By James Pethokoukis

As a (reality-based) optimist, I’m always on the hunt for a solid silver lining. Here’s a possible one from Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine: Europe is trying to lessen its dependence on Russian natural gas and oil, giving a boost to nuclear power. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, wants to build as many as 14 new nuclear reactors, starting in 2028, while UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he wants nuclear power to provide 25 percent of the country’s electricity by 2050. And even before the conflict, the difficulty in meeting “net-zero” carbon emissions targets was nudging some rich economies to give nuclear energy another look. “Personally, I think nuclear power will be indispensable,” said Japan’s energy minister last year.

I wonder if Europe’s largest armed conflict since WWII might have a similar impact on fears about genetically modified food. Many foreign policy analysts, as well as the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, think a key part of Russia’s war strategy is to hold global food supplies hostage. Ukraine and Russia are both major exporters of grains such as wheat and corn.

Can technology help provide a solution? A Wall Street Journal op-ed over the weekend provides some reason to think it might. Terry Wanzek, a North Dakota state senator and board member of the Global Farmer Network, points out there a big difference in current crop yield due to technology.

Wheat farming has failed to keep up with the advances that have transformed production of other essential grains. . . . Around the turn of the century, my farm produced between 45 and 50 bushels of wheat an acre. This summer, I’ll aim for 65 bushels—an improvement of around 30%. That’s fine, but it can’t match the progress agricultural scientists have made with corn and soybeans. Three decades ago, a good year meant 90 bushels of corn and 25 bushels of soybeans an acre. This season those amounts would be disastrously low. . . . The difference between the modest improvement in wheat and the huge improvement in corn and soybeans is technology. The genetic-modification technologies that make my production more efficient and defend my corn and soybeans from weeds, pests, extreme weather and disease aren’t available for wheat.

International fears about genetically modified wheat, in particular, has meant American farmers eschewing commercialization. According to the National Wheat Foundation, “There is no genetically modified wheat currently commercialized anywhere in the world.” I did not know that.

But perhaps global food shortages will play a key role in changing global opinion about GMO wheat, just as it might be happening with nuclear power. We might also begin to think more about what lessons we should draw from past agricultural tech advances, such as the Green Revolution. The creation of high-yielding crop varieties and agronomic techniques may have prevented maybe a billion starvation deaths since the 1960s. In the 2021 working paper “Two Blades of Grass: The Impact of the Green Revolution,” the researchers find that a “ten-year delay of the Green Revolution would in 2010 have cost 17 percent of GDP/capita [with a] cumulative GDP loss [of] US$83 trillion, corresponding to one year of current global GDP.”

The role for policy here? The WSJ piece concludes: “The U.S. could perform a useful leadership role by approving the technology for cultivation and sale domestically—and encouraging other countries to approve innovative and safe wheat technology.”

The post Going Green (Revolution): A Technological Fix to Global Shortages . . . Again appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.