Biotech Crops

The debate over genetically modified foods continues to rage on. A recent report showing the over all benefits biotech crops have had for farmers by way of increased farm income due to lowered production costs and increased output, and for the environment with the lowering of pesticide use by seventeen percent was received favorably by most of the ag industry but raised more issues for those opposed to biotech crops. Two of the main concerns being that insects will become resistant to crops that have been genetically modified to produce their own pesticides; and that plants engineered for herbicide tolerance will cross breed with weeds, in turn creating “super weeds”.  With the scientific breakthroughs already realized in genetically modified foods there has to be a way for a “meeting of the minds” in finding solutions to these proposed risks. The world’s population is expected to double in the next fifty years, meaning well over twelve billion mouths to feed. Biotech crops could mean the difference between a starving planet or a well fed one.