GMOs May Feed the World Using Fewer Pesticides

[iNow]

The larger point is that many of these strains increase resistance to pests. That alone leads to lower pesticide use. They also can reduce the need for herbicides, fungicides, and all manner of other "cides."

 

I suppose you're right that not all of them have yet come online, but the evidence we DO have suggests my point is hardly without merit.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131007094508.htm

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/22185/economic_impacts_and_impact_dynamics_of_bt_bacillus_thuringiensis_cotton_in_india.html

 

Like I said several pages ago, you and I just assess the risks differently. We hold different opinions on the technology and have arrived at different conclusions. I'm okay with that. Are you?

[overtone]

 

 

The larger point is that many of these strains increase resistance to pests. That alone leads to lower pesticide use. They also can reduce the need for herbicides, fungicides, and all manner of other "cides."

That is indeed among the wonderful potential benefits of this new technology, and we all hope these possbilities pan out some day. They face many obstacles, risks and costs known and unknown, and benefits we have hardly begun to imagine.

 

Meanwhile:

 

I suppose you're right that not all of them have yet come online,

That's part of the issue. The other important part is the nature of what has come on line, has taken over 80% of American agriculture, is currently being spread across an entire planet by persuasion (occasionally), corruption (universally), and coercion (more often than not),

 

and shows no sign of going away or being replaced by the more desireable approaches to this brand new and fundamental advance.

 

If we are discussing "GMOs", the ones actually in existence, taking over the landscape now and for the next few years at least, would be the first order of business. What Monsanto et al are doing is not some kind of temporary confusion or rocky patch in the early stages of an ultimately worthwhile and highminded effort - it's bidding to be the entire field as it may be for some time to come. These huge mutlilnatioanl corporations have an agenda, and they are implementing it; it has nothing to do with benefits for anyone but themselves, and they have no more sense of responsibility or prudent foresight than God gave a grasshopper.

[iNow]

Meanwhile, on another front:

 

http://www.wired.com/business/2014/01/gmo-free-cheerios/?cid=16619184

General Mills says that Cheerios will no longer include ingredients made from genetically modified plants.

 

Some anti-GMO activists are praising the move, which also includes labeling boxes of the company’s flagship cereal as GMO-free. But whichever side of the GMO debate you’re on, you should see the General Mills campaign for what it is: an elegant piece of corporate doublespeak that’s completely devoid of substance.

 

In a blog post, General Mills’ vice president of global communications Tom Forsyth writes that Cheerios haven’t changed that much, despite the new labeling. Oats are the main ingredient in Cheerios, and Forsyth points out that genetically modified oats don’t even exist. What’s changed, he says, is that the small amounts of corn starch and sugar in Cheerios will no longer come from genetically modified crops.

 

<snip>

 

Forsyth does point out that General Mills offers many other non-GMO choices, but then he adds that GMOs aren’t actually a problem. “It’s not about safety,” he says. “Biotech seeds, also known as genetically modified seeds, have been approved by global food safety agencies and widely used by farmers in global food crops for almost 20 years.”

 

<snip>

 

Regardless of how hollow its move is, however, we can’t help but admire General Mills for its shrewdness. Since the company doesn’t have to change the sourcing of Cheerios’ main ingredient, the cost of going GMO-free is relatively low. At the same time, it gains a whole new potential market of customers who try to shun GMOs in their groceries. Meanwhile, every other shopper who didn’t care whether Cheerios had GMOs in the first place won’t care now that they don’t. Their habits won’t change. As a marketing move, pulling GMOs from Cheerios may be exploitative. But it also makes sense.

 

Bravo, General Mills. You won the day by doing not much at all.

[John Cuthber]

"Posted 27 December 2013 - 04:22 AM

Quote

I find this compelling, and it seems to exhaustively debunk many of the counter claims that were being made in this thread.

You do?

 

Why? Just read this, carefully, with open eyes:

 

Quote

This year celebrates the 30th anniversary of GM technology, and the papers conclusion is unequivocal: there is no credible evidence that GMOs pose any unique threat to the environment or the publics health.

That doesn't ring evey warning bell there is?

 

That is empty, bullshit, completely unsound in argument and extrapolation - the nonexiatence of the supposed ":exhaustiveness" , and the inadequacy of this research to the support of any such claim as "safety" is immediately obvious to even cursory inspection.""

 

 

OK, the quoting is a bit messed up there but it's Overtone's assertion.

 

Fair enough- if it's not true that all the studies (and there have been hundreds) have found no evidence of harm even though we have been doing it since the 70s,* then it should be easy for you to cite evidence of the harm done.

 

Let us see the evidence of harm done.

Stop soapboxing and stump up the data.

Incidentally, the issues due to monoculture don't count. we do that with non gm crops too, for example bananas.

