Protecting Biodiversity

February 20, 2013
Land Use & Biodiversity 

Growing more food per hectare takes pressure off of the need to convert natural habitats into more farmland – helping protect our planet’s incredible wealth of biodiversity. If higher yielding biotech crops had not been available from 1996 to 2010, an additional 91 million hectares of farmland would have been needed to maintain global production levels. An extensive literature review on plant biotechnology and biodiversity also concluded that biotech crops help reduce agriculture’s impact on biodiversity through enhanced adoption of conservation tillage practices, and increasing yields to alleviate pressure to convert additional land into agricultural use.