Much like the Green Revolution before it, genetic modification of food crops has plenty of critics in the West who maintain that it will never meet its potential of feeding more people more cheaply. Critics were wrong about the Green Revolution, which played a major role in improving the food situation in countries like India, and according to a recent United Nations report, the critics are wrong about genetically modified food as well.
UN Development Program’s Mark Malloch Brown said, “These varieties have 50% higher yields, mature 30 to 50 days earlier, are substantially richer in protein, are far more disease and drought tolerant, resist insect pests and can even out-compete weed. And they will be especially useful because they can be grown without fertilizer or herbicides, which many poor people can’t afford anyway.”
The main obstacle to such advances right now is the often irrational opposition to genetically modified food in rich, Western countries.
Source:
UN says GM crops could rescue world’s poor. Ananova, July 10, 2001.
The United Nations Endorses Genetically Modified Foods by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
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