I understand the benefits of GMOs but my question is this: do we really need the technology?
In other words, is it impossible to grow enough food without using GMOs?
In other words, is it impossible to grow enough food without using GMOs?
Of course not. We waste drastic amounts of food every year thanks to spoilage. We feed food to other forms of food - how much food does it take to raise a cow to maturity? We turn food into fuel for cars at utterly dire efficiency.
Starvation happens because of economics, warfare, ongoing experiments with centrally-planned governments (freaking give it up, Kim Jong), things like that. Not small percentile increments in efficiency.
Genetic engineering is a toolkit to solve a vast array of problems we face, and it's available right now. With a 1% increase in yield, we can feed 1% more people. 1% of 7 billion is 70 million.
Starvation happens because we're not making enough small percentile increments in efficiency.
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I work in food security, my research is on crop productivity and we collaborate with many crop centres including the International Rice Research Institute. Those centres have huge communities of local farmers who are desperate for yield increases and other huge communities whose entire livelihoods were made possible by improvements in agricultural technology.
I can assure you the people whose families are able to eat today because of increases in crop yields in just the last few years are grateful that we're all still working on increasing yields and not just telling them it's a greed and distribution problem.
GMO cultivars usually do not contain new, man-made chemical compounds.
For example, Golden Rice contain beta carotene (occurs naturally in e.g. carrots).
The virus resistant Hawaiian Rainbow Papaya contains a protein from the virus' capsid, effective "vaccinating" the plants, resulting in virus resistance.
Bt Cotton contains a chemical from Bacillus thuringiensis, a common bacterium in soils, that is harmful to pest insects.
New, man-made chemicals aren't intrinsically bad. But based on past experience, we are right to be cautious because we can't always anticipate their effects, the effects can take a long time to become apparent and they can be impossible to eliminate (like with PCBs).
But you can't. For example, organic farming uses much more pesticide and herbicide than the same GMO crops do. There is a persistent myth that organic doesn't use herbicides and pesticides but it is not in any way true and never has been. But +1 to the marketing department for implanting that persistent idea in the mind of the general public.
Well, we don't need it in the sense that we could all pay more for food that is grown in less efficient ways, just as we don't really need cars to get to work when we can all ride bikes. We don't really need cheap food because we can all afford the more expensive stuff that comes from less efficient farming methods. So you're right - it's not really needed. But it has great utility.
Moving our focus away from rich westerners for a moment, there is a clearer case of 'need' when you consider areas prone to drought or poor people who can't afford the higher quantities of fertiliser, herbicide and pesticides that are needed to grow non-GMO crops. Or at least that would be true if GMO crops were more widespread and western activists had not done such a good job of telling the poor of Africa and India that they are toxic horrors to be avoided at all costs.