Not many, because there might not be that many people left.

The folks who have no access to commercial foods should be OK. They are living off the land anyway.

The folks who depend on others to produce food would be in a world of hurt. Hard to say whether that hurt would be making them hungry because of insufficient supply or whether they just couldn’t afford the additional price for organic foodstuffs. No doubt the supply will go down but here in the U.S. we tend to overproduce anyway.

Organic production (at least where I am located) requires 3 years of no applications of synthetic fertilizers or pesticides before the first organically certified crop can be planted.

That doesn’t mean the crop cannot be marketed though, but it does usually mean a substantial loss in yield for the first couple of years. After that, the yields actually aren’t that bad, maybe a 20–25% reduction. Right now the folks I know who do organic production are really happy with their corn and soybeans because the extra price more than compensates for the yield loss.

Another factor is the necessity to have buffer zones around organic fields but if everything is organic then I assume these would no longer be necessary.

One thing for sure, it takes more people to produce the same amount of corn and soybeans. Using cultivation instead of herbicide tolerant crops is going to mean more people sitting in tractor seats for longer periods of time. Crops that don’t require cultivation like wheat, barley, and rye would not have this problem.

Another thing might be the availability of suitable organic fertilizer. Where I live, we have a lot of chicken (broiler) houses. These produce a lot of fertilizer that is suitable for corn and wheat production. When I look at the availability for organic fertilizer components on a nationwide or worldwide basis though I am very concerned that there will be an insufficient supply to go 100% in 5 years. Less fertilizer means lower yields. Some of this could be alleviated by using legume covers, fallowing, crop alternation or even interplanting but many of these are going to result in lower yields on an area wide basis. Sufficient fertility over time is my greatest concern regarding supply if the world went 100% organic.

Right now we have a glut of corn and soybeans here in the U.S. (even with crazy politics aside). For a year or so the over production in storage would help slow the price increases but within 5 years I think that just about everything that had corn or soybeans in it (or was fed corn or beans as part of its diet) is going to cost a whole lot more.

Just take a look at the difference in price between organic meat and produce and the conventional products in the grocery right now. Take that difference in price and add it to everything in the store. It would be a major impact on many people’s diets.

It would be hard to say with certainty that reduced supplies would be so problematic that folks here in the U.S. would actually go hungry, but they would be paying a lot more for the food they had. Might solve the national obesity problem.

I suspect that places with a low carrying capacity for humans that currently get aid in the form of food shipments would be the first to feel the change, as surplus production would no longer exist.

Additionally, even modern countries which are net food importers are going to get hit hard. China might be really scary.

Just a few random thoughts.

If you got rid of all GMOs, you’d be getting rid of commercial-sized crops, (usually) meatier animals, and all modern processed foods. By all means, this is fine, but it’s not sustainable for large-scale communities. GMO is, on a basic level, as simple as breeding for a larger grain production. It doesn’t require science labs, just dedication and cultivators (ie. Anyone willing to grow the plant or manage the animals).

Like I said, this isn’t sustainable for large scale societies. For this to be effective, we’d have to revert to family owned farms that provide for our own family, likely with little excess. It’d be doable, but with capitalism as it is, it is unlikely that most working class people would be able to afford the land, seed, and stock needed to maintain life within a reasonable time period. Unless we saw the collapse of capitalism in the same time frame as your loss of GMOs, the lower half of the working class and most poverty level people would probably not survive long.

Short answer: no.

In fact, quite the opposite. The world produces more food than is required to feed the entire population, with some 25% surplus. The problem resides with distribution and waste.

Distribution: factor in time, fuel and infrastructure. You need the fuel to propel the trucks that run on the roads to the farms. The more farms, the more trucks, fuel and roads are needed, for the same quantity of produce. So, large, consolidated farms, managed for industrial scale production, burn less fuel and require less investment.

Large farms also have economies of scale. One large farm needs less labour and equipment, and is easier to manage sustainably, than the equivalent area divided into any number of smaller farms.

Take crop rotation: how do you coordinate what to plant across many small farms, so as to benefit the soil and increase productivity, with the market demands for specific crops? Don’t forget that every commercial farm runs on credit: the farmer borrows the money to buy the seed and fertiliser to plant a crop that has already been sold, to be paid upon harvest and delivery. Every farmer is betting on the market and the weather for at least four months into the future, so crop rotation sometimes becomes a lower priority. A big farm can roll with the punch, with variances across fields being mutually compensated.

Waste: again, time is a huge factor, complicated by piecemeal logistics. You want to harvest, you don’t want to store. Storage costs and, whenever you move produce from store to truck, you waste some. Even before the goods leave the farm, some 10% of the harvest is lost that way.

Then, every time you change transport modes - say from farm truck to silo, to railway car, to silo, to large trucks, into smaller silos at the distribution centre, into smaller trucks to destination - not counting the extra steps when the produce has to be processed, such as in the case of grains and most industrial tubers, you waste some more.

Fresh produce that goes to urban centres is even more manipulated, with further handling for display on supermarket shelves.

Waste accounts for between 20% to 50% of all that is harvested.

