It’s a rather calm-sounding official title for an important compilation of data on what’s happening with agricultural biotechnology around the world.

On Tuesday, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) released its annual report. This one also provides a 15-year overview, with the first biotech crop haveing been introduced in 1996.

Highlights of the report include:

• Biotech crops are now grown on more than one billion acres, about 10 percent of the total cropland in the world.
• The rate of adoption of biotech crops in the last 15 years makes it the fastest growing technology in the history of modern agriculture.
• The number of countries where biotech crops are grown increased to 29, with Sweden, Myanmar and Pakistan growing them for the first time and Germany resuming planting.
• A record 15.4 million farmers now grow biotech crops, and more than 90 percent of them are small holder farmers in developing countries.
• Developing countries grew 48 percent of all biotech crops and will exceed 50 percent by 2015.
• In India, some 6.3 million farmers grew 9.4 million hectares of Bt cotton, the ninth consecutive year of increases.
• In the last 15 years, biotech crops have contributed positively to sustainability and climate change.

It’s an important report, with important information about global agriculture.

Related Resources:

• The report’s executive summary.
• ISAAA’s press release on the report.
• A list of the report’s contents.
• A list of the report’s tables and figures.
• PowerPoint slides and figures.

You can purchase the entire report for $50 here.