The Necessity of GMOs

GMOs are expensive. They typically require more resources than natural plants and require replanting each year. But they also increase yield by incredible amounts, lowering hunger. These are common truths about GMOs, but GMOs are a politically and socially controversial topic. They represent tampering with nature by man, but, like many other processes man employs, we should continue development of GMOs with caution.

            Energy and medicine represent two cases that directly relate to GMOs. Go back about 150 years and man found coal and oil in the ground that could be used as fuel, as energy. These resources vastly increased the population and wealth of the world. Medicine, specifically in the last century, allowed immunity to prevent the spread of diseases and viruses. People created these medicines by modifying extracts from plants and modifying the bacteria and viruses to introduce them to our blood in a dosage that taught our bodies to defeat them. GMOs, like energy sources, remove resources from the ground, creating an imbalance. GMOs, like medicines and vaccines, modify organisms such that those organisms can make plants more nutritious and resistant to viruses and diseases.

            Humans can modify nature, with unnatural results, in ways that provide more good than bad. This issue begs the question: why is creating vaccines for people acceptable but modifying plants-that feed the same people who need vaccines-to be immune to viruses and diseases is such a divided issue? This is not a plants are people too argument. That makes no sense. But plants are the source of our food, and we need more of it. Shiva proposes essential arguments about the nasty sides to GMOs, of which there are many. But her argument highlights a major issue in GMOs, that big businesses take advantage of individuals and small businesses by making farming too costly in one way or another. Where I disagree with her is her argument that GMOs have made Indians worse off. Certainly small-scale farmers have lost their competitiveness as a result. But a quick look at World Development Indicators tells a different story. Since 1960 in India, total cereal yield, cereal yield per hectare, and GDP per capita have all at least tripled. People are wealthier and eating more. And on top of that, the GINI index in India suggests a more equal wealth distribution than the United States and the United Kingdom.

            Borlaug points out the incredible amount of land that would be required to feed today’s population without GMO. He stated in 2000 that at 1950 standards, we would need 1.2 billion more hectares than the 660 million already in use. GMOs have a bad reputation, but today we cannot feed 7 billion people without them. Still, this is not to say Shiva is wrong. She presents strong evidence suggesting GMOs have a bad effect in small-scale farming regions. However Borlaug is convincing that GMOs are good and necessary to feed the world.

            Humans created GM crops just as they did medicines. But there is a need for more careful implementation of the GM crops. Regulating big businesses by looking closer at their presence in small farm regions could mitigate the effects they have on less market-oriented farmers. Changing the patent laws on organisms could allow small-scale farmers to adapt their own seed. This sort of practice could provide the opportunity for thousands of small farms acting as their own labs with the GM seeds, rather than have most of the GM seeds developed in expensive labs at universities or big businesses.

            There are plenty of areas that need improvement; especially the role big business plays in the GM sector of agribusiness. But GMOs should continue to be a focus of research and development, of public and private funding, and of production on large scales if not small scales as well. A scary fact is that GMOs helped get the global population so large, and now the world relies on these crops to feed it.

My research for this post came from the class readings of Shiva, Stone, and Borlaug, as well as data from the World Bank.