable and rational approach to science and technology, we can own the podium in agriculture.
That's my introductory message, and it's where I come from.
So let me talk a little. I have a PowerPoint presentation, and copies will be made available to you. What I want to do is to present to you some of the tools that are considered ag biotechnology tools.
I know that in previous meetings you had presentations from plant breeders and scientists who talked about biotechnology as a tool kit. One of the messages you heard is that biotechnology does not equal genetic engineering; it is one option for using biotechnology, but it is not synonymous with biotechnology. I believe that many of these tools that I'll talk a little bit about can be applied to improving the productivity of organic production systems. So it's not an either/or, and I think we need to look for synergies and ways to work together to address the bigger issue.
But let me just talk a little bit about some of the benefits of ag biotech.
The first slide states—and I won't go through all of this, because you have it, but let me just feature some of the major points—that 90% of the farmers around the world who have benefited from biotechnology are small, resource-poor farmers from developing countries.