The article below is a typical Prakash melange of half-truths, unsupported claims dressed up as facts and outright deceit.

As usual his starting point is the Green Revolution with its "new crop varieties and farming practices, including pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers", which Prakash paints as an unqualified success.

But the Green Revolution is no necessary predictor for the Gene Revolution he is so keen to promote and, even if it were, Prakash is extremely careful in his choice of example - India. He makes no mention, in this context, of Africa where the Green Revolution was an unqualified failure.
http://www.foodfirst.org/policybriefs

And even in countries like India, the Green Revolution, with its promotion of chemical and irrigation dependent crop varieties, resulted in a series of problems which are widely recognised: reduced genetic diversity, increased vulnerability to pests, increased water shortages, increased soil erosion, reduced soil fertility, increased micronutrient deficiencies, and increased soil contamination.
http://livingheritage.org/green-revolution.htm

In fact, one of the greatest ironies of the so-called Gene Revolution is that so many of the problems it's supposed to solve (eg pesticide dependency, irrigation dependency, micronutrient deficiency) are atually by-products of the Green Revolution!

The Green Revolution has also created serious problems at a socio-economic level. For instance, by increasing dependence on expensive inputs it encouraged endebtedness and economic vulnerability amongst small farmers. More generally, the Green Revolution increased the divide between rich and poor and encouraged the displacement of vast numbers of small farmers from their land.
http://livingheritage.org/green-revolution.htm

Given this, not everyone will be encouraged by Prakash's claim that "the 'gene revolution' will continue what began with the 'green revolution'"!

The Green Revolution also did nothing to solve the critical problem of food distribution to the poor. Ironically, the country that Prakash cites as the examplar of the Green Revolution's success now has by far the largest number of hungry people of any country in the world.

Finally, India's American backed Green Revolution was achieved at the expense of India's high yielding indigenous crop varieties and it directly led to the suppression of the work of Indian scientists who were making a case within the agricultural mainstream for less input-intensive farming better adapted to local conditions in India.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=291
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2000/20001016/agro.htm#2

Having ignored all of that, Prakash uses his article's one-dimensional account of the Green Revolution as a platform for a still more fairytale account of the Gene Revolution - with claims such as "the United States is the model for regulating biotechnology"!

It would be more accurate to say that the United States is doing its damndest to promote itself as "the model for regulating biotechnology," but you'd only have to talk to a US rice farmer to get a somewhat different view.

Only nine months ago the US Department of Agriculture's inspector general warned that, "Current (USDA) regulations, policies and procedures do not go far enough to ensure the safe introduction of agricultural biotechnology". The inspector general's report also note that the USDA even "lacks basic information" on where GM field tests are or what is done with the crops after they are harvested - and that included pharmaceutical producing crops. (US food, anyone?)

This is the biosafety system that the US and the biotech industry are using USAID and lobbyists like CS Prakash to promote as a regulatory "model" for the developing world.

Promoting the interests of the biotech industry and the United States as a "lifesaving vision" for the poor and hungry is something pretty hard to dignify, but then Prakash's career of lobbying and deceit has long since divested itself of anything like dignity - see "the great deceiver": http://www.lobbywatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=55&page=1&op=2

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Elitism about biotech keeps food from hungry
By C.S. PRAKASH Des Moines Register, October 20 2006 [via AgBioView]
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061020/OPINION01/610200355/1036

In 1965 and 1966, crop failures created massive food shortages in my native India, which produced only about 10 million metric tons of wheat annually. Only emergency shipments of American grain prevented widespread famine.

In 2006, India is a net exporter of food, producing 73 million metric tons of wheat. This is thanks in large measure to Iowa's Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution he championed of new crop varieties and farming practices, including pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.

This week, as the World Food Prize honors those who have fed millions globally, famine still threatens several parts of the world - on a scale that emergency shipments cannot hope to solve.

In sub-Saharan Africa, dramatically increased yields are needed to save and improve the lives of its many people who depend on the land. A "gene revolution" of biotechnology holds great promise, but anti-science and elitism have stood in its way.

European nations, especially, and their misperception of biotechnology as unsafe are responsible for this. As a result, many African governments limit farmers' access to biotech seeds. Some have even refused emergency food aid of biotech crops - fearing not that the food itself as unsafe, but that farmers might plant and harvest the donated grain and jeopardize exports of future surpluses to affluen