[RobAley]

Can you substantiate your claim that "Biotech crops are probably key to our survival and prosperity as a species"? There is little evidence supporting that that I can find.

Globally, we currently produce more food than we need. The problems we currently have around starvation and malnutrition appear from my limited research to be centred on distribution, comoditization and other socio-economic factors.

How do biotech crops (current or future) tackle these issues?

[rmc]

Globally, we currently produce more food than we need. The problems we currently have around starvation and malnutrition appear from my limited research to be centred on distribution, comoditization and other socio-economic factors.

Remember some "produced food" is fed to other food to make meat. What would you say if vegetarianism was legally required?

[pyre]

That in general, we might be better off for it?

That said, it really has no bearing on this discussion. Currently companies do things like destroy perfectly good grains in an effort to prevent the price from dropping due to over-supply. Why? Because it costs money to store, so better to just destroy it. If we come up short later, then it's even more beneficial to the company because the price actually goes up!

That's not even touching the issue of Africa, where most 'aide' that is sent never makes it to the starving people due to political turmoil / warlords / etc.

[rmc]

I'm skeptical of claims that "food problems are just distribution, we produced enough food to feed everyone" claims, especially if it starts with "well, first everyone must switch to vegetarianism... easy!", and would need some convincing that it's possible to "end world hunger" without massive drastic changes.

[DanBC]

Replying to this really late, but:

> The world's second-biggest cause of child mortality, diarrhoea, kills about 1.5 million children every year. Three-quarters of these deaths could be prevented with a simple course of oral rehydration salts (ORS) combined with zinc tablets, at a cost of just US$0.50 per patient.

For years we've[1] struggled to get this live saving cheap stuff to little dying children, and haven't succeeded.

Without any massive change - just a little bit of clever thinking, we use Coca Cola's desire to sell fizzy pop to everyone, and their delivery networks, to help ship ORS.

(http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94996/GLOBAL-Follow-the-fizz-...)

I agree with you about the "We just need to [...]" school of thought being hopeless.

[mhb]

Golden rice is an example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice

[s8qnze982y]

That's the most common rhetoric example used in science circles.

In real world, if those 670,000 people can't get enough food to get the basic nutrients, if they won't die from vitamine A deficiency, they will die of something else.

The problem of starvation is of social nature, not technological one. There's plenty of technology to save lots of people in those countries, as they're decades behind.