Can GM crops solve world hunger? Essay for examination

One of the main benefits that advocates of genetically modified (GM) food have promoted is its ability to help alleviate world hunger. Genetically modified (GM) foods have become omnipresent over the past decade. They are a technological breakthrough that allows humans to manipulate and add foreign genes to crops to enhance desired traits.

The growth of biotech crops is the fastest growing segment in agriculture. While much of these crops are used for animal feed and biofuel, much of it also makes its way directly into a majority of processed foods sold in America and Asia. However, despite all the commercial success of GM crops, have they made a significant impact on world hunger?

What Is Driving the GM Food Revolution

The first GM food, the Flavr-Savr Tomato, reduced the cost to produce canned tomato products about 20% and numerous studies have shown an economic benefit for farmers planting GM crops. Even livestock can be raised less expensively, using feed made from GM crops. Also, faster growth rates resulting in cheaper fish production aquadvantage salomon the first aquatic genetically modified animal approved to be sold as food.

It's clear genetically engineered make plants and animals more resistant to disease, stay ripe longer, and grow more robustly in a variety of conditions are effective in reducing costs and providing economic benefits to food producers.

GM Crops and Feeding More People

Since they are cheaper to grow, increase yields, and extend the time food remains edible, it seems reasonable that GM plants should provide more food to a hungry world. however it often criticize as The countries that could benefit most from genetic engineering have benefited the least.

Politics vs. Research and Distribution

Many of the poorest countries most strongly affected by famine, such as many African nations, have set up difficult regulations that prevent the growth and import of GM food and crops. it seems to have GM Technology have less to do with technology and more with social and political issue.

Much of this resistance seems to be prompted by groups such as the African Center for Biosafety . As a result of the political and social situation, groups,  that focus on research and development of crops and farming techniques to address third world hunger specifically avoid genetic engineering as a method to improve plants.

Anti-GM sentiment, though, is not the only reason it has failed to benefit the poorest nations. From the commercial side, major crop development companies use genetic engineering primarily to improve large cash crops with the most potential for profits, such as corn, cotton, soy, and wheat with Little investment is put into crops, such as cassava, sorghum, millet, etc. which are more relevant for cultivation in poor nations. 

Using Genetic Engineering to Help Solve World Hunger

so let's just say it, the main driver pushing the development of GM crops is profits. Big agricultural companies, farmers, and food producers all want to make more money. These entities have benefited most from GM crops, and this incentive has certainly been helping move forward the development of the technology.

Some might even say it the way it is supposed to work—capitalism driving innovation. That's a different debate, though, and profit-driven efforts certainly don't negate the possibility that the technology can also be applied to benefit society at large by reducing world hunger. However, it also doesn't mean it will.

In fact, though, genetic engineering is a powerful tool for improving food production. There is no faster way to produce animals and plants with specific beneficial traits and, as we learn more about genetics, many more modifications will become possible. While this may scare many, the potential is also enormous and could play a role to improve the situation for the poorest in the world.

Genetic modification is already part of the crop improvement toolbox. The real question is if, in addition to helping make many people wealthier in the industrialized world, this advanced technology provides part of the solution to help improve a lot of the poorest regions of the world.

Applying this technology to safely and effectively solve the problems of third world hunger, though, would require reasonable engagement and coordination from a variety political and social groups, and that may be too much to hope for.

Why GM foods are not the solution to world hunger

though GM crops can undoubtedly be healthier, the goal of resolving the food crisis is difficult to achieve, if not impossible. The reason is that the problem is not inadequate supply of food, but its uneven distribution.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world is producing more than enough food, yet 815 million people went hungry in 2016, of whom 489 million lived in countries affected by conflict. So producing more GM food cannot really get to the root of the problem.

It is feared that the presence of antibiotic resistance marker genes in such foods would diminish the efficacy of antibiotics in humans or animals.