Biotechnology will be key to feeding the world in the future. There is no doubt about that. However, as to whether most of those traits will go into the plant by genetic engineering transfer of genes, I don't know what proportion of those traits will require that.
If you look at nitrogen use efficiencies, when we can use less nitrogen and get the same yield, it will have a happy impact on climate change and drought issues. I've seen the photos of plants that are stressed with drought and produce a normal yield. You look at a plethora of those traits. We will need to use more and more of those. It is explaining to the public. In Australia when the poll was done on if we were to introduce a water-use efficiency—which is what we should be saying, not drought stress—gene in wheat, would you support it, 70% of Australians said yes. Consumers saw value, or the citizens saw value, in a trait in terms of maximizing a resource that they don't have. That is how we have to approach it.
In the first instance, it was industry-led. We have a chemistry to sell. We introduce a trait, and without educating the people on the benefits of that single pass—you don't have to do five sprays and all that to kill the weeds—and the environmental benefits, the train left the station with the goods on it before the public got onboard. But in future you need to be proactive and engage the public on trait-specific and say that we could maximize yield with half the nitrogen we use now. It takes half a billion cars off the road. Do the math. We can tell you that with green peas and lentils you save enough natural gas to heat 132,000 prairie homes for one year, and you know how cold it gets on the prairies. Those are the kinds of things that will resonate with the public.
If we adopt that approach I think that is a way, but we need biotechnology and we have to define it for what it is. It is not all GMO. Probably only 10% or 20% of the traits we have today in crops are actually GMO. The rest are just biotechnology tools.