A World without Hunger: Organic or GM Crops?

Abstract

It has been estimated that the world population will increase to 9.2 billion by 2050; supplying the growing population with food will require a significant increase in agricultural production. A number of agricultural and ecological scientists believe that a large-scale shift to organic farming (OF) would not only increase the world's food supply, but might be the only way to eradicate hunger sustainably. Nevertheless, OF has recently come under new scrutiny, not just from critics who fear that a large-scale shift in this direction would cause billions to starve but also from farmers and development agencies who question whether such a shift could improve food security. Meanwhile, the use of genetically modified (GM) crops is growing around the world, leading to possible opportunities to combat food insecurity and hunger. However, the development of GM crops has been a matter of considerable interest and worldwide public controversy. So far, no one has comprehensively analyzed whether a widespread shift to OF or GM would be the sole solution for both food security and safety. Using a literature review from databases of peer-reviewed scientific publications, books, and official publications, this study aims to address this issue. Results indicate that OF and GM, to different extents, are able to ensure food security and safety. In developed countries, given that there are relatively few farmers and that their productivity, even without GMOs, is relatively high, OF could be more a viable option. However, OF is significantly less efficient in land-use terms and may lead to more land being used for agriculture due to its lower yield. In developing countries, where many small-scale farmers have low agricultural productivity and limited access to agricultural technologies and information, an approach with both GM and OF might be a more realistic approach to ensure food security and safety.

Impact on environment, ecosystem, diversity and health from culturing and using GMOs as feed and food

“…Global commercial cultivation of GM crops has reached to an aggregate land mass of two billion hectares over the last two decades, with total generated benefits of 150.3 billion US$ (Brooks and Barfoot, 2016). The so-called 20 th anniversary of GM crops resulted in significant net economic benefits (through yield and production gains as well as from cost savings) ultimately reducing yield gaps, reduced pesticide application, and conservation of zero tillage (Brookes and Barfoot, 2016;Taheri et al 2017). However, although cultivation of GM crops and their use in food and feed has not delivered what was expected in terms of accomplishment and GM technology has attracted an ever-increasing and an extremely emotional and complex scientific and political debate, involving a very wide community of different groups ranging from environmental conservationists and ecologists, to evolutionary M A N U S C R I P T…”

Trend of Biotechnology Applications in Pest Management: A Review

“…Biotechnology can also help conduct organic food production. Thus, organic farming can be achieved with the use of biotechnological tools (Dubey, 2014;Cano et al, 2017;Taheri et al, 2017). In this regard pest management (Brzozowski and Mazourek, 2018), durable molecular breeding (Gheysen and Custers, 2017) are also useful for organic farming.…”

Iron homeostasis in the human body and nutritional iron deficiency and solutions in China

“…Another research group in Japan found that compared to single introduction of individual genes, introduction of multiple iron homeostasis genes is more effective for iron biofortification (Masuda et al, ). However, widespread skepticism about transgenic food limits the promotion of transgenic high‐iron rice worldwide (Davidsson, ; Lee & Krimsky, ; Taheri, Azadi, & D’Haese, ).…”