Urban Ecoist

At first, I was attracted to this article because it was about the inevitable famines the world will suffer, due to climate change and a 50 percent increase in the world’s population. But then reading through, I noted that the US State Department’s Chief Science Advisor, Dr. Nina Fedoroff, made a strong statement about genetically-modified crops.

Like Professor Beddington [Britain’s chief scientist] and Bob Watson, the chief scientist at the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, Dr Fedoroff believes genetic engineering must be expanded if the world is going to be able to feed itself.

Genetic modification, she said, can have strong environmental benefits, such as significant reductions in pesticide use, while improving crop yields. Of crucial important will be the ability of scientists to identify genes which enable plants to survive in hot and dry zones so that they can be used to help the most productive crop strains survive and thrive as global warming intensifies.

She said it was important that both GM technologies and conventional crop development were encouraged now because the process of bringing new strains from the laboratory to the field took years. — TimesOnline

Ah, CM crops. Thay sound like such a great idea, don’t they? Just go in and tinker with a plant until it doesn’t need water to grow or frightens away certain insects. But we have a multitude of examples of science being used to catastrophic ends, and I am of the opinion that genetically-modifying crops is most probably a bad idea.

However, that said, we may not have a choice in the matter, and due to desperation, we may just have to play god and hope that things work out.

The “top US Scientist” as the title of the Times article suggests, is in France for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development conference this week. Dr. Fedoroff is there to talk about food shortages and the action needed to prevent them.

Fedoroff is “convinced that food shortages will be the biggest challenge facing the world as temperatures and population levels rise. Food security in the coming years, she said, is ‘a huge problem’ that has been met with little more than complacency. ‘We are asleep at the switch,’ she said.”

It’s funny that she’d advocate for GMO’s over population control. If there will be a shortage of food in 2030 that will affect 1 billion people, and the population at that time would be around 9 billion, why not instead try to promote family-planning and reduce the future population by one billion people? Problem solved.

And yes, I’m being glib.

US, State Department, Nina Fedoroff, famine, food shortage, climate change, population