Like many aspects in the scientific field there will a good and beneficial take from the innovation as well a bad and harmful side that might come from it as well. And GMO’s have seen debates for both sides of the coin since its introduction in 1973.

The very first negative problem stemming from GMO’s begin before they’re even present at your food market, even before the crop is harvested. This first problem begins when farmers buy the seeds for the crops from their GM crop provider, where the seeds purchased might be a terminator seed. A terminator seed meaning that it will not produce seed, rendering that said crop incapable of having an offspring, and although this can prevent the GM crop from breeding with a wild non-GM crop and therefore keeping that wild species intact. But the issue from terminator seed is what it means to the farmer as no longer can it use this year’s crops to be the parent of the next generation of crops (next years); causing an economic fear for farmers as they’ll have to rely on buying seeds every year from the monopoly being built the huge GM crop providers. A second and very concerning con for GM crops is the rise of bacteria becoming exceedingly resistant to antibiotics, a sort of super bacteria. This gloomy view deriving from the fact that GM crops now have sort of innate pesticide capabilities that could be passed on to a person. Other concerns around GMOs and how it can be harmful is the chance of incrementing allergies experienced, increasing the likelihood of cancer, and other environmental issues.

Moving along are now the benefits of the use of GMO’s and from starters is how much more hardy the GM crops are capable of becoming, fairly surpassing non-GM crops and GM crop has genes added to them to help them protect from pests, insects, and harsh weather conditions that would otherwise kill the crop. Leading us to the next benefit and it’s cause the crop is more likely to survive it, in turn, means more food, more food means lower prices for the produce, lower prices mean more people struggling financially will be able to eat. And speaking of more accessible produce to those struggling to get the protein and vitamin needs, well have another way of positively impacting those peoples life as GM crops are able to be enhanced in how much of a certain vitamin it’ll contain aiding the fight against specific vitamin deficiencies; and who wouldn’t like some extra vitamin c to help them lower cholesterol, prevent cancer, and lowering blood pressure. From a hardier crop to helping fight starvation and sickness in poverty, all these benefits are just but a few ones can mention giving the idea of how innovating GMO’s.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.