Thanks, Mr. Chair.
I bring the perspective of a decreasing demographic—those who have lived pre-biotech and post-biotech. There are fewer and fewer people who have been able to see the pre-biotech era and the post-biotech era. I can comment on both.
One of the biggest advantages we've seen in the biotech on growers is that growers work in an environment where there is total risk—weather, crop prices, and other risks—in an uncertain environment. One of the things biotech has brought to growers is more certainty.
If you look at average yields, the traits we're bringing in biotechnology are taking out the effects of dry weather, bug infestations, and weeds. So one of the great things about biotech is that growers aren't having as many down years. The dry year, the year where weeds are a problem, a year where pests happen—these misfortunes are offset by the insurance policy built into the crop.
When farmers have a bad year, it takes five or six years to recover. When you speak with growers, one of the things they speak about time and time again is that biotechnology has taken some of the risk out of farming, which is a major improvement over the pre-biotech era.