Biotech News - A World Without Hunger
Truth About Trade & Technology - A World Without Hunger

A World Without Hunger

by: Rakesh Mehar


Despite the major technological growth in the last few decades, food security still remains one of the major problems faced by the developing world. According to experts, a total of 800 million people, or one in every six people in the developing world do not have access to food. India, with the world’s second highest population, lists nearly 200 million under the poverty line, with poor access to food. Moreover, the agricultural sector in the nation supports two thirds of the nation’s population, but generates only one fourth of the national income.

Agricultural scientists say one of the primary concerns for Indian agriculture is that while population grows at a meteoric rate, there is a lack of availability of arable land. Although India has over 16 per cent of the world’s population, it possesses only two per cent of arable land. Moreover, problems such as desertification continually contribute to a further decline in available land. The steadily decreasing size of agricultural holdings of small farmers has also hit productivity hard. With the rapid rise in population and lack of means to increase net area of arable lands, increasing yield and productivity is the only means of ensuring proper food supply. However, traditional methods of breeding high yielding crops are inefficient in the present context, says Dr M N Sheelavantar, Vice Chancellor, University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore.

The chief difficulty arises from the non-availability of suitable species of plants for traditional breeding. He adds "In the last 50 years, we have exploited all the available plant species and natural breeding methods, and raised productivity levels by ten times. However, we can’t go any further because the hybrid vigour is on the decline, and no more desirable variations are available for plants to be crossed with." GM crops on the other hand, allow scientists to extract the DNA of any organism, animal or plant and insert it into target crops. Thus GM crops allow for the use of a much larger gene base than traditional crops. The second problem, he says, arises from the significantly longer time period required to create viable hybrid products using traditional methods. Traditional breeding requires a cycle of seven to 10 years to produce a usable product, time we do not have. On the other hand, a normal GM cycle would only take around three years.
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