Green Revolution and GMO's
Is it truely debatable?
What were the causes and results of the Bengal Famine in 1943?
The Bengal Famine resulted in an estimated 4 million deaths due to starvation in eastern India. In order to combat the growing number of deaths, India took legislative measures to keep traders from hording food for reasons or profit. Also, India experienced a Green Revolution!
What were the 3 basic elements of the Green Revolution in India?
Two Positive Results of the Green Revolution
2) Yield per unit of farmland grew more than 30% from 1947 to 1979, the time in which the Green Revolution is considered to have contributed the most.
3 Positive Results (Economic, Sociologic, and Political)
Sociologic: The Green Revolution created jobs for agricultural workers and industiral workers by creating lateral facilities like factories and hydro-electric power stations that required manual labor.
Political: Through the Green Revolution, India emerged from a starving nation to an exporter of grain. This earned admiration for India in the comity of nations, exspecially in the Third World.
Limitations of the Green Revolutin in India
The Largest Dam in India
A K63 Variety Wheat Field in India
A Hydro-Electric Power Station on the Krishna River
Concerns of the Green Revolution
Positives of GMO's
- Insect Resistance: Certian GMO foods have been combined with a toxic bacterium that makes them insect repellant, yet at the same time completely safe for human consumption. The result is a decrease in pesticide chemicals used on plants and a reduction in exposure of pesticides to the environment and populations.
- Environmental Protection: GMO crops and animals require less artificial, dangerous chemicals, less time, and less tools to look after. These special benefits help to reduce environmental pollution, promoting better air and water quailty.
- Added Nutrition: A lot of GMO foods have been engineered to be more nutritious in terms of mineral or vitamin content, helping to battle malnutrition in many places of the developing world. An example is vitamin A-enhanced rice which is currently helping to reduce vitamin A deficiencies.
- Longer Shelf Life: Many GMO foods have added genetics that allow them to stay fresh for longer periods of time. This short period of time can cause fresh produce to cost less money, allowing more people to have access to fresh fruits and veggies.
- Increased Yield: Foods that have been genetically engineered provide a much higher yield than those that have not. This results in a surplus of food that can support much larger populations, helping to eliminate deaths due to starvation. Also, access food can be exported, stimulating a country's economy.
Negative of GMO's
- Allergic Reactions: Genetic modifications of GMO foods often mix and add proteins that weren't indigenous to the suposed originals plant or animal, stimulating new allergic responses. Sometimes, proteins from a plant or animal that contains know allergens can be added to a new organism, prompting the same reactions as the first plant or animal.
- Decreased Antibiotic Efficiency: Often times, GMO foods contain antibiotic features built into them to make them immune or resistant to dieases or viruses. When eaten, these antibiotic markers can stay in the body making antibiotic medicines less effective. Today in hospitals all around the world, this antibiotic resistance is being seen.
- Gene Transfer: The most well known risk of GMO foods is that the modified genes of enhanced organisms can escape into the wild. Herbicide resistend genes in certian crops can breed and cross into wild weeds. These potentially "superweeds" could theoretically be impossible to kill with modern day herbicides. Also, new super organisms resulting from a cross breed of GMO foods could complete with natural plant and animal populations driving species to extinction.
- Increased Toxicity: Already most plants produce substances that are toxic to humans, only in such low dosages that they do not harm us. The creation of new GMO foods produces the risk of toxic plants being altered in a way that causes an increase in toxicity. An example are disease resistent potatoes that produce higher levels of the toxin glycoalkaloid.
- Small Business Competition: The creations of GMO foods puts large commerial businesses at large advantages, producing more food for cheaper costs. Because HYV seeds are more expensive, many small farmers cannot afford them. As a result they cannot complete with larger commercial companies, and lose their land. As the number of local farmers are diminishing, corporate companies can control the market.