But for the global champions of the new, gentle Green Revolution and its campaign against hunger, this is but one of many successful attempts to develop more nutritious grain and vegetable varieties. In Brazil, for example, the research organization Embrapa developed biofortified beans, pumpkins and manioc. In Uganda and Mozambique, farmers are growing a new variety of sweet potato rich in provitamin A. In Rwanda, more than 500,000 families are eating beans enriched with iron. And in India, farmers will soon begin growing rice and wheat with especially high levels of zinc.

The Harvest Plus program has already reached about seven million men, women and children, says program head Howarth Bouis, adding that biofortified grain is expected to improve the nutrition of a billion people by 2030. Bouis’ early decision to apply only conventional methods in breeding the new varieties was important to its success. “At Harvest Plus we took the decision not to invest in transgenics, because we wanted to avoid the controversy,” he says, remembering all too well the dispute over a variety known as Golden Rice.

The Genetic Engineering Conundrum

The transgenic plant, developed in 1992 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, contains almost twice as much beta-carotene, a precursor to vitamin A, as ordinary rice. Nevertheless, there has been so much public resistance to genetic engineering that it has yet to be approved for use anywhere in the world.

But in many cases, genetic engineering is unnecessary anyways. There are often natural varieties with grains that already contain the desired vitamins or nutrients. Rice is a perfect example, with about 100,000 varieties in existence worldwide. “You can basically find any trait you can think of,” says Swaminathan. In the laboratories of his M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Chennai, scientists are experimenting with high zinc-content rice. The biologists analyzed thousands of rice strains and eventually discovered about a dozen varieties with especially high zinc levels. They are now being crossed with high-yield varieties.

But Swaminathan isn’t opposed to choosing the high-tech approach if it can help alleviate hunger. ” I won’t worship nor discard genetic engineering,” he says. “It is important to harness all the tools that traditional wisdom and contemporary science can offer”

Because, for example, it is very difficult to increase iron levels in rice with conventional breeding techniques, the scientists have turned to biotechnology. “We isolated genes from mangroves and introduced them into the genome of rice,” explains Ganesan Govindan, one of the bioengineers at MSSRF. The transgenic rice grains contain elevated levels of iron, and the plants are more tolerant of drought and salt. Researchers expect the variety to be ready for market in two or three years.

‘25,000 Farmer Suicides’

But these high-tech solutions are also controversial. Vandana Shiva, a prominent opponent of modern agricultural engineering, lives in the Indian capital New Delhi. In the offices of her organization, Navdanya — located in the affluent neighborhood of Hauz Khas — are decorated with a flower arrangement on a glass table and clay vases containing sheaves of grain.

Shiva, dressed in a flowing robe and with a large bindi on her forehead, is an impressive figure, steeled by her tough, decades-long battle with the establishment. The civil rights activist never tires of castigating seed companies. “A globally operating industry is pushing hard to make the world dependent on their products,” she says. Farmers who have made the switch, she explains, give up their traditional seed and are then forced to buy the commercial varieties, which often come with license fees, in perpetuity.

“This type of agriculture has taken the lives of 25,000 farmers in India, who committed suicide because they couldn’t pay back their debts,” says Shiva. She doesn’t think much of biofortified varieties, either. “Harvest Plus is focused on one nutrient,” she says critically. “But a single nutrient is not a solution to multidimensional malnutrition crisis; the body needs all the micronutrients.”

Instead of these “monocultures,” Shiva is calling for a return to diversity in fields. “Most of our traditional crops are full of nutrients,” she explains. Why create Golden Rice with lots of vitamin A when carrots and pumpkins contain plenty of it already? Why develop genetically modified bananas with high iron content when horseradish and amaranth contain so much iron?

Shiva recommends field crop-rotation, and the fostering of vegetable and fruit gardens and small family farms primarily geared toward nutrition instead of maximized profit. Because Shiva believes organic farming is the only viable approach to defeating hunger, her organization has trained 75,000 farmers in organic farming methods since the late 1980s.

‘There Isn’t Enough Arable Land’

Harvest Plus Director Bouis believes that Shiva’s approach is naïve. “We have the fundamental problem that there isn’t enough arable land for a constantly growing population,” he says.

A UN Environment Programme report predicts that by 2050, agriculture will have to produce 70 percent more calories than today to feed an expected global population of 9.6 billion people. This “food gap” can only be closed, says Bouis, if we “make agriculture even more productive.”

But in Maharashtra, it’s clear that new varieties of super grains are not always the entire answer. A third farmer from the town of Vadgaon Kashimbe, Santosh Pingle, 38, and his family are visibly better off than their neighbors. They live in a plastered house, they have cows and goats for milk, and they enjoy the occasional luxury of a chicken from the market. Pingle’s recipe for success is that he has done more with his land than other farmers.

The farmer grows iron-rich Dhanshakti millet to satisfy the iron needs of his family of five. On the other half of their field, the Pingles grow tomatoes and high-yield hybrid millet, which they sell in the market. They also grow protein-rich pulses and other vegetables in their house garden, and his wife Jayashree and her daughters harvest lemons, coconuts and mangoes several times a year.

The Pingles are well on their way to achieving “prosperity and strength” — and they always have enough to eat.