Over the past 25 years, many governments have faced the decision of whether to approve agricultural biotechnologies and their resulting products, genetically modified crops.
Governments that decided to approve GM crops have benefited from higher yields and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. The evidence of lower agricultural productivity for countries that opted to not adopt GM crops becomes glaringly apparent when comparing agricultural production in the European Union with that of the United States.
As we know, the U.S. has approved GM crops, whereas the EU decision found the costs of adoption to be greater than the benefits.
Between 1995 and 2019, the agricultural production index for the 27 countries of the EU increased by only seven percent, while agricultural production in the U.S. increased by 38 percent. Further evidence of the cost of the EU’s failure to adopt GM crops as consistently as in the U.S. found that EU agricultural greenhouse gas emissions are 33 million tonnes higher than if they had adopted GM crops, equalling 7.5 percent of total EU agricultural GHG emissions.
The costs of not adopting leading food producing technologies are considerably important and evident in food insecure countries, perhaps more so than in industrial ones. Farmers in many food insecure countries lack access to pesticides that could be applied to reduce the populations of insects that attack their crops, thereby reducing yields.
It is for this reason that the adoption of GM crops that are insect resistant is so important for food insecure countries. That’s because the leading benefit following the adoption of GM corn in African nations hasn’t been a reduction in the use of pesticides but rather a doubling of production.
Over the past 20 years, academics have analyzed the yield effects following the adoption of GM crops in every market that they have been commercialized into as part of their research to assess the benefits and the costs of the technology.
The collection of results is virtually universal in their conclusions: GM crops increase yields. While the effects of bans on GM crops have had devastating effects on human health and nutrition since the turn of the millennium, countries are increasingly starting to make food security decisions based on their own agricultural capabilities and are approving GM crops for food production.
Future policies may need to pay more attention to the evidence of scientific benefits rather than the assumed or potential costs, which are rooted in doubts about the science.
Future improvements in food security will rely on the use and adoption of innovative technologies, which will need governmental approval. Industrial adopting countries will experience higher yields and reduced chemical use under the continued approval of GM crops. We have already seen the benefits in food insecure countries, with their higher yields and reduced food insecurity since taking affirmative action on GM and biotech approval. This isn’t taking into consideration that calculating the benefits of less malnourishment and starvation is virtually impossible. It is a priceless benefit, not a cost.
Stuart Smyth is an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Saskatchewan. He holds the Agri-Food Innovation and Sustainability Enhancement Chair. Robert Paarlberg is a political scientist and faculty member at Harvard University’s Wellesley College. This article first appeared on the SAIFood website. It has been edited for length.
