This chapter continues the investigation of current and future food supply issues by reference to the promises and problems of genetically modified foodstuffs. It also briefly touches upon issues of life patents as ‘driving forces’ of such genetic modification.

The promise

In their book Reshaping Life: Key Issues in Genetic Engineering, distinguished biological researchers G. J. V. Nossal and Ross Coppel (2002, p. 148, pp. 152–3) argue that feeding ‘increasing numbers of people on the planet’ is ‘probably the greatest problem facing humanity’. They refer to the ‘impressive achievements’ of science in increasing crop yield in past decades, including ‘the green revolution which has allowed global food production to keep up with an expanding population’ which ‘rests on a disciplined and institutionalised, ever-changing research base’ and ‘the doubling of yield in the US over the last 40 years’. But they say that ‘most experts believe that the conventional methods of improvement in yield of food crops have gone about as far as they can’.