This debate on GMO has been going on for decades now! Quite often these debates have revealed medieval superstition and/or dubious comparisons!
Facts are hunger is not increasing dramatically or not at all, we are all still alive, and world population continues to increase despite GMO.
"... Despite widespread planting, the data on health and environmental impacts remain limited, they write. What the research shows so far is “mixed”: The switch to GM crops seems to decrease deforestation in some areas, as increased yields mean more food per field, reducing the need to use more land. But elsewhere, deforestation is worse, likely for complex economic reasons. And GMOs are associated with less insecticide use, but increased herbicide use, depending on the type of GMO planted. ..."
From the editor's summary and abstract:
"Editor’s summary
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been widely adopted, but their environmental impacts are not well understood. Noack et al. reviewed research on the effects of GMO crops on the environment. The most common genetic modifications to crops provide resistance to herbicides or insect pests, which can lead to changes in pesticide use and other agricultural practices such as tillage and crop rotation. These changes have downstream effects on human health, carbon cycling, and biodiversity. Increased crop yields may reduce the need for converting additional land to agriculture, but increasing crop prices may encourage agricultural expansion. More research is needed to assess the effects of GMO crop adoption on deforestation and biodiversity.
Structured Abstract
INTRODUCTION
In recent decades, genetically modified (GM) crops have been widely adopted by some of the world’s leading agricultural nations, but the full extent of their environmental impacts remains largely unknown. ... Adopting GM crops often leads to changes in other agricultural practices, such as pesticide use, cropping, and tillage patterns, with profound environmental implications (see figure). Furthermore, with widespread adoption, these changes become large in scale and can lead to substantial economic and ecological spillovers through markets and ecological interactions, influencing the environmental outcomes of nonadopting regions. These spillovers can also lead to opposing outcomes in adopting and nonadopting regions. For example, increased profits from GM crop adoption can incentivize agricultural expansion and intensification in adopting countries with potentially negative environmental impacts. However, the increased global supply from these changes in adopting countries can reduce expansion and intensification in nonadopting countries through market effects with potentially positive environmental implications. The goal of our review is to synthesize the recent understanding of the environmental implications of GM crop adoption, with a particular focus on indirect effects and spatial spillovers.
Much of the existing literature focuses on the direct effects of GM crop adoption on agricultural outcomes and, to a lesser extent, its implications for the environment and human health. Recent studies employing causal inference methods have contributed to our understanding of the combined direct and indirect impacts of GM crop adoption through environmental management changes, including effects on yields, deforestation, biodiversity, and human health. Their findings paint a nuanced picture of GM crop adoption, with mostly positive impacts on yields and mixed effects on pesticide use, biodiversity, deforestation, and human health. These studies also find negative health effects from increased glyphosate use, possibly counteracted by reduced toxicity of insecticide applications due to the adoption of insect-resistant GM crops. However, the few studies that evaluate long-term consequences suggest that short-term benefits may decrease if pest resistance is not well managed. In addition, new results show that GM crop adoption increases deforestation locally, in contrast to previous studies that found a land-sparing global effect of GM crop adoption. Lastly, the evidence for the impacts of GM crop adoption on biodiversity is mixed. For example, a recent study found that although the overall impact of GM crops on bird diversity is small, the overall effect is composed of positive effects on insectivorous species and negative effects on plant and seed-eating species. While these studies greatly advance our understanding of the direct and indirect environmental effects of GM crops, they still do not fully assess the spillover effects on areas and regions that have not adopted GM crops.
OUTLOOK
To date, large-scale GM crop adoption has been limited to just two traits with different environmental and human health effects: herbicide tolerance and insect resistance. New GM crops and gene-edited versions with different traits, such as drought resistance, would likely have different environmental and human health impacts. Therefore, improving regulations and resistance management, providing incentives for the development and commercialization of new traits that align with social goals and human welfare, and gathering more comprehensive and detailed environmental data, especially on biodiversity, are critical for guiding agricultural innovations toward greater sustainability and allowing an accurate assessment of their impacts."
Environmental impacts of genetically modified crops (no public access)
Environmental impacts of genetically modified crops.
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