Apr 23, · In the decades since the first genetically modified foods reached the market, no adverse health effects among consumers have been found. This is not to say there are none, but as hard as opponents More than Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging Greenpeace to end its opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The letter asks Greenpeace to cease its efforts to block introduction of a genetically engineered strain of rice that supporters say could reduce Vitamin-A deficiencies causing blindness and death in children in Get 24⁄7 customer support help when you place a homework help service order with us. We will guide you on how to place your essay help, proofreading and editing your draft – fixing the grammar, spelling, or formatting of your paper easily and cheaply
Public opinion about genetically modified foods and trust in scientists | Pew Research Center
For more information about PLOS Subject Essays about genetically modified foods, click here. The role of genetically modified GM crops for food security is the subject of public controversy.
GM crops could contribute essays about genetically modified foods food production increases and higher food availability, essays about genetically modified foods. There may also be impacts on food quality and nutrient composition.
Smallholder farmers make up a large proportion of the undernourished people worldwide, essays about genetically modified foods.
Our study focuses on this latter aspect and provides the first ex post analysis of food security impacts of GM crops at the micro level.
We use comprehensive panel data collected over several years from farm households in India, where insect-resistant GM cotton has been widely adopted. Controlling for other factors, the adoption of GM cotton has significantly improved calorie consumption and dietary quality, resulting from increased family incomes. GM crops alone will not solve the hunger problem, but they can be an important component in a broader food security strategy. Citation: Qaim M, Kouser S Genetically Modified Crops and Food Security.
PLoS ONE 8 6 : e Received: February 20, ; Accepted: April 18, ; Published: June 5, This is an open-access article, essays about genetically modified foods, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose.
The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Funding: This research was supported by the German Research Foundation DFG. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Food security exists when all people have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food.
Unfortunately, food security does not exist for a significant proportion of the world population. Around million people are undernourished, meaning that they are undersupplied with calories [1]. Many more suffer from specific nutritional deficiencies, often related to insufficient intake of micronutrients. But how to achieve this goal is debated controversially. Genetically modified GM crops are sometimes mentioned in this connection.
Some see the development and use of GM crops as key to reduce essays about genetically modified foods [3][4]while others consider this technology as a further risk to food security [5][6]. Solid empirical evidence to support either of these views is thin. There are three possible pathways how GM crops could impact food security. First, GM crops could contribute to food production increases and thus improve the availability of food at global and local levels.
Second, GM crops could affect food safety and food quality. Third, GM crops could influence the economic and social situation of farmers, thus improving or worsening their economic access to food.
In regard to the first pathway, GM technologies could make essays about genetically modified foods crops higher yielding essays about genetically modified foods more robust to biotic and abiotic stresses [8][9]. This could stabilize and increase food supplies, which is important against the background of increasing food demand, climate change, and land and water scarcity. While agricultural commodity prices would be higher without the productivity gains from GM technology [11]impacts on food availability could be bigger if more GM food crops were commercialized.
Lack of public acceptance is one of the main reasons why this has not yet happened more widely [12], essays about genetically modified foods. Concerning the second pathway, crops with new traits can be associated with food safety risks, which have to be assessed and managed case by case.
Essays about genetically modified foods such risks are not specific to GM crops. Long-term research confirms that GM technology is not per se more risky than conventional plant breeding technologies [13]. On the other hand, GM technology can help to breed food crops with higher contents of micronutrients; a case in point is Golden Rice with provitamin A in the grain [14]. Such GM essays about genetically modified foods have not yet been commercialized. Projections show that they could reduce nutritional deficiencies among the poor, entailing sizeable positive health effects [15][16].
The third pathway relates to GM crop use by smallholder farmers in developing countries. Half of the global GM crop area is located in developing countries, but much of this refers to large farms in countries of South America.
One notable exception is Essays about genetically modified foods thuringiensis Bt cotton, which is grown by around 15 million smallholders in India, China, Pakistan, and a few other developing countries [10]. Bt cotton provides resistance to important insect pests, especially cotton bollworms.
There are also a few studies that have shown that these benefits are associated with increases in farm household income and living standard [21] — [23]. Higher incomes are generally expected to cause increases in food consumption in poor farm households. On the other hand, cotton is a non-food cash crop, so that the nutrition impact is uncertain. Here we address this question and analyze the impact of Bt cotton adoption on calorie consumption and dietary quality in India.
Bt cotton was first commercialized in India in In essays about genetically modified foods, over 7 million farmers had adopted this technology on For the analysis, we carried out a household survey and collected comprehensive data over a period of several years. This is the first ex post study that analyzes food security effects of Bt cotton or any other GM crop with micro level data.
Our study builds on data from a socioeconomic survey of farm households in India. Details of this survey are explained further below. The institutional review board of the University of Goettingen only reviews clinical research; our study cannot be classified as clinical research, essays about genetically modified foods. We consulted with the Head of the Research Department of the University of Goettingen, who confirmed that there is no institutional review board at our University that would require a review of such survey-based socioeconomic research.
