Genetically Modified Crops and Developing Countries

The world's population is expected to almost dou- ble by the year 2050, making food security the most important social issue for the next 30 years. Food production will have to be doubled or preferably tripled to meet the needs of the expected 6 billion people, 90% of whom will reside in the developing world. The enormity of this challenge will be further exacerbated by the dwindling availability of water and the fact that this additional food will have to be produced on existing agricultural land or marginal soils if forested regions and the environment as a whole are to be preserved. There are numerous ways by which agricultural productivity may be increased in a sustainable way, including the use of biological fertilizers, improved pest control, soil and water conservation, and the use of improved plant varieties, produced by either tra- ditional or biotechnological means. Of these mea- sures, biotechnological applications, especially trans- genic plant varieties and the future products of functional genomic projects, probably hold the most