Genetically Improved Crops - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 63

Chapter 3
Genetically Improved
Crops
Martina Newell-McGloughlin
Over the coming decades, food and agricultural production systems must be signifi-
cantly enhanced to respond to a number of transformative changes: global warming;
growing world population; increasing international competition; globalization; shifts to
increased meat consumption in low-income countries; and rising consumer demands
for improved food quality, safety, nutritional enhancement, and convenience. New and
innovative techniques will be required to ensure an ample supply of healthy food. To
confound this challenge, the inequity between the affluent and developing countries
will continue to grow, and only a handful of technologies is sufficiently scale neutral
to help with redressing this imbalance. Of even greater concern is the very immediate
need of global food security. In 2012 the United Nations issued an unprecedented warn-
ing about the state of global food supplies: global food reserves had reached their low-
est level in almost forty years, and failing harvests in the United States, Ukraine, and
other countries had eroded reserves to their lowest level since 1974, a period when the
global population was much lower. The deputy secretary-general's remarks in New York
warned of world grain reserves so dangerously low that another year of severe weather
in the United States or other food-exporting countries could trigger a major hunger cri-
sis. Unprecedented needs require effective solutions (Eliasson 2012).
Worldwide, plant-based products comprise the vast majority of human food intake,
irrespective of location or financial status (Mathers 2006). In some cultures, either by
design or default, plant-based nutrition makes up almost 100% of the diet. The world
food crisis of 2006-2008 demonstrated that the vulnerability created by this depen-
dence varied by country, with the poorest being most affected (FAO 2011). While some
large countries were able to deal with the worst of the crisis, people in many small
import-dependent countries experienced large price increases that, even when only
temporary, can have permanent effects on their future earnings capacity and ability to
escape poverty.