The foreseen future of food shortages and genetic engineering
This article explaining how and why the food shortages would occur; and how genetic engineering would help (as seen today) was written by Klaus M. Leisinger some good years back.
Experts at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Bank (at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research [CGIAR]) expect further progress in the coming years (FAO, 1996a; IFPRI, 1995). Others, such as Lester Brown at Worldwatch Institute, see an era of food scarcity ahead. There is almost general agreement, however, that future food security will be difficult to achieve: during the next 30 years, as many people will be added to world population as were alive in 1950-about 2.4 billion. During this same period, the globe’s ecological carrying capacity is expected to be further strained. The combination of these two trends will keep the hunger issue high on the agenda of human development 200 years after publication of the “Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society”, by Thomas Robert Malthus.
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Tags: developing countries, food scarcity, food security, genetic engineering, hunger
May 26, 2008 at 12:55 pm |
The proposed contributions of genetic engineering to the fight against hunger is a flattery. It is only a reason to bring in the agenda. The foreseen food shortages are not true unless they are planned as food is currently overproduced to extravagant extents, but those who need food don’t receive it, instead it is dumped. We do not want nor need genetic engineering, dictators do.