Engineering healthier, more plentiful crops to aid developing countries

Despite advancements in agricultural practices and technologies, global hunger is still an issue that we face today. The World Food Programme notes that there are about 795 million people in the world who do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life and the vast majority of the world’s hungry people live in developing countries where 12.9 percent of the population is undernourished. World leaders, policy makers and the agriculture industry all need to come together to find a solution to this humanitarian crisis and better address the global hunger issue which may only grow as our population expands to almost 10 billion by 2050. Gene and genome editing for crops has been presented as a reasonable solution to create healthier, more plentiful food but it has faced tremendous opposition in developed and developing countries alike. This is due to fear-driven anti GMO/genetically engineered food marketing campaigns that position these crops as dangerous or unhealthy to both consumers and policymakers, despite multiple studies proving otherwise. Inevitably and sadly, the non-GMO labelling of foods has become part of a fear-based marketing for products that otherwise may have nothing to offer the consumer in terms of benefits.