I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great field trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow test plots. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for acreage left you battered by the storms of uninformed pundits and ripped out by the hands of Greenpeace brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that biotic and abiotic stresses are redemptive. Go back to Colorado, go back to Oregon, go back to Southeast Asia, go back to Africa, go back to Europe, go back to the broken greenhouses of Germany, and the burned buildings in Michigan and California, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the laboratory with despair, I say to you today, my Frank ‘N’ Friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the Human dream.
I have a dream that one day the eaters will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all crops are bred equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Boulder Colorado, the sibs of proprietary beets and the half-sibs of open-pollinated varieties will be able to sit down together at the table of beta-hood.
I have a dream that one day even Africa, a continent sweltering with the heat of climate change, sweltering with the heat of hunger, will be transformed into an oasis of healthy soil and food.
I have a dream that my many seedlings will one day live in a world where they will not be judged by the presence or absence of a gene but by the content of their endosperm.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in India, with its vicious activists, with their lips dripping with the words of “poison” and “suicide” — one day right there in India little Bt Cottons and Bt Brinjals will be able to join roots with little conventional cottons and eggplants as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every grain of golden rice shall be exalted, and every trade barrier shall be made low, the politics will be made benign, and the wrong statements will be made right; “and the glory of Humanity shall be revealed and all threshed shall see it together.”
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the Soil with.
