Within the past century, there has been a series of revolutions influencing global agriculture production. One revolution arrived with the application of chemicals for crop protection and recent revolutions have centered on breeding strategies through biotechnology and genomics. With global hunger rising to as many as 828 million in 2021, according to the United Nations, another food revolution is on the horizon.

On January 3, 2013, adamant anti-genetically modified (GM) environmentalist Mark Lynas announced that he has changed his mind. At the Oxford Farming Conference, he delivered a blunt and passionate 5,000-word mea culpa to over 1,000 attendees that he got GM wrong: “I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologize for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonizing an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment. As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely. So, I guess you’ll be wondering—what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process, I hope I became a better environmentalist.”

Lynas explained his conversion in a full-Monty manner. He came to the realization that GM may be the only way to avoid mass genocide of billions born into a planet possessing limited resources but for technology. To vilify GM is to be as anti-science as climate-change deniers, he stated, and to feed a growing world population, we must take advantage of all the technology available to us, including GM. To insist on “natural” agriculture and livestock is to doom people to starvation, and there’s no logical reason to prefer the old ways, either. Moreover, the reason why big companies dominate the industry is that anti-GM activists and policymakers have made it too difficult for small startups to enter the field.

Lynas concluded his dramatic address with a plea for appeasement that those who wish to stick with organic are entitled to, but they should not stand in the way of others who would use science to find more efficient ways to feed billions. “The GM debate is over. It is finished. We no longer need to discuss whether or not it is safe. … You are more likely to get hit by an asteroid than to get hurt by GM food,” he says.

Even Bill Nye, best known as the Science Guy, has changed his views about GM. Initially, he was skeptical of GM foods and the impact they could have on the environment and human health. However, as he learned more about the science behind GM and the potential benefits they offer, he became more supportive of their use. Nye now believes that GM can play an important role in solving some of the world's biggest problems, such as feeding a growing global population and improving agriculture in developing countries. "GM foods are safe as can be. They are tested and tested," Nye said, adding that, "If you think about [it], you'll realize that farming is not really natural. If humans stop farming, the land goes back to being whatever it was before, a forest or prairie. Same is true for ocean or lake farming," he added of his newfound perspective.

Best-selling and award-winning author Charles C. Mann offers an insightful perspective about GM in his 2018 book "The Wizard and the Prophet". This thought-provoking and brilliantly written book featured Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution and Nobel Prize Laureate, as the Wizard who envisioned technological progress as the key to overcoming hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation. According to Mr. Mann: "The argument about GMOs is frequently posed in terms of health risks–are they safe to eat? In my view, the evidence to date is overwhelming that there is no particular reason to think that GMO crops pose more dangers to human health than crops developed by conventional breeding. At the same time, there are a host of reasons to think that the now-conventional industrial-style agriculture brought to us by the Green Revolution has problems: fertilizer runoff, soil depletion, the destruction of rural communities, etc. GMOs are often said by advocates of industrial ag to be the only way to keep this system going so that we can feed everyone in the world of 10 billion. If you already think that industrial ag is a big problem, then of course you would oppose a technology that is supposed to keep it going. That seems to me a better, more fruitful ground to argue.”

Thomas Kuhn theorized and prophesized in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” that science is not merely an accumulation of facts. It is a body of knowledge determined by history and ever-changing intellectual fashions, so that even the most widely accepted beliefs about science are subject to dramatic paradigm shifts. Thus, the mainstream science to which Mr. Lynas now professes allegiance may have the last word on hunger. Climate change and ocean acidification may convert die-hard luddites blinded by bias and impoverished by ignorance.

Scientific creations promise to amplify the invasive species and GM food controversies with a shriller debate. Traditional ecologists and environmentalists are instigating a jihad against introduced species fearing "invasive species" as aggressive outsiders causing a global holocaust among natives. Hopefully these conservatives will consider that the diversity and spontaneity of new “immigrant” biological communities mirror our modern transformative society. Furthermore, the impacts of introduced species are a subjective value judgment rather than an objective scientific finding. Perhaps biased scientists should not be the arbitrators but rather an informed society, understanding science-based solutions, should make the decisions.

Technologies for GM foods offer dramatic solutions for meeting some of the 21st Century's greatest challenges. Like all new technologies, they also pose some risks, both known and unknown:

We know that in 2010, 15.4 million farmers planted 1 billion hectares of genetically modified GM crops in 29 countries.
We know that there are currently about 1 billion hungry and malnourished denizens on Planet Earth and without GM there would be many more.
We know that risks must be taken for the future since the alternative is the certainty of a human holocaust from starvation far exceeding innovation based upon fear.

