Second Green Revolution, The | Popular Science | Find Articles at BNET

A century of agricultural innovation has vastly increased the amount of food on Earth-and with it, the total population. But the first green revolution is proving unsustainable, and hunger is on the rise. Now keeping the world fed will require an unlikely alliance between genetic engineers and organic farmers

AMONG THE TREE-LINED BIKE PATHS, automated livestock pens and darkened lecture halls of the University of California at Davis, a tiny room holds a weapon of mass destruction. Here, behind locked doors, sits a chunk of Xanthomonas, a bacterial blight that has decimated rice harvests in China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and West Africa. Since the passage of the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has deemed Xanthomonas a "select agent," which meant that in order to enter I had to produce a photo I.D., sign a series of documents, and suit up in a disposable lab coat. Within the restricted area, a staff researcher snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, unlocked an incubator, and extracted a petri dish of yellowish goo, which he held a few inches from my outstretched hands. "I can't let you touch it," he said.

It may have looked like nothing more than a lump of mold, but the pathogen that could rot the grain that feeds half the world had also introduced a new and ominous twist to the story of mankind's greatest agricultural triumph: the green revolution. Since the days of Thomas Malthus, many scientists have feared that the Earth could not produce enough food to sustain its rapidly growing population. While some contended that science would find a way to overcome such limits, the Malthusians [...]

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