The Indian food grain production is near 256 mt but to meet the future food requirement of growing population (500 mt), is contribution from genetically modified crops required or not?
While straight answer is tricky,i believe a number of variables are in the play.There are countries producing enough though not dependent on GMOs.However,GMOs presents more convincing prospects for higher production.Still a number of factors will serve as determinants of GMOs production eg the country,majority producers - small scale or large scale,cost of GMOs adoption and GMOs performance in all parameters...Currently technologies frameworked for high production are not achieving the anticipated high yield per unit area especially with smallholders..is GMO an exception to this trend,in this regard GMOs as a single siver bulllet may miss the bulls eye as population baloons and production units decline...
A good amount of food production in India whether cereals,vegetables,fruits are going waste even before it can reach the consumers.Enough amount of cold chain & processing facilities at the farm site at least through Co-operatives is woefully in adequate. If this is done,there will be a surplus of food. Pricing is another headache that the farmers have to face every year.If the above items are taken care of,there cannot be a shortage of food grains.
But there are stark facts about Indian Agriculture.Farm production per unit area is far below as compared to developed one in Asia.Disuse of organic manuring has lead to heavy inputs from inorganic fertilizers,entailing heavy use of pesticides & insecticides,which degrades the farm soil.
Comming to the point, local varieties of seeds are better suited for the type of environment we have in India,where is different in different agro-climatic areas of the country.GM needs good amount of inputs to get desired out puts & this the Indian farmer will ever do it.
On the other hand,if by chance,the local variety has been wiped out by the introduction of the GM, then the Indian farmers will have to face the wall.
Both in Cotton & Brinjal,it was not a success & the Central Govt. has put it on hold.
GMO's have their own significance in increasing current food production levels. It is no doubt that they are yielding several times in developed countries. When we think about India, where the agriculture production is much diversed, use of such GE crops will cause the loss of their traceability. Once, they get mixed it is impossible to find the source of later faults without which science will fail. European union hence adopted stringent law to measure the traceability and controlled and labelled marketing. Hence, I think any technology adopting in the environmental circumstances should be properly reviewed. Countries should not become dumping places which we experienced with pesticides.
GMO´s technology has reached a level where almost anyone (with enough money) is able to produce a new variety. Technology is there. Are we, humans, ready to use it appropriately? or just a bunch of people will benefit from it (as always?). Equity is one of the fundamental properties of sustainibility, wich it may no be reached by using this "silver bullet" like technology. Big, choby international companies are key role players in this issue, however they are far from interested on sharing their income with local growers.
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