 

* in case you wondered

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering#History

[overtone]

Fair enough- if it's not true that all the studies (and there have been hundreds) have found no evidence of harm even though we have been doing it since the 70s,* then it should be easy for you to cite evidence of the harm done.

Is there a single extended post from a GMO promoter here that does not contain at least one of these face-palm, jaw-droppingly ridiculous assertions?

 

"We" have not been "doing it" since the 70s. "Hundreds" of studies is peanuts, compared what would be need for prudence and sanity here - if they were actually relevant, if they were done in public so the bad results had a chance of publication, if they were done with care and in good faith. (The study Monsanto did to get regulatory approval for glyphosate resistant corn in Europe was a 90 feeding study of rats)

 

Just for starters: Every single GMO is a new thing - none of them have been mass marketed since the 70s, most for less than ten years, the new ones of course are new.

 

This stuff is not one trick, learned and studied: it's a fundamentally new arena of human endeavor, with hundreds of avenues of exploration and advance - safety of one implies little of nothing about safety of another, or in different circumstances, etc..

 

None of the studies so far are capable of detecting any but a small and insignificant fraction of the potential harms (direct single generation exposure allergies to the specific engineered product, direct poisonings, these kinds of minor risks). Their failure to detect what they are incapable of detecting is meaningless.

 

And I have posted plenty of evidence of harm - the instances of developed resistance to Bt varieties and glyphosphate herbicides (contrary to assurances and perfectly aligned with straightforward Darwinian theory, which is all you need to know about the assurances - they defy the predictions oif Darwinian theory. The standard predictions, btw, are severe harms from this), the loss of genetic diversity and imposition of particular genetic uniformities, the documented spread of engineered genetics into the landscape by various means (some not currently known), the economic takeover and erosion of food security inherent in the corporate agenda, and in general the imposition of known risks without concurrent benefits to the public - no one has benefited from the engineering (separate from the modernization of agriculture that it requires) so far except the agribusinesses.

 

 

 

Incidentally, the issues due to monoculture don't count. we do that with non gm crops too, for example bananas

The harms from GMOs that we predict from our experience with similar kinds of error in the past are still harms from GMOs. If you have found a new way of making a mistake you have already made and suffered from in other ways, it's still a mistake. The risks of genetic uniformity created by wholesale adoption of particular GMOs, for example, are risks of wholesale adoption of these GMOs. They don't go away just because there are other ways of creating genetic uniformities.

 

 

Let us see the evidence of harm done.

Stop soapboxing and stump up the data

Says the guy doing nothing but soapbox for GMOs, without any data, who doesn't know enough about the issues to even recognize the evidence presented so far.

 

The hazards of GMOs are many, large, obvious, and seem to be coming around to bite. What you need evidence for is the bizarre notion that people can convert the planet's agriculture to this stuff as we are seeing it converted, in confidence - they don't appear to know what they are doing. Do you have some indication, some evidence, that they do? That what looks like basic blundering and greed and power grabbing at public cost is actually OK?

Edited January 5, 2014 by overtone

[Ringer]

Says the guy doing nothing but soapbox for GMOs, without any data, who doesn't know enough about the issues to even recognize the evidence presented so far.

 

The hazards of GMOs are many, large, obvious, and seem to be coming around to bite. What you need evidence for is the bizarre notion that people can convert the planet's agriculture to this stuff as we are seeing it converted, in confidence - they don't appear to know what they are doing. Do you have some indication, some evidence, that they do? That what looks like basic blundering and greed and power grabbing at public cost is actually OK?

 

Alright, I posted a over 100 studies with data about GMOs and I reassert his call for evidence. So where is the evidence of actual harm and danger that is solely due to GMOs?

[John Cuthber]

Is there a single extended post from a GMO promoter here that does not contain at least one of these face-palm, jaw-droppingly ridiculous assertions?

 

"We" have not been "doing it" since the 70s. "Hundreds" of studies is peanuts, compared what would be need for prudence and sanity here - if they were actually relevant, if they were done in public so the bad results had a chance of publication, if they were done with care and in good faith. (The study Monsanto did to get regulatory approval for glyphosate resistant corn in Europe was a 90 feeding study of rats)

 

Just for starters: Every single GMO is a new thing - none of them have been mass marketed since the 70s, most for less than ten years, the new ones of course are new.

 

This stuff is not one trick, learned and studied: it's a fundamentally new arena of human endeavor, with hundreds of avenues of exploration and advance - safety of one implies little of nothing about safety of another, or in different circumstances, etc..

 

None of the studies so far are capable of detecting any but a small and insignificant fraction of the potential harms (direct single generation exposure allergies to the specific engineered product, direct poisonings, these kinds of minor risks). Their failure to detect what they are incapable of detecting is meaningless.

