GMO Is Not A Solution To Global Hunger
Global hunger, anenduring problem in the modern world, has been extremely difficult to solve. With the invention of genetically modified organisms came claims that GMOscould end world hunger, but this has not occurred. Rather, GMO companies havetaken advantage of the world by doing the exact opposite: letting the hungercrisis worsen by focusing on economics rather than ethics. This has raisedquestions about whether GMOs truly benefit starving children in the world or ifthey do nothing to help them. Although GMOs could have the potential to solveglobal hunger, they will not be able to because the companies that create themonly care about profit and corporate control; additionally, global hungermostly results from poverty and climate, issues that cannot be solved throughGMOs. Even though there is already more than enough food in theworld, hunger persists because it is an issue of poverty and climate, not offood shortages; GMOs cannot solve poverty or climate issues, only foodshortages, and therefore will not be able to end hunger. An example of this iswhat is currently happening in the world today. Millions of people are starvingand malnourished in the developing regions of the world.
According to KariCostanza’s article “Facing Famine: Battling Hunger with Hope in East Africa,”Peter and Samson, young boys whose mother died of hunger and father died of warfarein South Sudan, struggle to find food because of the immense drought occurringwhere they live. Thousands of other families in East Africa face similarthreats of starvation because of droughts, warfare, and a lack ofinfrastructure. This example illustrates how the lack of development as well asconflict in East African countries such as South Sudan and Somalia largelycontributes to the hunger crisis. If the needed infrastructure and support wasprovided to these countries, then the hunger and death rates would decrease. Inthe meantime, GMOs would not solve this problem because if you sent GM crops toEast Africa for farmers to grow and feed their families, East Africa’s droughtsand lack of resources such as water and fertilizer would prevent the crops fromgrowing successfully. Additionally, Emily Cassidy, research analyst for theEnvironmental Working Group Organization, states in her article “GMOs Won’tHelp the World’s Hungry” that, “GMOs are also 100 times more expensive todevelop than traditionally bred varieties, swallowing up resources that couldbe put to better use by helping to solve the real causes of poverty andhunger. ” This demonstrates how GMOs could make hunger worse because they wouldwaste resources that would otherwise be used to address hunger in moreeffective ways. In addition to the inability of GMOs to end poverty, GMOcorporations such as Monsanto care more about corporate control and profit thanfeeding the hungry. According to the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network(CBAN), “four companies now control 67% of the global seed market and 70% ofthe global pesticide market. ” These four companies, Bayer (the company whoacquired Monsanto), Corteva (DowDuPont), Syngenta (ChemChina), and BASF,“control most of the genetically engineered seeds planted in Canada and aroundthe world” (CBAN).
These corporations would not help the hungry because itwould sacrifice some of their control and profit to help provide the hungrywith crops, and they are not willing to give that up. The visual text on thefollowing page supports the argument in that it explicitly states that GMOs areabout corporate control and profit and therefore are not going to feed theworld. The visual text makes this argument by using different colored and sizedfonts as well as a visual of rice in a wooden bowl. The words in green — GMOs,corporate control, and PROFIT — help the reader make the following connection:GMOs are about corporate control and profit. Additionally, the authoremphasizes the word profit even more by presenting it in all capital lettersand making it a larger font size; this shows that the author wants theconnection between GMOs and profit to be clear. The bowl of rice on the rightside of the visual text is also important to the overall meaning of the piece;it takes up more than half of the space which shows its importance. Rice is asymbolic food for world hunger; when people think about world hunger, a woodenbowl of rice may come to mind because rice is one of the few foods that poor peoplemight be able to afford or have access to. The fact that it is in a woodenbowl, a symbol of poverty, adds to this visual.
Even though GMOs have many potential benefits to offer, suchas increasing crop yields and crops’ pesticide resistance, solving world hungeris not one of them. The industry surrounding GMOs does not allow them to endhunger; the corporations are too haughty to realize how much they could impactthe world if they let go of some of their profits. This could change if we, asworld citizens, plead our case to the global governments so that action can betaken against corporations like Monsanto. We should advocate for equaldistribution of food so that everyone has access to a sufficient food supply,regardless of their economic status. Everyone should have the right to food;they should not be denied this right because of their lack of income. GMOscould then help by providing an adequate food supply for the growing populationand prevent hunger rates from rising any more. Although the possibility forGMOs to help the starving children in the world is slim currently, by puttingin the time and effort to make a change, we can make this possibility areality.
