Could GMO crops benefit to solve the climate crisis?


The growth rate of crop harvests in the coming decades will have serious implications for the global food supply under climate change. If the relative yield gains assessed here are any indication of the potential for other crops and/or regions, then the adoption of new technologies such as GE varieties may constitute a potentially fruitful adaptation strategy for counter harmonizing the effects of climate change. There’s not going to be one singular resolution to solve the problem of climate change. In reality, it’s going to take a multi-pronged method compressing everything from reducing our individual carbon footprints to potentially more extreme solutions such as geoengineering. GMO crops cultivate with more healthy and deeper roots that are capable of storing increased amounts of carbon underground for longer; thereby reducing CO2 in the atmosphere. This is based on their detection of a gene which dictates the depth to which plant roots grow in soil. Their goal is to entirely shrink the carbon footprint of global crop cultivation by doing away with the need for synthetic fertilizers, which account for about 5% of humanity’s total greenhouse gas productions. Through extensive DNA manipulations, scientists are optimistic they can engineer a self-fertilizing affiliation between crop species and root-dwelling microbes, obviating the need for artificial fertilizer. No similar interdependence exists between bacteria and corn, wheat, rice, or any other cereal crop critical to modern diets and livestock feeds. This chemical treatment would be unessential, however, if scientists could build a legume-like symbiosis into the crops in Agriculture field.

The appearance of artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and high-cultivated crop diversities during the Green Revolution of the mid-20th century largely replaced these practices, ushering in a new era of bountiful food production but at a high environmental cost in genetically modified foods. Transgenic crops often get a bad rap for being more about corporate incomes than about benefits to humanity and the environment and for good reason. Technologies such as Roundup Ready ultimately only spurred the increase of super weeds that required even more toxic pest control, and decimated populations of frogs, insects, and other wildlife, all while making billions of dollars for Monsanto.

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