Fortunately, the market is transforming agriculture into an industrial activity. It is only when some new crop comes on line, such as palm oil for biofuels and vegan food and new ‘bio’ and ‘organic’ crap, that the demand for land clashes with our dire need to conserve natural resources and environments.

If we want more land, where is it coming from? We’d need to deforest and plow over wildlife refuges, and plunge the world further into global warming.

Instead, the fast increase in productivity, due to consolidation of farms and advances in agricultural technology, is causing vast tracts of former farm land to be devolved into forests and meadows.

To better feed the world, we need to further consolidate agriculture, remove all subsidies, improve logistics, and adopt new technology without fashionable fears.

Imagine how many years of progress we have lost, how many people we did not feed properly, because some idiots decided that genetically modified organisms were harmful. Some more imbeciles, and a sizeable portion of the same GMO Luddites, also decided that glyphosate was harmful, and forced populist countries to ban it outright.

Meanwhile, the ‘organic’ crowd keep on fostering waste with their posh fads. Same people who find subsistence farming cute. Subsistence farming - small, one family farms trying to grow everything - is the single biggest cause of slash-and-burn on the edges of the Amazon forest. If you look at the recent satellite pictures of the fires there, you see they are clustered in areas where the Brazilian government has promoted ‘agrarian reform’ in the past 18 years.

Conclusion: 99% of the inequality in food distribution, and all of the food insecurity still remaining in the world, are caused by populism and ignorance.

In 1998 Amartya Sen was given the Nobel Prize in Economics, largely for his work in demonstrating that famines are rarely caused by food shortages. They are usually an effect of either political strife or economic inequality.

The sad fact is that those who have the resources to purchase food, move it to where it needs to be, and distribute it equitably are almost invariably tied up in maintaining their own wealth. The governments over significant portions of our population are only really concerned with keeping control over their territory, and efforts to feed their population are often perceived as an invasion of that territory.

It's very, very difficult to require a government to maintain the welfare of its population. We don't even have that mandate in the United States, although it does seem that Europe is doing a bit better in that regard. The human ability to justify selfishness is overwhelming.

There are many answers to this question that I have investigated into that would take a lot of time to answer but I will give a little attention to three major issues.

The first issue is the will of the people. Until the issue it made such that it is the most important thing that we could achieve and that we must do it then other things will be more important. As Federico Garcia Lorca said, "The day hunger disappears, the world will see the greatest awakening humanity has ever seen." This is because people are not aware that humanity is them and they are not separate from it and that by creating the solution will enhance all of life. If we can put a man on the moon or build huge air craft carriers, we can end world hunger. It is all a matter of priority.

The second issue is to look at distribution. Are you aware that 50% of the food produced on the planet does not make it to market? There is enough food produced to feed the world 4 times over yet 42,000 a day starve and 14% of the world population has malnutrition. There are ways and means of distributing so that everyone has enough. If Amazon can get you 5 different articles from different suppliers in 2-3 days, then they have mastered the supply chain and logistics. Same can happen for food. There are inventions where food can be stored in a way that it does not perish right away and can be maintained for 4 months in a natural vacuum setting. There is lots of land that is not in use in a productive way where food can be grown on rotating crops with other crops that feed the soil and high yields can be attained. If education and centers of higher learning ere about solving the problem and put into action where we in turn teach other countries how to grow things with maximum yields and practices such as permaculture where the land is nurtured, we could do it.

The third issue is having corporatism and greed get out of the equation. For example in 1999 in Russia, where the growing season is very short because of the northern winter climate , 35 million small family plots or dachas produced 90% of the potatoes, 77% of the vegetables, 87% of the fruit, 59% of the meat, 49% of the milk so decentralizing from corporate big agri-farms with GMO’s and lots of pesticides back to people growing the food is one way to go. Since then they have been buying up huge plots of land and turning it into agribusiness raising prices so that people cannot afford a lot of the products, but the people had it covered before then.

Getting the World Bank and the IMF out of the equation where they create large debt and have never solved any of the food issues but have helped corporations acquire natural resources from those countries should be the first order of the day. So changing the monetary system to where life is valued not just for the few corporations and banks, but for everyone.

Until Humanity gets out of self-interest and makes hunger the number 1 priority we will never see change. If every human being has the right nutrition and fortitude and strength from eating proper meals everyday then much can be created and produced for what is best for all for everyone on the planet. So if people get away from worrying about Justin Bieber and the Kardashians and what they are wearing and put their focus on solving this problem, it can be attained within our lifetime. It is up to us.

I can understand that a lot of people think that we do not or can not produce enough food to feed 7 billion people.

In reality we have more than enough recourses to do so if feeding the world was the number one priority of all governments.

I produce a very large amount of food on a relatively small farm in South Africa but Most of that food does not get eaten by anyone because of market demand. If I cannot make a clear profit from selling my produce, then I do not take it to the market. So half the time it is not economically viable for me to harvest and sell, in which case that food is wasted or fed to the animals.

My point is that if we prioritise food security, and not waste it, we will be fine.

