Genetically Modified Food

Genetically Modified Food

As the human population grows dramatically at an unprecedented pace, so is the amount of food we consume around the world. Malthusian Theory predicted that we’re soon going to reach a point where shortage of land for food production will occur, and current food production capacity will fall behind the rate we consume.

Genetically altered or modified food comes in play to alleviate some of these concerns and improve the food production yield. Since we can modify the genes and insert genes from other species to strengthen certain traits of vegetables, Biogenetics have been widely used and applied to create a stronger, easier to farm, resilient species that we consume.

I believe this is generally good, because it reduces the impact we cause on the nature by using less pesticides and herbicides, and having to utilize less land for more productivity, which in turn leads to less deforestation. If we had to use less land, more of nature can be left intact and protected while producing the amount of food we require. According to 2012 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics, the world actually produces enough food to feed everyone at this moment.

World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. Due to the current fast-paced development, this is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day. However, humans will be exhausting the food resources at this rate of development.

Personally I am in favor of GM foods. I believe that we’re in time to provide more to the ones that have less. According to statistics from World Hunger Organization, there are 925 million people who do not have enough intakes of food, and the majority of those people are in either Asia or Africa. It is important to consider the well-being of the people besides our immediate ones, because that is what a prosperous world should strive to be – a world without hunger.

I think GM food can greatly aid the world hunger problem because it allows the production of food ingredients in areas where normally the specie cannot grow. For example, a frost or cold-climate resilient gene can be inserted into a host of vegetables such as tomato, potato, carrots and rice, and then planted in Syberian regions or other cold places where these products are not easily available.

Another thing GM foods can do is to nourish malnourished people with nutrients deficiency. Golden rice for example, contains a gene strain from daffodil plant which gives them high vitamin A content. This method can be used to enhance the nutritional content of a food product to address the nutritional deficiency vastly experienced in third world countries.  

Biogenetics also can be applied to improve the quality of meat products and accelerate growth in animal species. For example, cattle can produce more of prime meat and have a lower affinity towards fat, have smaller bones and more flesh, and be resilient against diseases and cold. They could even be engineered to eat less and grow more from the food they eat. This would vastly reduce the cost to produce meat and reduce the environmental footprints during production.

Wouldn’t it be good to provide African people with famine not only enough food, but highly nutritional food? In that sense, I believe GM foods can bring miracles for the world welfare. Of course there are many concerns regarding gene modifications. There are concerns of cross contamination or some uncertain effects of gene manipulation. But with proper precaution as always, this technology opens up great opportunities and a massive potential to solve our food crisis and population growth. Right now is not the time for us to be nitpicky about the quality of our food, especially not when we have been taking it for granted and wasting so much of the resources we were blessed with.

References

Cafiero, Carlo and Pietro, G. (2011). The FAO indicator of the prevalence of undernourishment. Food and Agriculture Organization. Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ess/ess_test_folder/Workshops_Events/Food_Security_for_All_FEB2011/Background_paper.pdf

The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2011. (2011). Food and Agriculture Organization. Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i1683e/i1683e.pdf

2012 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics. (2012). World Hunger Education Service. Retrieved from http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm