Optimism seems to be the word most favored by presenters and speakers here at the World Food Prize symposium.

Everybody’s optimistic about the future of biofuels and biotech. Really, really optimistic.

I don’t mean to make fun of optimism or of the many very capable people here who say they are optimistic.

But I must say I’m a little suspicious about all the Chamber-of-Commerce biofuel optimism. Back in the day, I covered some Tobacco Associates meetings for the Raleigh, N.C. newspaper. Tobacco growers, brokers etc. would jam a hall, every one of them puffing furiously on cigarettes as speakers proclaimed, “Tobacca today, tobacco tomorrow, tobacco fuh-evah!”

Seemed to me then that they felt a little threatened by the many signs that the industry was dying.

There was a “whistling-through-the-graveyard” quality to their optimism.

I’m feeling a little of that with the biofuels folks – and some of the scientists who may be smarting from criticisms of bio-engineered foods and bio-technology.  Obviously we can’t go on exploiting our petroleum resources much longer. Some say we’ve already reached “peak oil.” Fuel from agriculture seems like a great option.

But others say a big switch to biofuels will take land out of food production, that it will deplete further water resources, that it will send food prices through the roof and harm the world’s poor.Genetically modified foods have their own set of problems.

Some seem to regard these doubts about biofuels and gen-tech foods as a rejection of all science and technology, if not reason itself.

Norman Borlaug, 93, the esteemed father of the Green Revolution, in a short speech today criticized, “the new people who look at one narrow slit of possibilities” of science for the future.

“Let’s not get carried away by all these doomsayers,” he said. “Pessimism is a very poor ingredient for expanding and improving the possibilities for human beings.”

You’re more likely to find such people in developed nations, he said. They can afford to be pessimistic now that they are prosperous.

“Were it not for the improvements brought by science and technology, we would  be required to farm three times the land we farm now” to feed humanity, he said.

Don’t take this man’s words lightly. His scientific work on improved plant species has saved a billion lives, they say, saved more lives than any other human being, ever. His Green Revolution has some of its own unintended consequences. But he’s no slouch.

I’m cool with Norm. However, legitimate misgivings about possible unintended consequences are not the same as hatred of science.

In any case, Norm won’t make any money off his convictions at this point. Lots of the other optimists are heavily invested in their optimism – and in the bio-future. They stand to make fortunes if things roll their way.

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