Ex-Greenpeace director denounces 'immoral' groups that campaign against GM foods

THe global food shortage myth is just that, a myth. The shortfall is in the distribution networks. And it's not that there's necessarily a shortage of them, there's just a shortage of them that aren't completely riddled with corruption and theft.

Sooner or later we will hit genuine food shortages as our population coontinues to grow and grow. Where is the tipping point? 10 billion? 12 billion?

All it takes is a big volcano somewhere to disrupt the growing of crops around the world for a growing season (It happens every few centuries) and billions are starving in very short order. Good food distribution or not, there are too damned many of us and we are going to find that out the hard way, some day.

I'm not overly concerned when it comes to population pressures globally, but that's largely for boring reasons. We reached peak child a couple of years ago (1.9 billion children), and the only real difference between now and 2050 is that right now that value of children makes up 27% of the population, and by 2050 it will make up 20%. Most of this population growth will be either in sub-Saharn Africa (the mass majority) or in the poorest areas of the Middle East and eastern Asia, like north-west India, but on a global scale most of the increase will come not from new people being born, but by existing people living longer. A lot of those folks are better off than we expect (values like 88% female literacy and 83% measles vaccination rates worldwide paint a far better picture than we are often lead to believe). Sure, there are definitely problems, but I'm personally betting they have solutions. Yay Gapminder for that free information!

I definitely agree with your post when it comes to those areas though. I think there are limits to the capacities of the current system, as seen by the sheer amount of rent seeking and deadweight loss mentioned in PA9's post. The works of men like Borlaug (Nobel laureate, known as the man who saved a billion lives) fathered a green revolution that led to India, Pakistan and Mexico becoming more self-sustaining and, in the case of the latter, a net exporter. Too often do we ignore the benefits, often in the avoidance of famine and our current ability to feed large swaths of population, of GMO crops. In this case making nations capable of controlling a significant amount of their food security derives major benefits itself; politics, failures in supply chain and management, and the global reach of drought or disaster are limited, and hence problems from those issues limited under paradigms where other nations don't have to depend on an efficient supply system. Regardless of whether or not we do produce enough food right now, the question is if it is safe for countries to expect the delivery of food come hell, high water or Armageddon. Given the strife we've all seen come from a lack of food security, let alone a lack of food, I think the question is, generally, no.

Personally, I think the development of seeds capable of handling the conditions within the Sahelian region of Africa is important for the reason that we don't have to correct the supply management system. To do that would require we revamp every national government in the area, construct infrastructure capable of handling the movement of that much food (not to mention the requisite refrigeration facilities), and fight off the national, ethic, religious, and criminal problems endemic in those regions. In my view, it's easier to get them seeds to begin building a solution than to get them the finished product on a weekly basis.

Besides, I think it's a good thing there is functional industry in the area. Canada's own Prairies wouldn't be nearly as effective without the development of breeds of wheat that can handle the short growing season in the west. This was decades ago, when we called the creation of a GMO "breeding" (methods we use for most GMO production today). The face of our country would look very different if we didn't have grains for cattle and for human consumption in the middle of our country. This is providing the building block for development in nations where those are in short supply. It also moves power to farmers back from the people above them; when you are able to feed yourself and those around you, your dependence on a corrupt regime diminishes.

For me, a big thing is simply the offshoots that have come from this research. A ridiculous amount of money is put into making this a safe field, as the article points out. Likewise, this field has advanced our knowledge of biochemistry, genetics, genomics, geology, engineering and atmospheric sciences to entirely new heights. Even if we weren't getting much from massively increased yields of crops more likely to survive to our dinner tables, it'd be worth it just for the advances we make in those fields and adjacent ones every year.

Just in my opinion though. Damn, writing all this out on a phone is a pain in the ass.