Conspiracy theories and government-bashing aside, one of the main reasons World Hunger exists is distribution: where food is and where it is needed do not overlap.

Where are the hungry? We often think of them as being in an area with drought, or freezing cold, or on a remote mountain, or deep in an urban jungle. In other words, areas where food isn't abundantly growing. We could bring them food, but that would require usable roads, a stable government and society that won't steal the food or otherwise terrorize the food-bearers, and a means of keeping the food fresh during the voyage. That's easy for certain foods, but not for others.

But even if we could instantly teleport food from, say, the United States to Somalia, should we? Absolutely not. The truth is that hunger tends to correlate with poverty, and we are increasingly aware that donations of food and clothes and toys and other things are causing poverty instead of eliminating it. How? Imagine you are a farmer growing food in Africa, or growing cotton and weaving clothes, and make a living selling or trading your products to locals. What happens when the market is flooded with free food and clothes from the West? People take the free items and won't buy your goods. You can't sell them, so you become poor. You may be a farmer with some food, but if you needed the money for medicine or education then what good is it? You may be a weaver with clothing, but if you can't buy food what good is it? Mindless donations destabilize already precariously-poised economies… in other words, we can fight hunger by investing in local economies and hoping governments in poor nations improve, rather than by throwing food at people.

While it's good to be mindful of the hungry when you have much food yourself, its more important to be mindful of those living in terrible countries or dictatorships or lawless regions while you enjoy a stable democracy… assuming you enjoy a stable democracy, that is.

INTRODUCTION

Global hunger remains a pressing challenge, with millions facing food insecurity. Genetically modified (GM) crops have emerged as a potential solution, offering a range of benefits that could significantly impact food production and availability. However, the role of GM crops in addressing global hunger is a complex issue with both potential advantages and significant challenges.

According to literature studies, commercial agriculture faces a multitude of challenges that threaten its ability to sustainably meet the growing global demand for food. One of the foremost issues is rapid population growth, which places immense pressure on agricultural systems to produce sufficient food. Current agricultural methods are inadequate to address future food insecurity and malnutrition on a global scale. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projects that 653 million people will remain undernourished by 2030 despite some progress in reducing world hunger. Furthermore, the growth rates of major global crops—soybean, maize, wheat, and rice—are significantly lower than the 2.4% annual growth rate required to meet the needs of the projected population in 2050. Studies show that these crops are growing at annual rates of 1.0%, 0.9%, 1.6%, and 1.3%, respectively, which falls short of the required benchmarks. Compounding this issue are crop diseases and pests, which persist as major threats despite advancements in integrated pest management and preventative techniques. Transboundary pest outbreaks continue to inflict substantial damage on agricultural yields, exacerbating food shortages.

Another critical challenge is the strain on natural resources driven by urbanization, industrialization, and climate change. Agricultural expansion is a leading cause of deforestation, accounting for 80% of global deforestation. Between 2000 and 2010, approximately 7 million hectares of natural forests were lost annually in tropical and subtropical regions due to agricultural activities. This deforestation not only disrupts ecosystems but also diminishes biodiversity and contributes to climate change. Additionally, water scarcity is becoming an increasingly urgent issue in agriculture. Agriculture accounts for 70% of global water withdrawals, severely depleting freshwater resources. The problem is particularly severe in arid regions such as the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, where agriculture consumes 80–90% of water resources. This unsustainable competition for water threatens both agricultural productivity and the availability of water for other essential uses.

CHALLENGES & CONSIDERATIONS:

1. Regulatory Hurdles: The development and commercialization of GM crops often face complex and lengthy regulatory processes, which can delay the introduction of beneficial technologies to farmers. In many developing countries, regulatory frameworks for GM crops are inadequate or non-existent, hindering access to these technologies.
2. Socioeconomic Concerns: Concerns exist about the control of GM seeds by multinational corporations, which can limit access and affordability for smallholder farmers. The benefits of GM crops may not be evenly distributed, potentially exacerbating existing inequalities between large and small-scale farmers.
3. Environmental Concerns: There are concerns about the potential for gene flow from GM crops to wild relatives, which could have unintended ecological consequences. The use of certain GM crops, such as those expressing insecticidal proteins, could have unintended impacts on beneficial insects and other non-target organisms.
4. Public Perception and Acceptance: In some regions, there is a lack of trust in GM technology due to concerns about safety and potential risks. Misinformation and negative perceptions about GM crops can hinder their adoption and utilization.

To fully realize the potential of GM crops in addressing global hunger, it is crucial to:

• Develop and implement robust regulatory frameworks that should ensure the safety and environmental soundness of GM crops while facilitating timely access to these technologies.
• Promote inclusive and equitable efforts should be made to ensure that smallholder farmers, particularly in developing countries, have access to and benefit from GM crop technologies.
• Conduct rigorous scientific research to continue addressing potential risks and develop GM crops that are safe, effective, and environmentally sustainable.
• Engaging in open communication and dialogue among scientists, policymakers, farmers, and the public is essential to building trust and addressing concerns about GM crops.
• GM crops should be integrated into broader agricultural strategies that promote sustainable land use, soil health, and biodiversity conservation.

