Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), which are organisms which have been genetically modified in order to facilitate desired physiological traits or the production of desired biological products, are becoming an increasingly important field and have many implications for our future as a species. Our population is rapidly approaching nine billion and predictions show that one billion people will be at risk of starvation; two billion will have some kind of micronutrient deficiency (e.g. vitamin a, iron) most of them being localized in the poor countries from Africa, Asia and South America. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1970, agronomist Norman Borlaug (1972) stated:
“The Green Revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the Revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the Green Revolution will be ephemeral only.”
GMOs have been heavily implemented into developed countries but they create problems for places with less developed agriculture and economic situations. GMOs have even increased demand of crops (specifically soybean) showing benefits of a reliable crop. It is important for us to understand the best economical and sustainable practices of farming in order to successfully feed our ever growing population.
There are many benefits of diverse agriculture and the introduction of GMOs can eliminate that diversity. There are many people and groups asking for a shift in funding from GMO creation to agrobiodiversity because agrobiodiversity shows promise in being a better way to produce high quality and quantity diverse crops. However, there are still benefits of GM crops shown through the increasing amount of GM crops implemented in the United States which has grown quite rapidly since the start of the twenty-first century. GMOs may provide a solution to feeding the growing world population or GMOs could be just another way for big food corporations to make large sums of money. Nowadays, genetic engineering allow us to modify genomes of plants and animals, making them more resistant to drought or insects, enrich their production of nutrients, enzymes, or vitamins. However, genetically-modified foods (GMFs) are also publicly perceived as major threats of biodiversity, environment and human health, often surrounded with the stigma of being unnatural and dangerous. The controversy surrounding GMFs causes complex issues and paradoxes that can negatively impact the future of GMFs and the future of food production and consumption.
Members in the field of science have become more interested and involved in the aspects of genetically modified organisms. There are new characterization methodologies such as the microarray-based methods. Traceability and segregation systems may lessen the need for rigorous testing systems. Measured GMO content in processed materials might not always show the real GMO content in the raw material. An accurate traceability strategy for all GMOs in the food production system will cause us to need entirely new labelling and information transfer systems. There are many technological and political issues revolving around tracing of GMO’s. Progress has been made in the fields of sampling, detection, and traceability of genetically modified products. While there are still issues that remain, many of them depend on how legislation can interfere with them. There is a challenge for regulators where they will have to combine the consumers’ rights to reliable information on food products with the necessity for a safe food supply. This helps provide data for epidemiological studies. Finally, we will achieve transparency for the customer.
We want to know the economic and environmental benefits and detriments of GMO’s. This includes moral and nutritional impacts of genetically mutating food. Furthermore, we want to compare how pricing of seeds and new methods of farming could affect developing countries and the global issue of a raising population. In order to evaluate the growth of GMOs we need to understand the demographic of crops in the US and the general trend of the agriculture sector in recent years. We want to understand GMO’s effect on farming productivity and how much of the US’s agricultural economy is based on GMO’s. Specifically we will look at the price to upkeep the crop and the total production value. We want to understand if the increase of GMOs changes a crops sales or price.