Introduction

The issue of genetically modified organisms, especially food, is an extraordinarily contentious one in contemporary society. The world as a whole, as well as individual countries, have had heated debates in an effort to establish whether GMO foods are safe for human consumption or not. As a result, some regions have placed permanent bans, others placing moratorium bans, while the rest allowing GMO foods to supplement food production. A lot of evidence that GMO food is beneficial exists. Its effects, on the other hand, remain as aspects of speculation with minimum to zero scientific proof. Therefore, the world should allow the production of GMO food to avert some of the food-related challenges it is facing.

The constant growth of the world’s population has put excessive strain on land resources that provide water and croplands for the production of food. Consequently, the ever-increasing population has led to urbanization, which depletes and reduces croplands (Qaim, 2016). As a result, the demand for food has risen which calls for additional water and arable land to sustain food security. This has become a challenge in the current world. The state of food security, which is defined as the availability of nutritious, safe, and sufficient food at everyone’s reach, is dire. Instead, the population increase has made one in every seven people around the world to lead inactive and unhealthy lives because of lacking food and being chronically hungry. The adoption of GMO foods offers an amenable solution to this challenge. With it, people can have ready economic, physical, and social access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food at all times. Thus, the production of genetically engineered foods is the answer to the world’s problem of high population growth.

Increased population, typically which leads to insufficient food production, causes poverty. Food is a basic need meaning that poor people spend most if not all of their income on food. Consequently, poor people are vulnerable to high food prices, especially since the cost of food production has also gone high (Qaim, 2016). At the same time, farming is usually the immediate source of income for those struggling with poverty. Nonetheless, the world is currently witnessing a decline in agricultural output, leaving the poor with nothing to survive on. In other words, anything that revolves around food production has the potential to either make poor people poorer or improve their living standards due to the direct relationship between food security and poverty reduction. Since GMO foods have the ability to enhance food production and as a result food security, it also carries an overwhelming potential to eliminate poverty (Qaim, 2016). Rather than live in a deplorable state characterized by chronic hunger, poor health, and inactivity, poor people can immensely benefit from genetically engineered food.

The contemporary world is also marred with environmental stresses such as global warming that has significantly interfered with food production. Many parts of the world, which highly depend on farming, are experiencing episodes of heavy rains leading to floods, as well as droughts, excessive heat, salty or acidic soils, and frost that have made the survival of plants impossible. The outcome of these adverse climatic conditions is decreased food production (Hunt & Wald, 2018). This, in turn, leads to increased rates of poverty and disease burden due to a high population of unhealthy people. Production of genetically modified foods is the only solution to this problem that the entire world faces. This is because they are resistant to both diseases and pests and can also tolerate herbicides used to kill weeds. In simple terms, embracing GMO foods can supplement food production, thereby ensuring that the entire population of the world has safe, healthy, and nutritious food that satisfies their dietary needs. According to Hunt & Wald (2018), climatic conditions will be a non-issue with genetically engineered foods since their genes can be modified to suit any external conditions.

High population growth, which is the primary cause of food insecurity because of contributing to climatic stresses and poverty, continues to strain many people’s access to nutritious foods (Maghari & Ardekani, 2017). Having access to nutritious foods or food that meets one’s dietary needs is part of what defines food security. Therefore, people who cannot obtain nutritious foods are also considered food insecure (Gibson, 2012). A significant percentage of these people are the poor who do not have the privilege to choose what they can eat but eat what they find. However, this scenario exists only because the world has let it. Embracing genetically modified foods is a step that can easily solve this challenge since GMOs enable the production of crops or food that contain additional nutrients. Thus, people including the poor can access nutritious food even if it is only a single type. As a result, the world will have eliminated a huge disease burden since most of the contemporary illnesses emanate from lifestyle and dietary elements (Maghari & Ardekani, 2017). Simply, the world will have solved two critical challenges by embracing genetically engineered foods for their nutritional purposes.

The last critical factor to consider as a benefit of GMO are the resources that different economies will save or direct to other sectors. On a global scale, the world pumps trillions into food production despite millions of people going without food every day. However, the past century has seen improved food production that outpaces the population growth of the world. This does not mean that every person has access to nutritious and healthy food yet (Rose et al, 2019). Rather, this transformation can only be sustained when people embrace genetic food production worldwide. The costs of food production can go lower with people embracing GMOs as a supplementary food source. This is because the challenges in food production extend to the health sector and beyond. Yet with the current climatic stresses, if it is impossible to produce enough food for everyone. GMO food whether healthy for people or not, but GMO used to solved it.

Thus, people have resorted to the use of excessive pesticides and herbicides that pose health risks to consumers. Also, the use of these herbicides and pesticides have immensely increased the cost of food production since governments have to put in extra efforts to ensure food security (Rose et al, 2019). Since GMO crops are more resistant to such external conditions than the current types of crops, they could save the world a fortune if people developed a positive attitude towards them. These resources could then be used in other sectors that are also struggling, such as healthcare. However, people on the other side of the debate pose one legitimate concern; that lack of evidence of harm is not proof that genetically modified foods are safe. This is because society or rather scientists have not invented a standard method for measuring these perceived risks (Hilbeck et al, 2015). As a result, techniques of weighing the risks are relative, leaving the issue to opinionated conclusions since there is no outline of what constitutes acceptable risk. This is consort to be support human for safer but, it may help people to known more on GMO and about saftey.

The fact that those in support of GMO foods have never declared them safe supports this notion. This is because if genetically modified foods were whether 100% safe or not safe as it thought to be, researchers and scientists would have made a declaration right from the onset of the controversies and debates (Hilbeck et al, 2015). This means that there must be some risks associated with genetically engineered foods that no one is willing to officially declare because of the many solutions these foods bring to the world’s continuum of problems. In the meantime scientists have to research more on GMO, however the people have to try others way how GMO is good for people.