BENEFITS OF GM CROPS:

• Pest and Disease Resistance: GM crops can be engineered to resist specific pests and diseases, reducing crop losses and increasing yields (e.g. Bt cotton, expressing a bacterial gene that produces an insecticide, has significantly reduced the use of harmful pesticides in many countries).
• Herbicide Tolerance: Herbicide-tolerant crops allow farmers to control weeds more effectively, leading to increased crop yields and reduced reliance on manual labor.
• Improved Stress Tolerance: GM crops can be developed to withstand environmental stresses such as drought, salinity, and extreme temperatures, enabling cultivation in challenging conditions and increasing overall productivity.
• Enhanced Nutritional Value: This GM rice variety is enriched with beta-carotene, a precursor to vitamin A, which is crucial for vision and immune function. It has the potential to combat vitamin A deficiency, a major public health issue in developing countries.
• Biofortification: GM crops can be engineered to increase the levels of essential nutrients like iron, zinc, and vitamins, improving the nutritional quality of staple foods and addressing micronutrient deficiencies.
• Reduced Pesticide Use: As mentioned earlier, pest-resistant GM crops can significantly reduce the need for chemical pesticides, minimizing environmental pollution and improving the health of farmers and consumers.
• Conservation Agriculture: GM crops can be integrated into sustainable agricultural practices, such as conservation tillage and cover cropping, to improve soil health and reduce erosion.
• Improved Food Security: By increasing yields and expanding cultivation areas, GM crops can contribute to increased food availability, particularly in regions facing food shortages. Increased and more stable food production can help stabilize food prices, making food more accessible and affordable for vulnerable populations.

CONCLUSION:

In summary, the challenges facing commercial agriculture are multifaceted and interconnected. Rapid population growth, inadequate crop yield growth, persistent pest and disease pressures, and unsustainable resource use collectively hinder the ability of agriculture to meet future food demands. These issues underscore the urgent need for innovation, sustainable practices, and international cooperation to ensure global food security.

GM crops offer a range of potential benefits in addressing global hunger, including increased yields, enhanced nutritional value, and reduced environmental impact. However, significant challenges remain, including regulatory hurdles, socioeconomic concerns, and environmental risks. By addressing these challenges through a combination of scientific research, policy development, and public engagement, we can harness the potential of GM crops to create a more food-secure and sustainable future for all.

Forcing a farmer in Norfolk UK to give up organic cabbages in favour of cabbages grown with synthetic fertiliser which will produce more cabbages per acre temporarily, but which command a lower price, and may not completely sell out because the demand for the extra cabbages is not there, may bankrupt him, but will do nothing useful to help people in areas of the world where there are food shortages. They would cost more to grow and transport than the people in those countries could possibly afford to pay, and they don’t travel well anyway.

People who own and run farms are running a business. They are trying to make the best profit they can without running foul of any of the food safety, environmental protection or animal welfare laws that govern what they are allowed to do. I do not think it is appropriate to shove the problems of global food distribution on to their shoulders as well, because make no mistake, we already produce more than enough food to feed everybody on the planet with plenty to spare. The problems are with storage and distribution. I can’t see any way in which growing and selling things that people want to buy is more selfish than growing things that people don’t want to buy as much.

Absolutely

But it is not just human health that is effected. Much worse is the ecosystem health and particularly soil health. We are quite literally poisoning the land and purposely killing the ecosystems on about 1/2 the land surface of the planet

Already about 1/3 the surface area of the formerly productive farmland has been degraded beyond what can be used for crop production. The remaining 2/3 rds is between 30%-70% degraded on average and the fertility is dropping rapidly. Of course yields are still rising due to chemical use and better breeding techniques. However, the handwriting is on the wall. Already we have reached the point of diminishing returns. To get those higher yields requires ever more dangerous agrichemical use …. which in turn degrades the land even more …. which requires even yet again higher agrichemical use … and so on and so forth. It’s a vicious trap.

Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues

The most modern scientific organic methods can get out of the trap. Yields increase without degrading the land. But it requires a far more intelligent and educated farmer than currently found most places. You can’t go back to “olden days” and “subsistence organic” and expect to feed today’s modern world. It takes learning about the most advanced systems and them adapting them to a farmer’s unique local conditions.

Here is just one example from USA

Here is another from India (via Madagascar):

India's rice revolution – audio slideshow

Footnotes

All of the answers so far seem to have the same failing:

They don’t understand what Permaculture is (and is not).

Permaculture is not a system for growing food.

It is a design philosophy for undertaking any project in a sustainable manner, or if you will:

Thinking tools, that when used together, allow us to creatively re-design our environment and our behavior in a world of less energy and resources

Permaculture Design Principles

It can be boiled down to three ethics and 12 design principles.

Three ethics:

1. Earth care – care for the living soil, do not deplete its fertility
2. People care – look after ourselves, our families, our neighbours, our communities
3. Fair share – set limits to our consumption and redistribute surplus

Through the ethics, self-interest is regulated and the likelihood of negative outcomes reduced.