We essays about genetically modified foods out a panel survey of Indian cotton farm households in four rounds between and We used a multistage sampling procedure. Four states were purposively selected, namely Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. In these four states, we randomly selected 10 cotton-growing districts and 58 villages, using a combination of census data and agricultural production statistics [18][19][23]. Within each village, we randomly selected farm households from complete lists of cotton producers.
Sample households were visited individually, and the household head was taken through a face-to-face interview, for which we used a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire covered a wide array of agricultural and socioeconomic information, such as input-output details in cotton production, technology adoption, other income sources, and household living standards. The interviews were carried out in local languages by a small team of enumerators, who were trained and supervised by the researchers.
Prior to starting each interview, the study objective was explained. We also clarified that the data collected would be treated confidentially, essays about genetically modified foods, analyzed anonymously, and be used for research purposes only.
Based on this, the interviewees were asked for their verbal informed consent to participate. We decided not ask for written consent, because the interviews were not associated with any risk for participants. Furthermore, many of the sample farmers had relatively low educational backgrounds and were not used to formal paperwork.
Very few households did not agree to participate; they were replaced with other randomly selected households in the same villages. The first-round survey interviews took place in earlyshortly after the cotton harvest for the season was completed. The same survey was repeated at two-year intervals in early referring to the cotton seasonearly referring to the seasonand early referring to the season. In total, households were interviewed during the 7-year period.
Most of these households were visited in several rounds. The total sample consists of household observations Table 1.
Inthe proportion of Bt adopters was still relatively small, but it increased rapidly in the following years, essays about genetically modified foods. To our knowledge, this is the only longer-term panel survey of Bt cotton farm households in a developing country the data set with the variables used in this article is available as Data S1.
The survey questionnaire included a detailed food consumption recall, which is a common tool to assess food security at the household level [24]. For a day recall period, households were asked about the quantity consumed of different food items and the corresponding monetary value.
The questions covered food consumed from own production, market purchases, gifts, and transfers. The quantity data for the different food items were converted to calories consumed by using calorie conversion factors for India [25][26]. The total household calorie consumption from the day recall was then divided by 30 to obtain a calorie value per day.
Taking into account the age and gender structure of households, as well as physical activity levels of household members, the number of adult equivalents AE was calculated for each household.
Male adults involved in farming count as 1. Male and female adults with lower physical activity levels count as 0. For children and adolescents, appropriate adjustments were made [25] — [27]. The daily household calorie consumption was divided by the number of AE in a household to obtain the calories consumed per AE and day. Values for minimum dietary energy requirements found in the literature vary, which is due to several reasons [24].
Values stated per capita are lower than those stated per AE, because children have lower calorie requirements than adults. Moreover, not all studies take physical activity levels into account already in the AE calculations, as we do. Minimum values around kcal per day for adult men are also found in other studies [28]. Based on this, we take kcal per AE as the threshold, that is, households with daily calorie consumption below kcal per AE are considered food insecure.
Most of the calories consumed in rural India are from cereals such as wheat, rice, millet, and sorghum that are rich in carbohydrates but less nutritious in terms of protein and micronutrient contents.
Hence, in addition to total calories consumed we calculated the number of calories consumed from more nutritious foods to assess dietary quality. Recent research suggests that the share of calories consumed from higher value, non-staple foods can also be used as an indicator of nutritional sufficiency [29]. The reason is that poor and undernourished households will largely choose foods that are the cheapest available sources of calories, namely cereals in the context of rural India.
Only when they have surpassed subsistence, consumers will begin to substitute towards foods that are more expensive sources of calories [29]. It should be mentioned that food consumption data from household surveys may not provide very accurate data to measure nutritional status [24][30].
Sometimes, consumption data overestimate calorie intakes, because food losses, waste, and other uses within the household cannot be properly accounted for. However, this limitation applies to both adopters and non-adopters of Bt, so that the comparison between Bt and non-Bt, which is relevant for the impact assessment, is unaffected.
Genetically Modified Foods and Their Pros And Cons
, time: 9:42The Golden Rice Project
Jun 05, · The role of genetically modified (GM) crops for food security is the subject of public controversy. GM crops could contribute to food production increases and higher food availability. There may also be impacts on food quality and nutrient composition. Finally, growing GM crops may influence farmers’ income and thus their economic access to food 1 day ago · Essay on morning walk in english for class 8 essay about my hopes and dreams essay on jealousy can be a disease, an essay about death penalty. Stanford common app essay example satirical essays on writing we essays Why write essays on genetically modified foods descriptive essay of swimming. Essay on your favourite book We even have an urgent delivery option for short essays, term papers, or research papers needed within 8 to 24 hours. We appreciate that you have chosen our cheap essay service, and will provide you with high-quality and low-cost custom essays, research papers, term papers, speeches, book reports, and other academic assignments for sale
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