 

And I have posted plenty of evidence of harm - the instances of developed resistance to Bt varieties and glyphosphate herbicides (contrary to assurances and perfectly aligned with straightforward Darwinian theory, which is all you need to know about the assurances - they defy the predictions oif Darwinian theory. The standard predictions, btw, are severe harms from this), the loss of genetic diversity and imposition of particular genetic uniformities, the documented spread of engineered genetics into the landscape by various means (some not currently known), the economic takeover and erosion of food security inherent in the corporate agenda, and in general the imposition of known risks without concurrent benefits to the public - no one has benefited from the engineering (separate from the modernization of agriculture that it requires) so far except the agribusinesses.

 

 

 

The harms from GMOs that we predict from our experience with similar kinds of error in the past are still harms from GMOs. If you have found a new way of making a mistake you have already made and suffered from in other ways, it's still a mistake. The risks of genetic uniformity created by wholesale adoption of particular GMOs, for example, are risks of wholesale adoption of these GMOs. They don't go away just because there are other ways of creating genetic uniformities.

 

 

Says the guy doing nothing but soapbox for GMOs, without any data, who doesn't know enough about the issues to even recognize the evidence presented so far.

 

The hazards of GMOs are many, large, obvious, and seem to be coming around to bite. What you need evidence for is the bizarre notion that people can convert the planet's agriculture to this stuff as we are seeing it converted, in confidence - they don't appear to know what they are doing. Do you have some indication, some evidence, that they do? That what looks like basic blundering and greed and power grabbing at public cost is actually OK?

You do realise that citing a single death due to GM would actually make me look stupid in a way that calling me a GMO promoter never will.

Why not try it?

[hypervalent_iodine]

!

Moderator Note

Do we have to rehash this argument over and over in every single GMO thread ever made? iNow, feel free to PM me if you think this is incorrect, but my take of the OP is that this is very much *not* a thread on whether or not GMO's are safe and as such, any discussion to that effect is off topic.

 

In fact, I'm making an executive decision. Given that this is the mainstream, accepted science section of the forum and the mainstream, accepted view is that GMO's are safe, we can assume for the purposes of productive GMO-related discussion that the question is already asked and answered, with the exception of those that specifically wish to address it.

[hypervalent_iodine]

!

Moderator Note

overtone, was my modnote truly that hard to figure out? Stop derailing this thread. Your post has gone to the trash, FYI. If this keeps up, do not think we won't suspend you.

[overtone]

Your post has gone to the trash,

The argument was clear, specific to the thread, and explicitly so. Why do you "moderate" by excluding my side of the argument - the only side here that has presented evidence, adhered to the topic, and addressed the issues raiseed by the OP without personal attack?

 

This assertion of yours

 

Given that this is the mainstream, accepted science section of the forum and the mainstream, accepted view is that GMO's are safe,

is false, for the reasons I detailed in the trashed post. This falsity is also relevant, directly, to the OP, for the reasons also detailed among many others. I did not, as is the custom throughout this thread from other posters whose posts remain, merely assert those claims, but argued them from evidence. If you suspend posters for such reasonable and relevant and detailed response, where is your forum?

 

 

 

Stop derailing this thread.

I'm not. I expalined why not, explicitly - I did not ignore your posting, but dealt with it directly. You should restore the post as it applied to your false claims - as a matter of integrity if nothing else, before suspending me, so your grounds will be visible - if any. Edited January 7, 2014 by overtone

[imatfaal]

!

Moderator Note

 

overtone

 

Firstly, please do not make comments about moderation within the thread itself. After this post the thread will return to the topic or be closed.

 

The argument was clear, specific to the thread, and explicitly so. Why do you "moderate" by excluding my side of the argument - the only side here that has presented evidence, adhered to the topic, and addressed the issues raiseed by the OP without personal attack?

 

The original topic seemed to me to be a statement that the world needs GMO-based crops to feed the growing population, that the additional agricultural chemicals needed would be lower for these crops, and that this claimed gain might be threatened by an unwarranted public rejection. This was almost immediately hijacked into a discussion on corporate ethics, public safety, and unwarranted and fallacious characterisation of the opposition (from both sides of the argument).

I may be alone but I believe that telling another poster to "quit lying" is a personal attack and I will continue to treat it as so unless the other members of staff ask me not to. Your tone was combative, dismissive of other opinion, and derogatory towards other posters from the very start. Please desist from using these tactics in our discussions.

I read through the thread and my conclusion is that you most certainly did not rely on an evidence-based argument. You provided a few links on page three of the thread - a blog which in-turn linked to a very interesting (though not to my eyes peer-reviewed) report, a news-paper article, and another blog; and a press-release on an article by Greenpeace (I am a member and as such I expect them to be advocates, not balanced reporters, nor disinterested observers) - a link to the actual article would have been nicer.

