tay Opinion TIBTEC-647; No of Pages 4returned again to haunt mankind.

Conventional agriculture is successful and sustainable Current conventional agriculture can support 1000 people/km2; a 1000-fold higher than hunter gathering [1]. As populations grew enormously in the last century, the input of knowledge, science and technology enabled agriculture to cope, providing (until last year) relatively cheap, abundant food to over 80 % of its people. In western countries, yields/ha have more than doubled in the past 50 years. Developing countries also benefitted from the high-yielding green revolution cereals, which are estimated to have saved one billion from direct starvation [2]. Since Opposition to agricultural knowledge The publication of ‘Silent Spring’, a misleading polemic about pesticides (specifically DDT) by Rachel Carson saw the start of opposition to conventional agriculture [7]. Her knowledge of toxicology, which was the real subject of her book, was poor; unsurprising because she was actually a marine biologist. However, hermessage of fear, despite her marginal qualification, appealed to a section of the public, who were even less qualified but strongly opinionated. As a result of minority agitation, bans were imposed on DDT use. The disastrous consequence was an enormous resur-gence of malaria in developing and third world countries where it had been virtually eliminated and the associated premature deaths of many millions of third world childrenCorresponding author: Trewavas, A