Week #4 - Are GMOs Increasing the Price of Food?
Top Consumer Questions about GMOs
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While the cost of food is impacted by various factors (the price of oil affects transportation costs; temperature changes can cause drought; etc.), GMOs play an important role in keeping those prices as low as possible. It’s estimated that corn-based products would be priced 6 percent higher and soybean-based products would be 10 percent higher if GM crops were not grown, according to a 2010 study by Graham Brookes et al.
But what role, exactly, does biotech play in the cost of food?
We reached out to Graham, who is an agricultural economist at PG Economics Ltd., U.K., to explain more about the complicated topic of food cost and explore the role GMOs play in the global food economy.
Key points from Graham’s response include:
- "The [GM] technology adopted to date has largely been productivity-enhancing and cost-reducing technology. This means additional global production has arisen from use of the technology, equal to an extra 122 million tonnes of soybeans, 237 million tonnes of corn, 18 million tonnes of cotton lint and 6.6 million tonnes of canola in the period 1996–2012.”
- “[T]he real price of food and feed products has fallen consistently during the last 50 years. This has come about not ‘out of the blue’ but from enormous improvements in productivity by producers. These productivity improvements have arisen from the adoption of new technologies and techniques.”
Read his full response here.
Other experts have weighed in with their perspectives on this issue—take a look!
- If gmos are the answer to the food shortages why do food prices keep going up?
Answered by Stuart Smyth: http://gmoanswers.com/ask/if-gmos-are-answer-food-shortages-why-do-food-prices-keep-going - Since all stages of GMO conventional agriculture heavily rely on petroleum, how will this affect the price of food and environmental pollution in the long term?
Answered by Janet Carpenter: http://gmoanswers.com/ask/all-stages-gmo-conventional-agriculture-heavily-rely-petroleum-how-will-affect-price-food-and
