Thank you for your observation and question.
On the issue that you rightly raise about the tragedy in the world of a billion people suffering from undernourishment and hunger, I think most people, when they look at that and how the world is going to help deal with that question, which has been a long and ongoing one--the millennium development goals spoke to trying to reduce that by half by 2015, I think it was--we're not doing as well there as probably we would like. But I think it's fair to say that a lot of the world's countries and governments and their regulators recognize that we're probably going to need all the tools that we can have, responsibly used, to help address that problem and water and all the rest of it.
I think you see that happening across the world now with the rapid uptake in a lot of the developing economies. We now have something in the order of 25 countries where GMO crops are growing about 330 million acres on the ground, including 90% of those crops now in developing economies.
On Europe, I should say right at the outset before I go to this part of the question, and on technology dependence--I should pick that up as well.... It's all about choice. It's about choice for the consumer and choice for the farmer. A lot of people think that because I work for the plant science industry I'm somehow against organic. I'm not. If farmers choose to grow organic and if consumers choose to buy organic, that is their right, and that should be their choice, as long as it's all done on a factual basis in terms of what the benefits and the risks are.
As to whether somehow these technologies that we're developing are making farmers technology dependent, I would suggest that this is a gross underestimation of the intelligence of the average farmer. They are very shrewd people and they wouldn't be choosing these technologies, like they are in Canada, if they didn't bring benefits economically.
Farmers are really good stewards of the land. That's their whole being, if you like, because if they don't look after the land and the environment, the land and the air, they won't be there subsequently. To suggest that this is somehow tech...that farmers aren't smart enough to see around that I think is a gross underestimation of them.
In terms of Europe and tolerance levels, once again--