GMO's and Food

In an article by the Huffington post earlier this week they reported that multiple entities have passed bills limiting or banning GMO crops. Mexico has banned genetically engineered corn, Kauai has passed laws requiring that pesticides and GMO crops have to be disclosed to the public and they cannot be planted within 500 feet of schools, homes, and other buildings. Hawaii has passed a preliminary bill that prohibits open air cultivation, propagation, development or testing of genetically engineered crops or plants. The bill, which still needs further confirmation to become law, would also prohibit biotech companies from operating on the Big Island. Washington state is also attempting to pass a bill that will require all GMOs and GMO products to be labelled. This bill, while not necessarily landmark, would open the door for other bills like it in other states.

This past week I attended the World Food Prize in Des Moines. The subject of this years prize was genetic modification and GMO crops. The panels that I attended focused mainly on how genetically modified crops could help us overcome some of the difficulties we face with climate volatility, pests and diseases, and increasing food security by increasing productivity. The three laureates were from Monsanto and Syngenta and they won for their pioneering work in genetic engineering in food crops. Now, while I understand why people dislike the idea of GMOs and the pesticide and herbicide use that come along with it, I think that they are a necessary evil in a world of exponential population growth and decreasing food productivity.

The first panel that we attended was a panel on how genetically modified crops can help keep food production increasing during global climate change. According to the IPCC report the world is already looking at a global temperature increase of 1-2ºC by 2050 and if we do not mitigate our carbon emissions we will have an increase of 5-6ºC by 2050. One of the panelists said that for every degree increase in temperature, we lose 10 percent off of global food production. A lot of what was said at the dialogue amounted to the fact that we need to explore all our options, and that genetic engineering is one of the most promising options at our disposal right now to fight climate volatility. Many plants can be bred to have high tolerances for drought or heat which will make them extremely important in combating the increasingly common extreme weather events that will occur with increased global climate change.

The next issue that was addressed by the panels was pest control and plant disease. Many GMO's are focused on giving resistance to certain herbicides or using bacterium that produces a protein called Bt toxin that is completely harmless to humans but destroys the stomachs of herbivorous insects. Herbivorous insects reduce production and decrease the quality of the crops that are produced. Sometimes insects can even decimate entire crops which leads to famines and food insecurity. These GMO's can be a viable solution to food security issues while decreasing external pesticide use. However, many trade constrictions, like the new ones listed above, mean that widespread use is not economically viable for food insecure nations because they cannot be sold to Europe or the U.S. While I don't think that GMO's are the best solution, we are past the point of using all the "great" solutions.

In addition the world population is expected to reach 9 billion by the end of this century. This increase in population means that we are going to have to increase food production by 50 percent to meet demand. Another facet of GMO technology is increased production through hybrids, selective breeding, and molecular modification. While I believe that as a species we need to recognize the limits of our habitat, I also realize that the urge to breed has been evolutionarily bred into every fiber of every living being in our entire ancestry. So, while I think that educated people should step up to the challenge and help make this problem more manageable, it is imperative that we still produce enough food so that all children that are born have an equal chance at life.

Genetically engineered crops can help feed the world as we keep increasing our population, using up the rest of the arable land, and destroying our existing breadbaskets with over-farming. This planet has a finite amount of land, a finite amount of water, a finite amount of phosphorous and other nutrients. What we have in excess is human ingenuity and we must use that to it's fullest extent in order to continue living on this planet.

GMO article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ocean-robbins/huge-gmo-news_b_4129311.html