This house believes that biotechnology and sustainable agriculture are complementary, not contradictory.ENTER THIS DEBATE
What do you think?
Voting at a glance
Representing the sides
The number of people on Earth is expected to increase from the current 6.7 billion to 9 billion by 2050. How will we feed them? Genetically engineered crops will play an important role.
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Biotechnology is not a system of farming. It reflects no specific philosophy nor is it guided by a set of principles or performance criteria. It is a bag of tools than can be used for good or evil, and lots in between.
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About this debate
For years advocates of agricultural biotechnology, notably genetically modified (GM) crops, have been at loggerheads with proponents of organic farming and other sustainable farming techniques. GM and organic are regarded as opposite ends of the farming spectrum. The former is usually characterised as high-tech, dominated by large seed companies and favouring large-scale industrial farming; the latter is seen as more traditional, less dominated by corporate interests and favouring small farms.
But the two camps have much in common. Trying to produce higher yields while using fewer chemicals, the aim of much GM research, is also the aim of organic farming. Both camps are looking for new ways to produce food that minimise environmental impact, can cope with climate change and can be scaled across the developing world. So it seems reasonable that advocates of sustainable agriculture should be open to the use of GM technology to achieve these aims, while fans of the high-tech approach should concede that they can learn a lot from traditional agricultural practices. Is it possible for these very different approaches to work together, or are the differences in philosophy too great to be overcome?