Introduction of C4 traits into rice to increase photosynthetic efficiency

if there were fewer mouths, you would need less rice. I realize it isn't an area the Gates Foundation is active in, but there is quite a bit of evidence that educating and empowering women reduces population growth[1]. In many parts of the world women are still treated like property, forced into marriage, and have no access to family planning or education.

1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-women-can-sav...

  The next call came from Australia in 2006. Biologists there
  wanted an adaptation of Mouseopause for rats. Rats, they told 
  her, were eating 30% of the rice crop in Australia and 
  Indonesia. If she could reduce the rat population by even half, 
  they claimed, the crops that would be saved could feed millions 
  of people.

Agricultural output is always variable. The world needs more storage capacity [2], and to better support small farmers. There's the ancient parable about "seven years of abundance" preceding "seven years of famine". Only "old" grain should be fed to animals.

For the most part, genetic engineering has been used to sell pesticides. While this C3->C4 innovation might not be as harmful as Monsanto's, it would be better to deal with our other agricultural problems too. Getting rats' numbers under control, and other low-tech investments (such as was undertaken in Thailand starting in the 1960's [3]), would be just as effective as throwing new seeds at farmers...

Haiti demonstrates that politics is the most important factor for determining agricultural output. [4]

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_silo [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_production_in_Thailand [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12531999 - "Why Are Haiti's Coffee Trees So Tall?"

Well worth a listen: http://longnow.org/seminars/02016/mar/14/radical-ag-c4-rice-...

Honest question: can't we assume that, as population grows, people will just plant more rice?

Sure this cannot be done everywhere, but there's surely some arable land somewhere that can grow, and maybe technology can help in other ways than by manipulating the genome of plants.

For instance, if we had cheap energy or a very efficient desalinating tech, we could desalinate ocean water and cultivate normal rice where there are deserts now...

In France farmers are complaining that the prices of farm products are too low and it sounds like there are many places where we produce way too much for too few consumers.

Instead of playing god to reduce a risk in 2050, can't we try right now to find economical, political, or technical ways to take the surplus from one place and bring it to places where food is already dramatically lacking?

EDIT: formatting