Twelve design principles:

1. Observe and interact – engage with nature both passively (observe) and actively (interact)
2. Catch and store energy – develop systems that collect resources when they are abundant, so that we can use them in times of need
3. Obtain a yield – ensure that your effort results in truly useful rewards
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback – adapt your design to emerging circumstances; systems are dynamic and never ‘finished’
5. Use and value renewable resources and services – self-explanatory, I think!
6. Produce no waste – value and use all resources, create circular systems
7. Design from patterns to details – start with the big picture, then refine
8. Integrate rather than segregate – the elements of a system should support each other, rather than being stand-alone
9. Use small and slow solutions – small systems make better use of local resources and are easier to adapt; don’t commit too many resources to a new project too quickly
10. Use and value diversity – diversity creates resilience to adversity and uses resources more fully
11. Use edges and value the marginal – interfaces tend to be productive and diverse
12. Creatively use and respond to change – progress is not linear

The text in italics is my attempt to interpret each principle concisely.

There is much to be said about each of these principles – books to be written about each one, in fact. In this highly distilled form, they’re a useful checklist to run through when designing any project, whether setting up a business or re-imagining a community.

tl;dr

If we applied Permaculture principles rigorously, we would indeed eliminate world hunger.

To give a few examples:

• Most food poverty is caused by distribution failures. (violates ethic 3)
• We are destroying the world’s topsoils. (violates ethic 1, principle 6)
• Biodiversity is decreasing. (violates principle 10)
• Resources (e.g. water) are being hoarded rather than shared fairly. (violates ethic 3)
• Linear thinking (e.g. on biofuels) produces perverse outcomes (violates principles 4 and 12)

It is not beyond our wit to design sustainable, self-regulating systems. However, it appears to be beyond our will, as a civilisation.

Suggesting – or denying – that creating Permaculture-inspired food forests and small-holdings could ‘feed the world’ massively misses the whole point of Permaculture.

Food production systems do not exist in isolation and it’s our stubborn insistence that they do which lies at the root of the whole sorry mess.

Fascinating question.

First off, one has to point out that there isn't actually too little food being produced globally (at least right now), it's just that it's in the wrong places, a lot is being wasted, and yet more is in relatively inefficient forms (like meat).

Most starving people actually being in Africa as of today and the most significant increase in population driving the demand for more calories being there as well, the first objective for Africa will be to feed itself.

But in theory, it probably could.

Africa has a lot of untapped potential in agriculture:

• There are significant productivity reserves. Take as an example this study by the Ghanaian ministry of agriculture that tallies the average crop yields across the country under rainfed conditions:

Notice that for the majority of the crops, production per hectare could be doubled, tripled, even quadrupled, and that is not taking into account any heavy technical input (six tonnes of maize per hectare is just over the global yield average, but the most advanced countries like the US, France or Italy average 9 or 10, and the recordholder in Iowa apparently reached yields of over 20).

And this is in a country like Ghana that is not the one with the least developed agriculture.

So on average, yields could be pushed up significantly, and Africa as a whole could probably double or triple its production with its current cultivated surface by changing and intensifying its methods.

• There is a lot of non-cultivated, arable land. This of course depends on the country even more heavily than the yields - a relatively small but super-densely populated country like Rwanda doesn't have much space left. The Congo has lots. It's rather likely that over the entire continent on average, you could increase cultivated surfaces by something like 100%. Combine that with our previous assumption of productivity increases, it means Africa could produce four to six times more than it currently does.
• There is no mechanisation. Now, the impact there is not so much the yield per hectare as the yield per farmer and hence isn't necessarily a priority, or even a good thing, as long as there are plenty of people around to do the farming and aren't really qualified to do anything else; But as the next step, it could probably add a bit on top, let's say 25%, bringing the total increase to five to seven times the current production.

At this point, we haven't quite made a hard choice between organic and conventional methods. By default, they are less aggressive to the environment in small farms in Africa simply because these farmers don't have the money to put the large quantities of fertiliser on their crops the Americans or Europeans do.

A meta study by UC Berkeley on the yields of organic agriculture vs. conventional agriculture found that the average difference across all the crops they looked at was around 19% (in favour of conventional), but also noted that a lot of the studies analysed were biased in favour of it and that certain practices, specifically multi-cropping and crop rotation, which happen to be common in most of African smallholder agriculture, can reduce the gap to less than 10%.

That's not that much, and given the potential increase we just found, the lower yield of organic farming doesn't actually make a huge difference.

So theoretically Africa should be able to become the breadbasket of the world (or at least of itself, for a start).

Production is not the only issue though:

• Logistics need to be taken care of. Due to bad roads and an atomised, unorganised transportation market with not always reliable suppliers, it's not that easy and often expensive and risky to actually bring crops to the seaports for export.
• Standards and norms. To export to Europe for example, you need certifications proving the quality of your production processes and those are often too expensive and too complicated especially for small farmers to acquire. This is only going to get more difficult as other geographies will continuously tighten their quality requirements as well.
• Market linkage. The exporters have few direct links to the producers, leading to unstable supply and frequent over- or under-supply of various crops due to lack of communication and stable links.
• Pre-processing and/or packaging. This is essential for African countries to capture more value and should help with the linkage gap.

