One of the really remarkably beneficial aspects of genetic engineering is that much of the previous methodology for controlling pests and so forth is through chemicals that affect a very broad spectrum of insects, for example, or fungicides that control fungi.

We wouldn't think of going to our doctor and saying 'Treat me the way doctors treated people in the 19th Century', and yet that's what we're demanding in food production.

We have domesticated crops over a very long period of time, like tens of thousands of years. And crops get - seeds get carried. Sometimes, if they're very small seeds, they get scattered off trucks. Pollen travels.

If everybody switched to organic farming, we couldn't support the earth's current population - maybe half.

We've gotten so good at growing food that we've gone, in a few generations, from nearly half of Americans living on farms to 2 percent. We no longer think about how the wonderful things in the grocery store got there, and we'd like to go back to what we think is a more natural way.

Civilization depends on our expanding ability to produce food efficiently, which has markedly accelerated thanks to science and technology.

The more we can grow on already cultivated land, the better.