“Genetically modified organism” or how you most likely have heard them be abbreviated as, GMO’s. it is something most have heard and even read about but still have some misconstrued thought about them. One of which is how people think of only crops when the name GMO’s is mentioned, while in fact is that just as it is present in the name genetically modified “organism” GMO’s encompass all sort of plants, animals, and microorganisms as the genetic make-up in all those can be modified. Another fact about GMO’s is that it is not a new procedure that requires the use of technology as humans have been capable of various techniques in a way to genetically modify an organism for a long time. In fact, that is why we have many breeds of dogs in addition to the research of selective cross breeding Mendel performed on his peas.

Alas adding traditional GMO’s and all the organism to the equation it is better to able to distinguish what would most consider GMO’s to be nowadays and why GMO’s have come to be so closely tied to crop. Beginning with what would be considered as a GMO’s today is organism whose trait have been taken from another organism and added to our very specifically chosen for organism to have gain that trait or enhanced with the use of technology, eliminating trial-and-error, a more fitting term would be genetically engineered organism or transgenic organism. Unlike the traditional GMO’s that are picked and hoped to be passed to the next generation with no guarantee of it being carried. As for the reason why, crop is at the forefront of everyone’s mind when discussing GMO’s is due to crops being the one’s that have been successfully experimented on the most as well as the longest.

As with popularity of GMO’s ever rising to high levels also comes the possibilities that many will disagree with it and GMO’s are no exception with the topic being a hot zone for arguing. With many demanding that they be heavily restricted on the practice or even completely stopped claiming that the use of them will have vast repercussions on both our health and well-being, to the environment and it’s living creatures that would be affected by GMO’s. While the other side of the argument sees them with the upmost regard, that like previously mentioned it has helped humanity since it started in the late 19^th century, and the concept of genetic engineering has been around for many centuries prior to us tempering with organism and their genetic make-up to a specific level. Those who are also for the existence and use of GMO’s state how the possibilities with them could change the world and humanity by helping fight climate change and poverty.

It is more than apparent that an era of GMOs is imminent. Nowadays GMO’s being present in almost every aisle of your food supermarket, whether in the form of the apples you got or the corn feed “insert meat of your choice”, even the coke cans have a GMO in the form of the corn syrup additive found in it as corn is one of if not the face everyone will think of when the name “GMO’s” is mentioned to them. Noticing that corn is being mentioned quite often in a post title about “the future of GMO’s”? well there’s a reason for this, and it’s because corn is a prime example of what we can expect of GMO crops in the future with 88% of corn now being a GMO. A trend that will only become more common as we go into the future with 94% of soybeans and 95% of sugar beets already being a GMO.

            But how else can we see predict what the future will look like for GMO’s in other countries? An example that we can look to is Bangladesh in 2013 where the constant crop yields were often lacking due to the crop being lost to pests, and with the practice of using pesticides, it showed to rapidly become expensive and would often cause farmers to become sick. All these troubles would then become solved when they introduced a genetically modified version of the eggplant that was resistant to insects and causing the countries use of insecticide to drop by more than 80%, caused the income from the harvest to increase dramatically, and the health of the farmers improve. Giving a clear image of how GMO’s will in time take the same steps as Bangladesh and accept the many benefits that GMO’s have to offer. Statistics also point at the presence of GMO’s becoming more and more common as it is predicted that by 2050 the need for food will have increased by 70% in order to feed everyone adequately, as well as a need for improved pharmaceutical produce and just one way this could be is within the highly valued horseshoe crab blood and it’s used to detecting bacterial endotoxins. Since the horseshoe crab is only able to make little amounts of blood but a promising implementation of GMO’s in the future is trying to engineer an organism to have the capability of producing the crab’s blood but in larger amounts.

            It was in 1973 when Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen made a revolutionary breakthrough in the GMO technology field by being the first to successfully genetically engineered an organism by targeting a specific gene of one organism, cutting out the gene, and including it into another organism’s genetic pool. From that groundbreaking innovation that mankind has seen that day, the unimaginable potential that “genetically modified organisms” can have. Some of the capacities of GMO’s already include, the anticoagulant antithrombin “ATryn” being genetically added to a goat’s gene so that its milk produces human antithrombin. Then there’s the newly develop “golden rice” that has been modified to contain a higher amount of vitamin A in order to reduce the estimated yearly 500,000 children who will go blind from vitamin A deficiency. To even the most known GMO’s and how crops have been modified to have combat insects and pests, as well as some having resistance to herbicides.

