Topic: 2024-GMOs and Food Security
Country: United States of America
Delegate Name: Sloane Truckenbrod
Delegate: Sloane Trukenbrod
Committee: ECOSOC
School: Francis W. Parker School
Topic: GMOs and Food Security
Representing: USA
A common debate in food security is about eating genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Genetic modification helps crops resist insects, drought, and disease, so farmers can grow more food with dependable harvests. In the United States alone, the varieties of transgenic corn, soybeans, and cotton account for over 90 percent of each of these crops. Because the world population will increase to 10 billion by 2050, GMOs have gained the greatest importance due to the rising demand for food. Yet, the debate on this topic has reached a fever pitch, as questions about environmental and health impacts evoke mixed feelings among the general public.
Even as the U.S. is a global powerhouse for food, food security remains a complicated issue in America, with climate change, economic inequality, and swinging production costs taking their toll. This means millions of Americans continue to suffer from food insecurity, about 10.5% of households, according to recent data from the USDA. With these challenges at hand, the government encourages GMOs as one sure way of ensuring foods are readily available to counter their price increases whenever the weather conditions become extreme. This is a means of ensuring that foods are within people’s reach and at affordable prices, especially for the less fortunate.
However, GMOs continue to meet with fierce resistance among the public in the United States. Many Americans are terrified of potential long-term side effects on health, even as scientific studies declare GMOs safe for consumption. Other concerns include those on the environmental impact, specifically on issues of biodiversity and contamination of organic crops. In these divided positions, centered around a scientific consensus, lies the quite problematic situation that exists for the government in promoting GMOs.
Americans also lack trust in the large companies driving GMO technology such as Bayer, formerly known as Monsanto. These companies have repeatedly been criticized for their controlling tendencies regarding seed and hard-sell legal tactics that can give the appearance of putting profits over public benefit. This perception of corporate control over the food system only serves to further entrench public distrust, making GMOs seem less like solutions to food security and more like tools of profit. As such, government support of GMOs should go hand in hand with transparency and public engagement toward building trust necessary for wider acceptance.