The invasive species and GM debates are highly polarized, pitting good against evil, with little regard to the alternative of global starvation. Feeding the future, with the certitude of the devastating effects of climate change, will transform the economics of the agriculture and aquaculture industries to adopt competitive new technologies. Governments should consider policies for GM and immigrant super species to mitigate global starvation.

Modifying the Genome to Compete in a Changing World

Most of the 1 billion hectares of GM crops planted in 2010 were herbicide and insect-resistant soybeans, corn, cotton, canola, and alfalfa. Other crops grown commercially or field-tested are a sweet potato resistant to a virus that could decimate most of the African harvest, rice with increased iron and vitamins that may alleviate chronic malnutrition in Asian countries, and a variety of plants able to survive weather extremes. Although growth is expected to plateau in industrialized nations, it is increasing in developing countries. The next decade may see exponential progress in GM product development as researchers gain increasing and unprecedented access to genomic resources that are applicable to organisms beyond the scope of individual projects.

On the horizon are bananas that produce human vaccines against infectious diseases such as hepatitis B; fish that mature more quickly; cows that are resistant to mad cow disease; fruit and nut trees that yield years earlier, and plants that produce new plastics with unique properties.

Technologies for GM foods offer dramatic promise for meeting some of the 21st Century's greatest challenges. Like all new technologies, they also pose some risks, both known and unknown. Controversies surrounding GM foods and crops commonly focus on human and environmental safety, labeling and consumer choice, intellectual property rights, ethics, food security, poverty reduction, and environmental conservation.

The key areas of political controversy related to GM are food safety, the effect on natural ecosystems, gene flow into non-GM crops and corporate control of the food supply. While it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods, to date, no adverse health effects caused by products approved for sale have been documented.

Many agricultural scientists and food security specialists view GM crops as a critical element for sustainable food security and environmental management. Through selective breeding, farmers and scientists have a history of modifying animals to maximize desirable traits. In the broadest sense, genetic modification refers to changes in an organism’s genetic makeup not occurring in nature, including the production of conventional hybrids.

With the advent of modern biotechnology, it is now possible to take genes for a specific protein either from the same species or from an entirely different one and transfer it to create an organism expressing a novel trait or a trait outside the normal range of variation for the species. This technique can add both speed and efficiency to the development of new foods and products. Genetically engineered plant varieties, such as herbicide-resistant corn and soybeans, have already been widely adopted by U.S. farmers, and genetically engineered fish or seafood are similarly being adopted by the aquaculture industry.

Scientists are seeking ways to genetically engineer fish and other seafood species to introduce or amplify economically valuable traits. Fish are of particular interest to researchers since they are fecund and therefore produce large quantities of eggs, which are external to the animal making it relatively simple to insert novel DNA. Research on GM strains is currently under development for at least 35 species of fish worldwide, as well as for a variety of mollusks, crustaceans, plants, and marine microorganisms, for various purposes. Fish are being modified to increase food for human consumption, to produce pharmaceuticals, to test water contamination, and for other uses.

Male tilapia grows faster than females, female trout, salmon, and shrimp grow faster than males, and many species develop a bad taste with maturation of either males or females. The production of single sex groups of fish takes advantage of these differences. Administering appropriate hormones can change the phenotypic (apparent, physical) sex of many aquatic species. For example, genetically male tilapia can be turned into 'physical' females through hormone treatments. These genetic males, that are physically female, are then crossed with normal males to produce a group of all-male tilapia that grow faster. The genetically male tilapia can reproduce with other females but will lose the growth effect.

The shrimp genetic industry has developed “reproductively sterile, all-female shrimp for commercial culture. As selectively bred shrimp with elite genotypes become available for use to the global shrimp industry, the demand for a genetic protection strategy and method to produce all-female populations has never been so great.

The Climate Game Changer

Ocean acidification is one of the side effects of the rising concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere attributed to the burning of fossil fuels. The oceans can absorb enormous amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but as the gas dissolves it makes the water more acidic. Increasing acidity can make life difficult for corals and other marine organisms that build shells and skeletons out of calcium carbonate. It's going to change some of the dominant organisms in the oceans, and there's a very real danger that it may short-circuit the entire ocean food chain.

The invasive species and GM debate is highly polarized pitting good against evil with little regard to the facts. Contingency plans for feeding starving billions with the certainty of climate change will transform the agriculture and aquaculture industries in the future. This will have an exponentially greater impact than human activity for disrupting ecosystems and both GM and introduction of super species may be required to mitigate global starvation.

The challenge will be the selection and cultivation of more hardy aquatic species that can adapt, survive, and thrive in a future environment buffeted by extreme weather and transformed from climate change. Furthermore, “sustainability” should be the criterion for cultivation decisions and carry more weight than if the plant or animal is exotic or genetically engineered.