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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