GMO Brings Forth an Agricultural Revolution
Once the Neolithic people began cultivating their own plants, breeding domestic animals…We were screwed. Farming aided permanent settlement and exponentially grew populations, which brew the development of civilizations. As with civilization, diseases became easier to spread, and the gap between different social classes grew as the elite became pampered, while farmers were exploited.
There is merit in acknowledging the positive push it gave civilization. This revolution of farming created specialization within societies…allowing artists and philosophers with the time to think and invent.
However, nutritionally we definitely screwed up. Ironically, GMOs are the answer to our modern-day food dilemma.
As with the first agricultural revolution, our diets became less nutritious given its lack of diversity. Fast forward to today, we have Coco-Cola investing a ton of money into media campaigns that “exercise is important”… diverting the equal importance of having a healthy diet. Their PR aim was to frame themselves as a healthy brand.
As with misinformation, economically well families enjoy healthy food. While to others, junk food is the only option, which further accumulates problems (specifically health issues). In Mexico, the leading cause of death is diabetes, which is significant considering its violence statistics. In 2019, Mexico reached more than 31, 000 murders in one year.
Nutritiously, we’ve become reliant on junk food that boils down to little nutritional value and to some it’s not a choice.
In the early twenty-first century, the average human is far more likely to die from bingeing at McDonald’s than from drought, Ebola or an al-Qaeda attack. -Yuval Noah Harari
Good news though! We are on our path to a new agricultural revolution, for the better… in which we manipulate the genome to our nutritional advantage.
Regarding access to nutrition, the Golden Project tackles this issue perfectly.
The World Health Organization reported (in 2012) that about 250 million preschool children are affected by Vitamin A deficiency (VAD). If children were provided with vitamin A, 1/3 of all under 5 children deaths can be prevented… this compounds to 2.7 million children.
The research went deeper, and we realized that VAD is prominent amongst the poor that have a diet that consists of rice, other carbohydrate-rich, micronutrient-poor calorie sources. Eventually, research led to the invention of Golden Rice.
Golden Rice was created by the introduction of a new maize gene, and another new gene: a very commonly ingested soil bacterium. Both of these genes enhance vitamin A value. As for its implementation, there is no additional charge for its enhanced nutritional value. The additional charge is covered by the donation of Golden Rice’s investors. Furthermore, there is no limitation on small farmers’ use of the crop. They can save, replant, sell the seed, and sell the grain. This implementation structure allows me to further believe that the inventors’ incentives were mainly to improve the health of developing nations.
That is GMO done right. There is often controversy around GMOs even though we have always been manipulating our food sources. The controversy doesn’t necessarily arise out of scientific concerns of the health side but mainly the social iffy-ness of the issue. Could we really give humans the power to code living things?
The technology itself isn’t inherently good or bad. It’s implications lie within the hand of its users. GMO can be used as a tool to push ourselves closer to a utopian healthy world or can be used to solidify the existence of current health issues. These fast-food giant economic powers have been using GMOs to speed up the production of food, which decreases nutritional value.
Or perhaps worse, the invention of Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURT). GURT shuts off the reproductive abilities of seeds, which makes the second-generation seeds sterile. Agro-corporations use GURT to force farmers, specifically in developing countries to continuously buy seeds every season…To generate a stable revenue for themselves.
It all lies within the incentive of the inventor.
I think the trade-off is there. Just because there are negative implications and abuses of powers, doesn’t mean we shut ourselves to potential. Just because hackers can hack into your bank account, doesn’t mean you don’t open up an account.
The powers of gene editing will allow us to enhance the nutritional value of food. This helps us to combat health issues that are specifically prevalent in developing nations. If one gene-editing invention can save 2.7 million children from VAD… think about its potential beneficial disruptions. One that I’m most pumped about is drought-resistant crops. Drought resistant crops can help us accommodate to extreme weather climate change will inevitably bring amongst us.
We have the superpowers of gene editing. It’s up to us what we make of it.