            But like how those organisms have been modified we can take it a step further and make GMO’s that can actively help the environment and humanity. Some possibilities of this can range anywhere from modifying plastic eating organisms that currently takes a substantial amount of time to digest plastic and therefore helping clean the environment from landfills of plastic. Modifying plants to draw nitrogen from the hair is one that is currently being worked on right now and would help solve two problems, removing nitrogen from underwater which speeds up climate change, and the nitrogen attracted would also work as a fertilizer. Lastly but not the last possibility of GMO’s that show how much potential the GMO’s can have is simple, but we could add genes from hardwood trees that allow massive amounts of carbon to be absorbed from the environment into common trees.

           While a majority argues about how GMO’s would impact our health or cause harm to the environment by introducing the unknown to it. The reality is that for many GMOs can be prosperous for the economy at a corporate level and at the corporate level. Starting off with how the individual would benefit from GM crops, firstly the individual would at the moment of purchase be saving money by choosing a product that contains GMO’s as they’ll be cheaper than the “organic” competitor due to their low survivability while growing. A second way the individual would benefit financially from the GMO’s is the shelf life and how GMO’s will drastically take a longer time to rotten or expire when compared to their “organic” competitor; a longer shelf life implicating fewer trips to the market and less money being wasted due to food going spoiled.

            The way the economy would benefit from the GMO’s would be as beneficial as it was at the individual level. Beginning with the fact that GM crop can better withstand weather conditions that otherwise it wouldn’t be able opens the possibility of the crop being grown more time that in turn would lead to more harvests and more produce revenue. Evidence for the increased revenue from report findings where farmers who favored the use of GM crop had a net gain of $78.4 billion collectively from 1996 to 2010; a $46.8 billion or 60 percent due to yield gains derived from the reduced cost of production. With the significant profit having a great impact on farmers, it wasn’t the only way that they would prosper as the GM crops’ gene to resist pests and insects also allowed farmers to cut down the use of pesticides by 17.9% and save on what would otherwise be used for pesticide. This reduction in pesticide use is also of importance to the environment as it lessens the amount of the phosphorus found in the pesticide to wash off the crop and end up in a lake where the phosphorus would damage the lake by feeding the growth of excessive algae which would impede the growth of other aquatic plants and consume all the oxygen in the lake, leaving with critical oxygen levels that would in time kill them.

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.

The first sign of humans “genetically modifying” an organism dates to 9000 B.C. when ancient farmers in the middle east and northern Africa began selectively breeding wheat to be hardier and have bigger grains, beginning the concept of selective breeding. Moving further down the timeline we started to selectively breed many more crops and even animals, with an excellent example of this being corn. Corn as after a multitude of years being selectively bred it has experienced an astonishing change to its size nowadays being an enormous crop when compared to what it once was (the size comparison shown above); bananas, apples, and tomatoes also experiencing dramatic changes to them similar to the corn and its changes throughout time.

The more traditional form of genetically modifying an organism would continue to be used by humans for many more years to come, with a noticeable discovery around the 1700s when cross-breeding within a species began. Bringing us to a more recent time when in 1973 Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen made a revolutionary breakthrough in GMO technology by being the first to successful genetically engineered an organism by targeting a specific gene of one organism, cutting out the gene, and including it into another organism’s genetic pool. All this accomplished via the use of bacteria that carried encodes for antibiotic resistance to another. The finding causing a chain reaction of events surrounding GMO’s as well as growing concern from the public about the ramifications that the use of this might come about for the ecosystem and human health down the line. Following the event GMOs only became more prominent in the research and commercial field with genetically modified tomatoes becoming approved in 1992 and ATryn, anticoagulant antithrombin becoming approved shortly after in 2009. And now to modern-day where 88% of corn, 94% of soybeans, and 95% of sugar beets sold worldwide are a Genetically modified crop.