From the Ground Up – GMOs Necessary To Feed The World

GMO is an abbreviation for a genetically modified organism whose genome has been altered by the techniques of genetic engineering so that its DNA contains one or more genes not normally found there.

Eighty per cent of our food contains some sort of GMO that you buy at the grocery store, and proponents of the technology point out theres not one incidence of human health issue. The USDA, the FDA, the CDC, and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization have all concluded that the technology is safe, and agricultural producers maintain that this technology is an absolutely necessary tool for them to be able to feed a growing world population. Travis Miller is the Interim Associate Director for State Operations for the Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Service.

Id encourage people, I like to do a garden myself, and Id encourage people to grow a garden but you cant feed the 300 million people in the United States all with back yard gardens, plus the 50% or more of our crop that we send overseas to feed other people. And GMOs have provided the technology that has reduced the pesticide use, has reduced the insect damage to our crops, has improved the quality of our crops, so that we do have the, its one of the many technologies that were now using to get the kind of yields we have to have to continue to feed the world.

Genetically Modified Organism technology is invaluable to plant breeders. If you look at what crops used to look like when we first started cultivating crops, the dont even resemble what we have today. And that was through traditional breeding technology, pollen from one source and pollen from another source. Problems that have plagued agriculture for decades are being addressed.

Now GMO is another important tool that a plant breeder can put in his tool box and say, oh, well what about this plant disease that we have, well heres a gene that I can take from a spinach plant and put in in a grapefruit and solve a disease thats going to take the citrus industry out.

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From the Ground Up - GMOs Necessary To Feed The World