Genetically Engineered Foods essays

Genetically Engineered Foods essays Ever since humans began to grow their own food thousands of years ago, we have been struggling to find ways to make our crops grow bigger and better. In recent centuries though, science has made great improvements in the field of agriculture. This started with Robert Blakewell, an English farmer in the 1700's. Blakewell created herds of superior cattle, horses, and sheep by only breeding his best individual animals. By taking the best and eliminating the worst, he was able to raise livestock that was better than any other farmer's (Trede). By the 1900's, Americans had begun to produce hybrid corn by combining all different kinds of corn into one strain (Trede). From the early 1920's through the 1960's and even up until today, this method has more than tripled the yield of the world's best cropland (Avery). Because of this, Third World countries now have 35% more food per person than they did before any scientific advancements. The method of cross-breeding to create superior hybrids is known as classical breeding. Classical breeding has been going on for years, and continues to be used by farmers and planters. It is a simple way to help a plant or animal evolve into a more desirable breed. Based on this technology alone, we have been able to create breeds efficient enough and with a high enough yield to sustain us so far. However, if the current rate of population growth remains constant, by the year 2030 almost 90% of humans may have to give up eating meat in order to have enough food for everyone (Avery). Classical breeding isn't efficient enough to keep up with this demand. For example, European company Syngenta developed a corn with the intention of making it resistant to the European corn borer. Limiting their methods to conventional breeding, though, they were only able to improve the yield of the corn by 10% (Pollack). This experiment took 12 years to complete, an average length of time wh en dealing with class...