“Can GM Crops Help to Feed the World?”: Next Steps and New Directions

This proposal builds on Grant No.15625 “Can GM Crops Help to Feed the World?” and has three specific purposes: 1. the continuing maintenance and development of the “Biosciences for Farming in Africa – B4FA” website (http://www.b4fa.org/) for a further near three years because of the critical nature of the issues that it covers, its crucial importance for communication and hence need for continuation beyond the period of the current contract for its viable life 2. the publication of the work of the fourteen associated smaller GM crops grants projects in the form of a book of 1000-1500 word essays designed to be accessible to a non-specialist readership of policy makers, educationalists, society organisations and the media. 3. the carrying out of a scoping study and a workshop for the possible development of a project entitled “Entrepreneurship for Aid and Trade – EAT” focusing on the ways in which the many people in poverty can move from depending on donor aid to economic independence and self-reliance by entrepreneurship in both local and international export/import trade. Following three years of John Templeton Foundation-supported work, these three initiatives will ensure the widest possible sharing of results and ideas to help set a common agenda for the way forward in African countries and bring it to the attention of a wide audience in sub-Saharan Africa and worldwide.