There is nothing wrong with GM crops. It is a faster (than wind blown or insect carried pollen) way to do plant breeding and select for traits that improve yield, disease resistance or drought tolerance.

What is not is a magic bullet instantaneously solves crop production problems. Scientists might be able to use GM technology to identify genes that regulate yield but many times that gene is closely interconnected to 1, 10, 100 or 1,000 other traits and they have to figure out how to tweak one without scrambling another.

It's a bit like cancer research. Just because doctors know with 99% certainty that the protein brachyury is responsible for a type of cancer called Chordoma, which I have, does not yet mean they have identified what makes that protein go haywire and cause cancer. And it doesn't mean that can just grab a drug to kill bracyury without messing up 100 other metabolic systems in the human body.

Plants are just as complex / miraculous as animals so it takes a lot of research time and effort to get the results we want. But if using science and GM technology allows us to cut the time required to find answers from 50 years to 15, shouldn't we try?the agriculture industry has been using GMO pants for almost 50 years and we are still trying to boost crop yields, cut disease losses and improve drought tolerance.

Someday…

Yes, but it would take a radical change in the way we handle food production. Permaculture, as we are reminded time and again in the literature, is a low energy, high human labor system (as opposed to high energy, low human labor of current mechanized and broadscale agriculture). This means that many more people need to be farming to have the output that is necessary.

Some figures from the United States state that currently around 1 in 50 people farms. From some rough calculations, in the United States, about 1 in 10 people would need to be farming using permaculture to make it happen. That requires a 5 fold increase from where we are now.

This number is based on the work of Peter Bane, Steve Solomon, and others who state that we can raise all of an individual's food on 1/10 to 1/3 of an acre, and that a single person can farm no more than about 2 acres on their own with permaculture.

No, they aren´t. They will help but will not solve the problem.

The main idea on genetic modified foods is to create more resistant and more productive crops, so we can produce more and at a lower cost, enabling the producers to profit more.

(notice the part where I say "lower cost" and "profit more", and that i didn´t mentioned "world hunger")

The main problem on world hunger is not that we don´t produce enough food (at least not nowadays), is that the produced food does not arrive all mouths that need to be fed and a high percent of it get spoiled.

Even if you double food production, maybe some more get available to people, but still without improving distribution, improving equality on access to it and better distribution, we still will have too much waste on some parts of the world and almost nothing reaching the other parts.

Because GMOs are not the only answer, and we have some troubles with the way GMOs operate that make it harder to use them to help the poorest people on the planet.

GMOs actually have done A LOT to help secure food for impoverished countries. Golden rice is the gold-standard for how to use GMOs to help people who need food. However, as helpful as they have been, there is a limit to what GMOs can do when the market provides perverse incentives - the market demands that food producers take food from the hungry and sell it to those who already have more than enough food, because those who have more than enough food have been shown, time and time again, to be willing to pay for excess.

And by “those who have more than enough” I mean me, and people like me. I live in Canada, which is one of those countries that can and does import food from food insecure countries. Way, way more of it than we could possibly ever eat. Why? Because marketing. It’s not even because we actually want it - it’s because grocery stores have found that we’re more likely to spend more money if the shelves are overflowing with product. This sounds ridiculous (because it is), but it’s a problem harder to solve than you might think because we, as consumers, don’t really have actual control over that sort of behaviour. Our reaction to the overflowing shelves is completely subconscious, and it’s hard as hell to counteract that.

The whole point of capitalism is to maximize profits. And we know for a fact that the best way to do that is to manipulate the customer’s subconscious with overflowing shelves because the extra spending that it causes provides more than enough profit to counteract the excess food waste. And no matter how much we bemoan the idea that it’s sad that there are hungry people in the world, nothing is going to change this until we fix the fact that our world operates on a system where the primary incentive is profit over everything else, no matter how heinous that becomes.

Not really no. That study you referenced has a tiny keyhole level of relevance. It can not be generalized to include all organic food as the journalist improperly declares.

There are some general things we can say about organic, but the types of things they say in the study are not really applicable in general terms. For example they proclaim

“The reason why organic food is so much worse for the climate is that the yields per hectare are much lower, primarily because fertilisers are not used.”

Now wait a minute. That is not a characteristic of organic agriculture in general. It can take decades before organic methods have healed the land enough to dramatically reduce fertilizer use. Sure there are a few that have been doing this 30 years or more that no longer need any fertilizer at all, but that is the exception, not the rule. Trying to take just any old field and one day out of the blue deciding it will be “organic” so no fertilizers needed is a guaranteed path to failure. We use manure, green manure, cover crops and compost to fertilize until the carbon in the soil gets high enough that we no longer need any fertilizers.

And now you know why the primary premise of the study is flawed. They did not include soil carbon into their calculations either. This indeed is a primary general characteristic of all organic farming and gardening, increased soil carbon.

Northeastern’s Own Organic Breakthrough – NU Sci

And where did that carbon come from? You guessed it, CO2 from the atmosphere. Any study neglecting this is automatically so flawed as to be unusable.

