While world leaders are busy grappling with global warming another equally pressing issue is laying dormant - the problem of how to feed a rapidly expanding world population.
The planet seems to be split into two camps. The Europeans are totally opposed to the GM concept and have taken strident measures not only to reject GM crops, but to ban products that may be in their eyes tainted by containing ingredients derived from GM crops.
America - and most of Asia - is accepting the GM concept and bringing it into expanding use.
There is no doubt that GM brings with it benefits. Crops have been produced that withstand otherwise crippling diseases. Modification has allowed previously salt contaminated land to be used to produce food - and genetically modified strains have the ability to greatly expand the yield for any given area of crop land.
The objections of the nay sayers is that we can not predict the long term effect that GM may have on human health, or on the change that may occur to the soil and other living matter subjected to cross contamination.
Just as the industrial revolution and an improved way of life increased Co2 in the atmosphere and is fast creating global warming, the expanding world population is threatening our capacity to feed all these people.
It's a classical case of " cause and effect " !
There may be long term consequences of GM and some of it may be unpleaant, but so is the prospect of a world famine. Can we afford to ignore GM if the result is death by starvation for millions, plus the certainty of mass migration and likely wars as desperate people move and fight to survive ?
At the moment the full attention of the world is on global warming. Perhaps that should share equal place with ensuring an adequate food supply.
Both problems are capable of devastating this planet Earth !
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