Food surplus means nothing if it can't be distributed reliably. It matters nothing if you can spread food nice and even in 2017 if we get famines in 2018. Transporting and trading food makes it vulnerable to problems in transport and economics. So nothing beats locally grown high yield nutritious crops. And GMO can improve yields and nutritional values.
Golden Rice comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice >Golden rice is a variety of rice (Oryza sativa) produced through genetic engineering to biosynthesize beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A, in the edible parts of rice.
That's exactly what happens with sterile GMOs if you throw away all your non-GMO seeds then can't pay next year's GMO licencing costs.
Patent laws are completely different set of problems. They don't necessarily need to have anything to do with GMO as process.