GMO Crops: Sustainability, Safety, and Feeding 9 Billion

Introduction: The GMO Debate and Global Hunger

There are many dimensions to the GMO food debate, and one of the most prominent is the claim that GMO foods are essential to feeding a global population expected to reach nine billion people. The amount of arable land is not growing — and indeed, climate-change-induced desertification and declining supplies of fresh water are likely decreasing the amount of arable land worldwide. GMO foods, which have typically been modified to be resistant to pesticides or to deliver higher yields, are often promoted as a solution to the perceived coming global hunger crisis (Charles et al., 2010). In particular, GMO foods are promoted as a means of closing the yield gap, since Western nations utilizing modern agricultural techniques tend to achieve higher yields than nations with more traditional agricultural systems.

Feeding Nine Billion: Distribution, Not Production

If the world's population is expected to plateau around nine billion, that implies a 70–100% increase in food production, given that many of these people will be lifted out of poverty during the next few decades (Charles et al., 2010). One of the problems with this argument, however, is that it is a red herring. Food production is not the core issue; food distribution is. Globally, agricultural production is already sufficient to feed the world's current population. In both high- and low-income countries — albeit for different reasons — there is a tremendous amount of food waste, which represents an inefficiency in our food system that could make far better use of existing agricultural capacity (Gustavsson, 2011). The United Nations estimates that around one-third of the global food supply is wasted — enough to comfortably support a population of nine billion (Marotte, 2013). Between eliminating waste and employing conventional cross-breeding methodologies, food security can be achieved without wholesale reliance on GMO crops.

A classic anecdotal argument holds that food aid from the West is being refused as a means of alleviating famine because of its GMO content, and that this refusal is wrong (Zerbe, 2004). It is one thing to point to starving populations and decry the application of Western views on GMOs to people who are hungry; it is another to recognize how cynical that framing is — leveraging someone else's suffering to promote an agenda. Our food system should not, if food equity is a genuine concern for GMO proponents, require aid to famine-afflicted regions in the first place. Famine aid is a band-aid solution, and if it is the best strategy on offer, that is simply not good enough. GMOs as the solution represent the laziest way of conceptualizing the challenge of feeding nine billion people. They may work in the short run, but they are not the smartest long-term approach to the issue.

Sustainability and the Long-Run Food System

One of the reasons the easiest solution will not work is that it is not sustainable. It is a fallacy from the outset to design a food system intended to cover only the next 30–50 years, as if humanity is expected to last only that long. The optimal food system must take the long run into account. GMO crops are part of a larger food system that engages in a number of unsustainable practices, none of which are likely to feed us indefinitely.

The first concern is that increased production — GMO or otherwise — remains dependent on the heavy use of phosphorous, nitrogen, and potassium in fertilizers. The development of such powerful fertilizers drove the boom in global food production after World War Two (Huang, Pray & Rozelle, 2002). Phosphorous is a non-renewable resource derived from phosphate rock, and the global supply is expected to be significantly diminished within the next 50–100 years. Long-term phosphorous scarcity is a high-priority concern for global food security (Cordell, Drangert & White, 2008). The use of genetic modification could actually address this issue positively — but not in the manner genetic modification is currently being used. The prevailing model of deploying GMO crops worldwide is simply doubling down on a strategy with essentially zero long-run sustainability. If genetic modification were being directed toward a post-phosphorous agricultural system, it might have more merit; but a GMO crop regime designed primarily to make crops pesticide-resistant does not contribute anything meaningful to the long-run sustainability of the global food system.

There are other sustainability concerns as well. An increasing reliance on GMO crops will diminish biodiversity — dramatically so in some cases. Consider that climate change is going to alter the ways in which many crops grow and behave. The more diverse our agricultural system, the better equipped we will be as a species to continue feeding ourselves even if the climate changes dramatically. At present, we are caught in a cycle of trying to innovate our way out of problems. While it is perfectly reasonable to have faith in our collective capacity to do this, caution against hubris is warranted: human populations have experienced crashes before, both locally and globally, and are not immune simply because we now have better science.

Conclusion: GMOs and the Real Challenges Ahead

For the sake of argument, let us assume that GMOs are safe. We do not know that with certainty, because they have not been in widespread use long enough for proper longitudinal studies to have been conducted. But suppose they are safe. They still do not, in their present form, address the issue of hunger. Hunger in the world today is not caused by a lack of agricultural output; it is caused by food waste and the lack of equitable food distribution. The evidence suggests that GMO foods are but one of many alternatives available for feeding nine billion people — and in 30 years, they may be able to contribute to that goal. But beyond 30 years, they cannot, at least not under their current design.

Right now, GMOs are embedded in an agricultural system dependent on non-renewable resources and the overconsumption of renewable resources like fresh water and fish. Unless genetic modification addresses these structural issues, it is not solving the real food supply problems we face. That problem is not "too many mouths to feed" — it is that the entire system is unsustainable. There may well be a role for genetic modification in genuinely addressing these challenges: developing plants that grow abundantly with little water, or with minimal fertilizer, would be a legitimate and valuable use of the technology. But that is simply not the direction in which genetic modification is currently heading. Instead, it is moving toward the creation of food monopolies — patent protections that threaten both the affordability of food and the biodiversity that will be essential to feeding ourselves in the dramatically different climate of the twenty-second century. On balance, GMOs as currently applied do more harm than good, and until they are directed at the actual challenges we face, that will continue to be the case.

References

Charles, H., Godfray, J., Beddington, J., Crute, I., Haddad, L., Lawrence, D., Muir, J., Pretty, J., Robinson, S., Thomas, S. & Toulmin, C. (2010). Food security: The challenge of feeding 9 billion people. Science, 327, 812–818.

Cordell, D., Drangert, J. & White, S. (2009). The story of phosphorous: Global food security and food for thought. Global Environmental Change. Retrieved June 3, 2015 from http://www.global-food-security.com/assets/story-of-phosphorous.pdf

Gustavsson, J., Cederberg, C. & Sonesson, U. (2011). Global food losses and food waste. Save Food Congress. Retrieved June 3, 2015 from http://www.madr.ro/docs/ind-alimentara/risipa_alimentara/presentation_food_waste.pdf

Hino, A. (2002). Safety assessment and public concerns for genetically modified food products: The Japanese experience. Toxicologic Pathology, 30(1), 126–128.

Huang, J., Pray, C. & Rozelle, S. (2002). Enhancing the crops to feed the poor. Nature (August 2002), 678–684.

Kimenju, S. & de Groote, H. (2005). Consumers' willingness to pay for genetically modified foods in Kenya. 11th International Congress of the EAAE. Retrieved June 3, 2015 from http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/24504/1/pp05ki01.pdf

Marotte, B. (2013). One-third of global food supply wasted: UN. Globe & Mail. Retrieved June 3, 2015 from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/one-third-of-global-food-supply-wasted-un/article14240931/

Zerbe, N. (2004). Feeding the famine? American food aid and the GMO debate in Southern Africa. Food Policy, 29, 593–608.