Hunger and malnutrition
Hunger means more than just missing a meal. It’s a beneath crisis with more than 820 million people in its grip, with millions more now under its threat due to the COVID-19 pandemic. New evidence shows that the number of hungry people in the World is rising to 821 million or one in every nine people, according to The State of Food Security and Nutrition, which was released earlier to the World in 2018. Limited progress is also being made in addressing the multiple forms of malnutrition, ranging from child stunting to adult obesity, putting the health of many at risk.
The annual UN report found that critical drivers to hunger are climate change that affects rainfall patterns, agricultural seasons, climate extremes such as droughts and floods, and conflict and economic slowdowns.
Biotechnology offers a promising alternative to synthetic foods and an improvement on conventional plant-breeding technologies. Combined with other advanced agricultural technologies, it provides an exciting and environmentally responsible way to meet consumer demand for sustainable agriculture (Robertson & Swinton 2005). When the benefits of GM crops reach small and marginal farmers, more Green Revolutions may become a reality.
Poverty is the real reason for hunger that often strikes women–the nutritional gatekeepers in many families–the hardest. Economists argue that resolving hunger requires political solutions and not just agro-technical solutions (Feder, Willett & Zijp 1999). According to them, instead of looking at biotechnology as a yet unproven and non-existent breakthrough, decision-makers should look at the full body of research that shows solutions to eliminate hunger are not technological but rooted in fundamental socio-economic realities. There is no technology that can override the immediate political and social forces that keep people poor and hungry, even though technology and biotechnology try to improve in some way
Moreover, while industrial increase has a significant role in delivering global food, the contributions of less-intensive smallholders, family-farms and agroecological systems must be acknowledged and better quantified. Globally, farms under two produce 28-31% of total crop production and 30-34% of food supply on 24% of gross agricultural area, while harbouring greater crop diversity and lower post-harvest loss than larger farms (Ricciardi, et al., 2018).)
GM crops may have a role to play in fighting global hunger, but merely increasing crop production or nutritional value that might not solve the larger problem of inequity in access to food. For example, farmers whose livelihoods depend on production of commercial crops rather than staple food may be able to increase their income by growing GM crops, affording them the financial resources to purchase more or higher-quality food. Moreover, GM crops might better withstand certain natural disasters, such as drought. However, since data shows that political unrest is the primary driver of hunger, it is unclear whether these farmers would be able to sell their products or use their income on nutritional food sources within a country plagued by conflict.
To ensure safe and sufficient food production, political and economic decisions by governments and companies, rather than technological limitations, will determine how successfully we can feed a growing population in poor countries ,for wiser decisions, an international body should be created to ensure that the necessary technology reaches the places where it is needed and to deal with the political, economic and social problems associated with technology transfer. UNESCO has been entitling monuments as belonging to humankind, which must be preserved not only for the benefit of the locals, but for the entire World. Perhaps new technologies that could solve fundamental problems of human well-being should be given a similar status, to ensure that they reach everybody in need.
References
Robertson, G. P., & Swinton, S. M. (2005). Reconciling agricultural productivity and environmental integrity: a grand challenge for agriculture. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 3(1), 38-46.
Feder, G., Willett, A., & Zijp, W. (1999). Agricultural extension: Generic challenges and some ingredients for solutions. The World Bank.
Ricciardi, V., Ramankutty, N., Mehrabi, Z., Jarvis, L., & Chookolingo, B. (2018). How much of the World’s food do smallholders produce?. Global Food Security, 17, 64-72.