Overview to Four Volumes: Sustainable Agriculture and Food xlvsuch traits as drought- or salt-tolerance, and nitrogen-fixation. These are likely to
bring more explicit consumer benefits than the first generation. These include
stress tolerance in cereals, such as thermo, salt- and heavy metal-tolerance; drought
resistance; physiological modifications of crops and trees to increase efficiency of
resource use (nutrients, water, light) or delaying of ageing in leaves; neutraceuticals
(crops boosted with vitamins/minerals); vaccine crops (such as banana and potato);
designer crops modified to produce oils or plastics; the development of new mark-
ers to replace antibiotics; and legumes with increased tannins for bloat control in
cattle.
The first generation technologies have tended only to provide substantial pri-
vate benefits for the companies producing them and farmers using them. Many of
the later generation genetically modified organisms are, by contrast, more multi-
functional and public-good oriented, although like all technologies clearly none
are without risk. Modifications of crops with low value in rotations, such as leg-
umes and oats, will make them more attractive to farmers because of high protein
and energy content. Others will be more efficient in nitrogen use, so reducing
nitrate leaching, or modifications of rhizobia could improve the nitrogen-fixing
capacity of a wide range of crops. Both options would reduce the need to use nitro-
gen fertilizers.
Although the pace of change in the development of GM has provoked many
debates, there has been relatively little said about the potential benefits for devel-
oping countries. Many concerns are about important indirect effects, such as the
growing centralization of world agriculture. These represent structural changes in
agriculture in which GM crops are a contributor to change, but not necessarily the
driver. These contested positions raise important questions. Will GM crops con-
tribute to the further promotion of technological approaches to agricultural devel-
opment? Could such technologies bring environmental benefits, and so promote
sustainability? Are GM technologies essential for feeding a hungry world, or is
hunger more a result of poverty, with poor consumers and farmers unable to afford
modern, expensive technologies?
Some say emphatically yes, often raising the spectre of famine and excessive
population growth as a way to gain greater support for GM as a whole. But GM
crops can only help to feed the world if attention is paid to the processes of tech-
nology development, to benefit-sharing, and to low-cost methods of production.
Most commentators agree that food production will have to increase, and that this
will have to come from existing farmland. But past approaches to modern agricul-
tural development have not been successful in all parts of the world.
In most contexts, people are hungry because they are poor. They simply do not
have the money to buy either the food they need or the modern technologies that
could increase their yields. What they need are readily available and cheap means
to improve their farm productivity. So a cereal crop engineered to have bacteria on
the roots to fix free nitrogen from the air, or another with the apomixis trait, would
be a great benefit for poor farmers. But unless such technologies are cheap, they are
unlikely to be accessible to the very people who need them most.