There are more flaws too. For example this gem is so wrong as to be laughable.

"Because organic meat and milk production uses organic feed-stock, it also requires more land than conventional production.”

Really? This completely ignores the whole carbon cycle! All that tends to show is that factory farming with organic feed-stock (is this even a thing?), and supplied by novice farmers who just converted old degraded conventional fields recently, show no benefit. WTF? They are not even smart enough to use the manure as fertilizer from their own animals? Since good pasture is as much as 5 to 10 times higher in primary biomass yields over any cropping system, explain why any organic farmer would be foolish enough to spend all that money on feedstock? It’s a ridiculous assumption. Organic farmers in general use culls, crop residue, waste, food scraps etc whenever possible. Further, pasture is net negative carbon footprint. Actually increasing its use means reducing carbon in the atmosphere. We really don’t need to increase the land use, but even if we did, it would yield a net negative footprint!

For a more rational analysis look here:

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1307/6/24/242048/pdf

and here:

https://www.savory.global/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/restoring-the-climate.pdf

and here:

Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues

Oh and BTW to show their original premise that organic farming requires more land is also completely wrong:

https://rodaleinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/fst-30-year-report.pdf

All that study proves is that farming is a skilled occupation and although scientists think they are smart, I’ll take any farmers knowledge in the real world over a scientist that has no clue of even the most basics in organic methodology.

Bottom line is this. Organic farming as a general rule sequesters carbon in the soil. Conventional farming doesn’t. Therefore organic farming has a much superior carbon footprint. There may be isolated exceptions, but this applies overall.

I would point out though, the analysis they made about biofuels is spot on correct. So while the study does have flaws, the tool they developed to analyze biofuels worked out great. So the study still has value anyway.

Can we feed 10 billion people on organic farming alone ...

Sustainable business | The Guardian...

Aug 14, 2016 · Still, organic farming has been shown to create more jobs and reduce farm workers’ exposure to pesticides and other chemicals. Organic farming can help to both feed the world and preserve wildland.

• Author: John Reganold

Can organic farming stop world hunger? - Capital Current

https://capitalcurrent.ca/.../2015/03/27/can-organic-farming-stop-world-hunger

Mar 27, 2015 · Generally speaking, organic farming takes place on a smaller scale, with more diverse crops and less agrochemicals. This means that soil erosion and water table pollution is less of a problem. Crop diversity, or planting several different varieties of plant side-by-side means less risk of disease and greater nutrients in the soil.

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Organic Agriculture Can Feed the World - Regeneration ...

10/22/2018 - Regeneration International...

Oct 22, 2018 · Organic agriculture is a viable solution to preventing global hunger because: It can achieve high yields. It can achieve these yields in the areas where it is needed most. It has low inputs. It is cost-effective and affordable. It provides more employment so …

Sustainable Agriculture is the Key to Ending Hunger - Impakter

Sustainable Agriculture is the Key to Ending Hunger - Impakter

• How Big Is World Hunger?
• Progress in The Fight to End Hunger
• The United States’ Collaborative Approach
• How Can We Adapt?
• Focusing Agricultural Development Projects

The current world population of 7.3 billion is expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050. Today, nearly 800 million people, or one in nine, are undernourished. By 2050, that number could grow by two billion. Most of the world’s hungry live in developing countries, where 13 percent of people face undernourishment. Asia faces the greatest hunger burden, with two-thirds of its population suffering from undernourishment. In Sub-Saharan Africa, on…

See more on impakter.com

• Published: Oct 09, 2017
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It can’t feed the entire world right now, as there are just too many of us. I do believe though, that if we can figure it out, then that would be the answer to feeding everyone. Right now, I grow my own garden every summer. My plan is to eventually have a greenhouse so that I can produce fresh produce for myself year-round.

Organic farming is quite labor-intensive, and I am hoping to see the day when all city buildings have rooftop gardens. It would be a great idea to hire people who are unemployed to do the cultivation.

Present-day agriculture makes use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to produce the high yields needed for feeding everyone. So far its been doing the job, but it isn’t sustainable. That is why we need to move food production to organics. It will be better for us, and for the planet too.

Do you believe in GMOs?

Yes, GMOs exist. Hell they’ve existed for tens of thousands of years. We’ve been modifying plants since we started agriculture. We’ve just got very good at it and will get even better in the future.

Do you think it’s only way is to end world hunger?

No. Currently we produce enough food to end world hunger. Sure it uses many GMO crops but as I said we’ve been genetically modifying plants and even animals for thousands of years. There really isn’t any going back now. They are part of our Ecosystem.

The end to world hunger requires a change in mindset and willingness to do what should be done not to just grow more crops.

Even though the crop loses its nutritious value after being modified?

Do you believe that GMOs are always less nutritious?

Cassava is now iron, protein, vitamin A and amino acid bio-fortified.

Rice, beans, and sweet potato are now iron and zinc bio-fortified.

