new-science
Pros and Cons of GM Food
September 10th 2008 17:11
Currently, only 18% of our land mass is cultivated for agriculture. To make matters worse, urban sprawl and development claim 70,000 km2 per year of previously dedicated farmland. Add to this, the global population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2040 and a serious problem arises. How do we propose to continue feeding ourselves in the future when our population is rising and our farmland is shrinking?
One answer, some say, is through GM foods. These are resistant to more diseases, grow in less space, provide greater yield and need fewer pesticide applications. There are other benefits as well since they can be engineered to carry medicines. For example, bananas can now carry a vaccine for Hepatitis D. Simply doing something as simple as eating these bananas can save adults and children from becoming infected by a disease that is both horrible and incurable. Syngenta, a GM company, is now producing rice which contains 23 times more vitamin A than conventional rice. Since vitamin A deficiencies cause 500,000 deaths per year, the medicinal quality to such rice is significant. Foods such as these may be genetically modified, but they are positioned to affect the world’s population in positive and potentially life-saving ways.
Even China seems to be acknowledging the future importance of GM food. Although China has mostly grown GM cotton, they are now considering other important crops such as rice. And, they are putting their money where their mouth is, to the tune of around $267 million each year for the next 13 years. China plans to use this money for research on GM crops as well as education of their populus who may be biased one way or another, toward GM. Considering the recent dwindling rice suply and the uptick in demand, GM rice, which will produce a greater yield with less pesticide is, starting to become a real option for a country with over 1 billion people and shrinking ways to feed them.
GM foods have their own set of problems, however. Only one of these is that farmers who grow conventional (non-GM) crops must vigilantly ensure that GM crops are not growing in their fields. This can be difficult since seed from GM farms can be blown quite a distance and contaminate other fields. Trucks carrying GM seed can also spread GM crops if only a small amount of seed escapes from the truck into fields adjacent to the road. Unfortunately, GM crops are patented due to the fact they are altered in a lab with specific genes. The ramifications of this can be devastating. If GM plants are found in the field of a farmer who has not paid for GM seed, the farmer can be forced by the GM company to destroy their seed reserves to ensure destruction of GM seed that may or may not have accidentally mixed with their conventional seed.
Although there are many issues surrounding the GM pro/con debate, this should give you a peek into what GM food is and why so many people seem to either be staunch advocates or violent opponents of it.
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