The increase in agricultural productivity over the past century has enabled a five-fold increase in the human population and about a 50 percent increase in food per person.
Knowledge, machinery, and chemicals significantly replace land and labor in agricultural production. These achievements have also led to increased greenhouse gas emissions, groundwater depletion, and biodiversity loss. China exemplifies both the achievements and challenges of this transition. It has performed outstandingly on the agricultural front, feeding 22 percent of the world’s population with 9 percent of the world’s arable land and an uneven distribution of water resources.
Yet the adoption of agricultural biotechnology has been limited by regulation. All major national academies of sciences say that genetically modified crops are as safe as traditional crops. Still, regulations have limited the adoption of genetic engineering, mainly in producing fiber and animal feed. About three-fourths of the world’s cotton and soybean and one-third of the corn are produced by genetically modified organisms. The adoption of GMOs has substantially increased the yield of these crops, reduced the use of toxic pesticides, and increased the income of farmers.
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