.jpg)
In theory, there is enough food in the world for everyone; the problem is that it is not well distributed. Governments should try to redistribute that food in order to feed their population, but what if it is not enough? The world’s population is likely to rise from 6 billion today to 8 billion in 2020 and 11 billion by 2050 (click here) and, probably, 95% of the increase will occur in the world’s poorest nations. What should governments do then?
GM foods have been considered as a possibility in the challenge of producing enough food to feed the world. This technology may not only benefit the world’s poor by altering the nutritional contents of food, but could also help reduce crop losses and increase food production without the need for additional farmland.
The controversy goes on because opponents of GM claim that GM is a bad idea because it is “unnatural”, and hunger is not caused by farming problems, but by political circumstances related to poverty and unfair trading practices.
What do you think? Are GM foods a practical solution to an impossible problem?
For further information: http://www.trust.org/alertnet/multimedia/in-focus/hungry-world/
Personally, I think that GM foods are not the solution to food insecurity. In fact, as money and food are not well distributed, obviously there will be an imbalance. The core problem is bad management of money. A perfect example of this problem is the case of "the golden rice". It is a GM rice which promotes the production of vitamin A and is being widespread in countries of the third world in order to end with the vitamin A deficiency. It sounds as a great idea; however, its production costs are really high, approximately US$100 million, and the costs of developing it may be much higher. So, with all that money and good management of it, a large amount of population could be fed in a healthier way, without the necessity of consuming GM foods, which by the way, could have harmful effects on consumers as well as on environment.
ReplyDelete