We bio-fortify rice, beans, potatoes, legumes, cassava, bananas, corn, wheat, sorghum and many other plants to boost iron, zinc, protein, vitamin A, amino acid, and many more nutrients.

It is intellectually dishonest to insinuate that crops lose nutritional value if they are genetically modified.

No, nothing could be done about it due to the system.

You notice how nice the fruits and vegetables look at the store? That’s because of the market anything that doesn’t look nice doesn’t make it to the store. Surprising 1/5 to 1/4 of this is trashed. Not to be sold. Another aspect is destitution. Many times the food given doesn’t end up where intended or at least most of it. Price control is another issue. I remember when my grandfather was paid a nice check to not grow anything. So the prices of goods wouldn’t drop due to over stocking perishable goods. There is enough food grown every year even with those paid not to grow to feed the world. But POWER and GREAD get in the way. To you and me that is basically a sin. But to the powerful it’s just businesses. Run by people that care more about money than human lifes. Unfortunately due them running the show there is little to nothing we can do. Other then offer handouts. That do help and help good. the 0.1% of those in need. Thus even though we have the food to feed them already. 90 to 98% of it will never touch human mouths. It doesn’t make profits. Sorry but that’s the world we live in.

The crops do not lose their nutritional value after being modified. Some crops gain nutritional value, while others gain a resistance to insects, but the major modifications seem to be the resistance to herbicides. That doesn’t change the nutritional value of the crop, but it does mean that more chemicals are used during growing and harvesting. Some people have expressed concerns that changes other than the ones desired may affect nutrition by affecting portions of the DNA strands other than the targeted areas; scientists have responded by creating smaller, more targeted packets for transferring genetic material. Some projects have been halted because it was discovered that certain proteins transferred into peas and beans caused allergies.

That’s the point, really. Not all modifications are useful or healthy. Monitoring keeps the unhealthy ones from going forward.

There are a number of benefits to be derived from GM plants, among them increased nutrition (Golden Rice Project), increased yield (virus resistant papayas), and the need for fewer pesticides (Bt crops). There are also a number of plants being developed that can produce vaccines, a less expensive and more accessible process than expensive manufacturing which may be especially useful in less developed countries.

GM crops have potential for good as well as harm, and they need to be tested and monitored carefully, but so far, the benefits seem to outweigh the dangers.

Genetically modified plants and human health

GMOs and Human Health | BestFoodFacts.org

With the knowledge we currently have, we could likely speed up the growth cycle somewhat. We’ve already done so to some extent through selective breeding. That’s why we have short-season varieties of various vegetables and grains.

I don’ think we could make it “super fast”, at least not at present.

I do question whether making plants grow faster would end world hunger. Aside from the plants, there are other elements of growth that would either not keep up with supper fast plants, or to which superfast plants would do harm. Soil fertility and the availability of water come to mind.

Hunger is also a much more complex phenomena than any one scientific advance can end.

Thank for asking such a tricky question. I would love to answer.

Organic Farming is nothing but one type of agriculture production system, which is practices since time immemorial. Farming is closely associated with human civilization on the planet earth. Organic farming has so many other names like natural farming, substantial farming, primitive farming, zero budget farming, ecosystem farming, etc.

Modern Agriculture based on heavy use of agrochemical, for targeted production, which in turns make our soil dead, unfertile and unproductive.

Why modern agriculture came in to picture?

To feed our ever increasing population, use of science and technology was but obvious. And agricultural practitioner used all the tools and techniques available during these days. Use of agrochemical starts during 19th century with the invent of essential minerals/ elements requires for plant growth and development. Vis-a-vis , with the formulations and use of Urea, an essential nitrogenous fertilizer. The use of new and innovative technologies are continuing and due to some faulty and inappropriate use of moderate agrochemicals resultend are widespread.

With these background, can Organic farming able to feed us ?

My answer is yes of-course beyond doubts. Since so many years has been taken to denature our mother land to this extent, its may be time taking process but it will be doable. Since all the agrochemical were formulated from the material's available on the planet earth, no extraterrestrial material's and technologies has been used since the beginning of human civilization.

In this regard needs of hours is

Proper policy and planning

Systematic approach

Par-excellence execration

Of gradual conversion of our agriculture in natural or so called organic farming.

This will not happens overnight

Our patience will be tested by mother nature by various ways and means during the course of conversion.

This will bound to happens

The success mantra for come in to natural way of farming and leaving with nature are

Dedication

Determination

Devotion

Jai Hind

First we show sympathy on hungry Nations and donate food grains by the rich Nations and developed Countries on human grounds . We,the people should help transport the food grains to needy Hungary African Countries by developed Nations of the World.

And so many African Countries are suffering for food grains.

There are arid and semi -arid zones in African Countries. The rich developed Countries should provide Reasearch in Agriculture.

In my point of view in African Countries should grow millets.These are short duration and require less rain fall.The following crops should be taken into consideration to grow cereals .

1. Sorghum
2. Pearl millet.
3. Finger millet.
4. Foxtail millet.
5. Baranyard millet.
6. Proso millet.
7. Browntop millet .These millets help hungry people and even in hardiest conditions also get some crop yeilds.