Dr. Michael Lipton—international expert on genetically modified crops and global poverty— presented a major address on the impact of genetically modified foods on agricultural development and poverty reduction as part of activities surrounding the annual meetings of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

Dr. Lipton gave the 1999 Sir John Crawford Memorial Lecture on Thursday, October 28, at the World Bank, H Street Auditorium, 1912 G Street NW, Washington, DC. His speech was entitled "Reviving the stalled thrust toward global poverty reduction: Are genetically modified crops a need, a threat, or an irrelevance?"

Dr. Lipton is Research Professor of Economics at the Poverty Research Unit, Sussex University, England. He was a co-author of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics report, Genetically Modified Crops: the Ethical and Social Issues (London, 1999).

He has authored numerous books and scholarly papers including Why Poor People Stay Poor: Urban Bias and World Development (1977, revised 1987); New Seeds and Poor People (with Richard Longhurst, 1989); Successes in Anti-poverty (1998); and "Poverty and Policy," with Martin Ravallion, in the Handbook of Development Economics (1995).

Dr. Lipton's distinguished career includes research in Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Botswana, Sierra Leone and South Africa and Sri Lanka. In 1988-90, he directed the Consumption and Nutrition Research Program at the CGIAR's International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). He is currently working on "2000-related" analytical reviews of poverty reduction for the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the World Bank.