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 “In the end, if the storm is to be averted, we are probably going to have to turn to technology again. That is the main reason why opposition to GM crop research is rapidly starting to look inhumane. Few people realise that transgenic varieties of common staples, such as Golden Rice (a GM variety rich in vitamin A) and new strains of fungal-resistant wheat are either ready to use or nearly so. The only reason we are not seeing a GM revolution is the persistent opposition by environmental groups.”

Michael Hanlon: Can science eliminate famine?

The storm is coming. One of the great dependables of modern life — cheap food — may be about to disappear. If a growing number of economists and scientists are to be believed, we are witnessing a historic transition: from an era when the basics of life have been getting ever more affordable, to a new period when they are ever more expensive.

For those of us in the affluent West, the severity of the situation is not yet fully apparent. Indeed, we are still living in something of a fool’s paradise. One of the most extraordinary phenomena of the last 100 years has been the relentless fall in the cost of feeding ourselves.

Globally, food is still cheap: but new data from the World Bank shows that it may not remain that way for long. A combination of factors — not all related to simple supply and demand — has seen basic prices for crops including wheat, soya and maize rise by tens of percentage points. Some foods are a third dearer in real terms than they were five years ago; after two decades of almost laughably cheap food, shoppers are starting to feel the pinch.

In the rich world, it takes a while for food-price inflation to have an effect. But in poorer regions even modest rises can have massive consequences: it was a spike in the price of bread as much as political dissent that sparked the Arab Spring.

Is disaster inevitable? Ever since the days of Thomas Malthus, who famously predicted in the 18th Century that population increases would far outstrip gains in food production, those who have foreseen global famine have been proved relentlessly wrong. As the world’s population has doubled and almost redoubled (in 1900 there were about 1.7 billion people alive; this now stands at a little over seven bn), the era of mass starvation has stubbornly failed to arrive.

Today, the global population is rising by 1pc a year and by 2060, even the most optimistic predictions see it peaking at 10 bn. ]That is a problem because nearly all the land that can be used to grow food is now being used for just that….

…In the end, if the storm is to be averted, we are probably going to have to turn to technology again. That is the main reason why opposition to GM crop research is rapidly starting to look inhumane.

Few people realise that transgenic varieties of common staples, such as Golden Rice (a GM variety rich in vitamin A) and new strains of fungal-resistant wheat are either ready to use or nearly so. The only reason we are not seeing a GM revolution is the persistent opposition by environmental groups.

There may be other advances on the way. In California, Professor Patrick Brown, a molecular biologist at Stanford University, is developing a way to turn plant tissue into fake meat. In the Netherlands, scientists are working on a way to grow real meat in a vat. These are early days, but if these technologies can be made to work there is the whiff of a new revolution in the air.

Twice before, our species has been saved from starvation by science. But as we move towards a planet of eight billion people, we are in uncharted territory. Let’s hope a new Norman Borlaug is waiting in the wings.

Irish Independent

2012-09-05 18:47:21

Source: http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-storm-is-coming.html