The Economist: The next green revolution
Europe may not like it, but genetic modification is transforming agriculture
FOR a decade Europe has rebuffed efforts by biotechnology firms such as America's Monsanto to promote genetically modified crops. Despite scientific assurances that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are safe for human consumption, and a ruling by the World Trade Organisation against national import bans in the European Union, many Europeans have yet to touch or taste them. But that may soon change, according to Iain Ferguson, boss of Tate & Lyle, a British food giant. “We sit at a moment of history when GM technology…is a fact of life,” he said this week. …
The single biggest threat to biodiversity is not global warming but habitat destruction. With expanding population comes the need for more crops, which means more cropland. In a recent post, I showed that between 1910-2006 in the USA, despite gross domestic product increasing by nearly twentyfold and population tripling, the amount of cropland has stayed constant.
Using 1910 technology, an additional 700 million acres (roughly the land area east of the Mississippi) would have been needed on top of 300 million acres to feed the growing population. Advances in crop productivity (as well as improved food distribution and retailing methods) more than matched the population growth and created a large surplus for shipment to other parts of the world.
Worldwide conversion of various habitats to cropland had been growing to match the explosion in human population until the 1960s when agricultural technology from the West began to spread to other parts of the world. Since then, the growth in acres of cropland has halted (although biofuel efforts may bring more growth.) There are still many regions where productivity could be radically improved and is being improved as infrastructure, and other factors fall into place. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are just one new addition to a collection of tools to increase productivity.
GMOs are no different than what agriculturists have been doing for millennia. Ancient farmers selected the most hardy plants from their crops and used their seeds to grow more productive crops in the future. GMOs are merely the result of scientists doing it faster and in more precise ways. However, environmentalists, as well as anti-corporate anti-technology groups, have mounted opposition to GMOs partly because they believe the technology is unhealthy (despite endless studies from a vast array of interested parties that show no support for this) and partly because multi-national corporations will profit from the use of GMO (which I suspect is the source of the real opposition.) Yet without the use of GMOs, you will almost certainly see a greater conversion of habitats into cropland as the world population grows by as much as another 50% over the next few decades.
Furthermore, some developing nations will be able to grow surpluses that could be sold in the US and Europe, thus improving many of their populations. The US and Europe would get cheaper food. The US needs to drop its agricultural subsidies, and European nations need to drop their ban on GMOs. The developed world will get cheaper food, developing nations will get improved economic status, and countless hundreds of millions of acres of habitat will be protected from destruction.
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