GM CROPS: A GROUNDLESSLY FEARED AGRICULTURAL ASSET

By 2050, the world’s population is expected to expand from today’s 7 billion to way beyond 9 billion. To keep pace, the United Nations say global food production will have to double over the next 35 years. Meanwhile, the amount of arable land shrinks rapidly. Beyond doubt, conventional farming methods can not bring about the desired results in time and agricultural developments such as new machinery and fertilizers have their costs and drawbacks, despite their usefulness.

Enter Genetically Modified (GM) crops, one of the most important advances in agriculture. Through identifying benefits of GM crops related to foods and farming, and by refuting common claims of GM’s opponents, this article will discuss why GM is a forceful solution to raise agricultural productivity.

Genetic modification is the process of altering the genetic makeup of an organism. This is a broad term and albeit GMO standing for Genetically Modified Organisms, GM crops are a result of Genetic Engineering (GE) which is a branch of genetic modification which involves specifically changing an organism’s genes through biotechnology. Common GM crops include soybeans, cotton, corn, potatoes, papayas, and apples.

The foremost advantage of GM is the lowering of costs for farmers which in turn

decreases the price of food. Thus, cheaper food due to GM is a major advance in helping solve world hunger. There is no surprise that the UN’s FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) is a proponent of GM. Currently, 18 million farmers in 28 countries are planting GM on over 448 million acres, and overall there has been a 20% increase in yields. These crops are designed to withstand changes in temperature and can handle challenging environments, even having survived drought in the past owing to complex combination of genes. Plants are also made less vulnerable to disease and viruses; their resistance to pests and weeds has led to reduction of millions of kilos of pesticide and herbicide use. Eggplants are a staple crop in Bangladesh and farmers – many of them children – had to spray pesticides on them 40 times, but this was only until GM was made legal. GM is banned in other agricultural countries due to political activity and anti-GM activists though hope remains that GM will be legalized in these countries too.

In 2016 study by the US National Library of Medicine, GM was concluded to help fight malnutrition. Severe Vitamin A deficiency can cause blindness, and this kills more than 1 million people every year. Golden rice, a GM crop that provides Vitamin A supplementation, efficiently cures this problem. Other examples where crops are made healthier using GM are: giving lettuce a greater concentration of nutrients, reducing starch in potatoes, and lowering the saturated-fat content of cooking oils.

Healthier food is not the only approach by which food quality can be improved; using GM, food can have longer shelf-life, stronger color, eliminated seeds, and enhanced taste. In blind tastings, testers regularly rate GM foods higher than naturally grown alternatives. One, in 2007, found 60 percent preferred GM tomatoes. Spicier peppers and sweeter corn are just two of the many possibilities. Moreover, the increased lifespan and durability of the food will allow the shipping of food to remote areas.

The most common fear of GM crops is that it is dangerous to health, but it is more or less obvious that this fear is simply of the unknown rather than based on science. So before refuting this anti-GM argument, I would share a study that was conducted at different universities in which over 2000 adults were surveyed on their opinions of GM foods. Over 90% responded with opposition to GM. Then they were given a test with simple true and false such as “all plants and animals have DNA”. (Answer is true). Many of them did not know the answer and those who thought they knew the most actually knew the least.

GM is just a way to move genes very precisely, and humans have been moving genes for over 10,000 years by conventional breeding. The corn cob used to be a small piece of stalk and after centuries of selective breeding, it is what it is today. A GMO is simply an organism that produces tens of thousands of proteins like any other organism but 1 or 2 or 3 of them were chosen specifically by humans.

There have been over 1800 tests looking at the safety of GMOs and so far no evidence

has been found that they are harmful. GM crops are regulated by the FDA (Food and Drug Association) who have examined, tested, and approved that they are just as safe for consumption as traditional crops. One research paper connected GM to cancer development in rats but that paper was retracted from the journal it was published in for containing invalid or misleading information. The species of rats used in the experiment also had a higher chance of developing cancer and consequently the paper was universally criticized. Speculation that GM triggers allergies doesn’t have any evidence either; besides, GM is not used in the most common allergen sources such as nuts and diary.

The other common argument posed by GM’s opponents is that there is an adverse effect on the environment due to “super-weeds” resulting from herbicide resistant cross pollination which would end up harming the food chain. On the contrary, it is unusual for pollen of one species to grow on the stigma of another and despite millions of hectares of GM crops grown, no ‘superweeds’ have appeared.

From all of this, it is clear that GM is a forceful solution to raise agricultural productivity as it has advantages such as lower costs, better food quality, and reduced impact on the climate. In addition, all the claims against GM are false and baseless.

P.S. If you still aren’t convinced about the safety of GM foods, feel free to pay much more for the so called ‘organic’ foods!

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References:

https://greengarageblog.org/13-main-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-gmos

https://vittana.org/24-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-gmos

https://www.livestrong.com/article/213053-pros-cons-of-gmo-foods/

https://www.debatingeurope.eu/focus/arguments-gmos/#.Xjv9IGgzaUk

http://www.fao.org/english/newsroom/focus/2003/gmo7.htm

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/extreme-opponents-genetically-modified-foods-study/story?id=60405014

https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2018/08/the-gmo-debate/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH4bi60alZU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSten18rI9A