This assertion of yours

Given that this is the mainstream, accepted science section of the forum and the mainstream, accepted view is that GMO's are safe

is false, for the reasons I detailed in the trashed post. This falsity is also relevant, directly, to the OP, for the reasons also detailed among many others. I did not, as is the custom throughout this thread from other posters whose posts remain, merely assert those claims, but argued them from evidence. If you suspend posters for such reasonable and relevant and detailed response, where is your forum?

 

You may wish to refresh your definition of evidence. The post split off provided no refutation of the quoted text merely more rhetoric and well-reasoned but unfounded assertions. For your guidance in a scientific milieu it not not sufficient to merely mention the 200 rat study - a link to the study and a brief reason how it supports your assertions would be better. Moreover you provided no evidence whatsoever for 2 pages of the thread - your posts were a mixture of assertion, rhetoric, and invective.

It is clear this is a topic which raises strong emotions in members - and I fear your vision is being clouded by these emotions; your arguments are not well-made, are frequently rude and aggressive, and you refuse to admit that any moderation may be needed. I do not see the clear line of cold logic and hard facts in your posts which you clearly believe to be present in your arguments - this may be my failing, but it is one that is shared by other posters and staff.

There is a need for a well moderated internet forum that can enable discussions of subject which divide opinion - the climate change debate, the safety and utility of genetically modified crops, the pros and cons of nuclear energy etc - and I believe we provide such a service. However, we need to keep these debates in the scientific realm and avoid them becoming flamewars.

I'm not. I expalined why not, explicitly - I did not ignore your posting, but dealt with it directly. You should restore the post as it applied to your false claims - as a matter of integrity if nothing else, before suspending me, so your grounds will be visible - if any.

The post is still visible in the trash can and I am happy for it to stay there. It was continuing to derail the thread and correctly split off.

Please do not respond to this moderation within the thread.

EVERYONE
If this thread is to continue it must be on the questions raised in the original post - it will not be allowed to descend into a repeat of the previous 5 pages.

I, for one, would welcome information and evidence regarding the (illusory?) crop yield benefits of GMO-based crops - this was first raised by Charon in the second post and enlarged upon by various posters; now this would make for interesting reading. It seems a fairly simple question - the Scientist quoted in the OP clearly believes there are benefits, others have disagreed - surely there are numerous studies which settle the question? And if not, why not?

 

[iNow]

The question about crop yields came up again above in the modnote, and what I've read is that results can be mixed here. While it's certainly possible that yields will increase due to genetic modification, this is not by any means an absolute.

 

Also, at least with the corn that's been studied, it seems that it's less about an increase in yields and more about a decrease in losses during bad years (perhaps these are just two ways of saying the same thing, but the latter is more precise). Also, the GMOs offer a bit less variability and more certainty, which adds to this benefit.

 

Another study about this was presented about a year ago in the journal Nature Biotechnology. This summary from University of Wisconsin provides a good overview:

 

http://www.news.wisc.edu/21505

By analyzing two decades worth of corn yield data from Wisconsin, a team of UW-Madison researchers has quantified the impact that various popular transgenes have on grain yield and production risk compared to conventional corn. Their analysis, published online in a Nature Biotechnology correspondence article on Feb. 7, confirms the general understanding that the major benefit of genetically modified (GM) corn doesn't come from increasing yields in average or good years, but from reducing losses during bad ones.

<snip>

Lauer, who is also a UW-Extension corn agronomist, has been gathering corn yield and other data for the past 20 years as part of the Wisconsin Corn Hybrid Performance Trials, a project he directs. Each year, his team tests about 500 different hybrid corn varieties at more than a dozen sites around the state with the goal of providing unbiased performance comparisons of hybrid seed corn for the state's farmers. When GM hybrids became available in 1996, Lauer started including them in the trials.

 

"It's a long-term data set that documents one of the most dramatic revolutions in agriculture: the introduction of transgenic crops," says Lauer, who collaborated with UW-Madison agricultural economists Guanming Shi and Jean-Paul Chavas to conduct the statistical analysis, which considered grain yield and production risk separately.

 

Grain yield varied quite a bit among GM hybrids. While most transgenes boosted yields, a few significantly reduced production. At the positive end of the spectrum was the Bt for European Corn Borer (ECB) trait. Corn plants with this added transgene, which comes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, are protected from a damaging caterpillar. When the researchers combined the yield data from all of the ECB hybrids grown in the trials over the years, they found that the ECB plants out-yielded conventional hybrids by an average of more than six bushels per acre per year. GM hybrids with "stacked traits," or multiple transgenes, tended to have slightly improved yields an extra two or three bushels per acre. On the other hand, grain yields from hybrids with the Bt for Corn Rootworm (CRW) transgene trailed those of regular hybrids by a whopping 12 bushels per acre.

<snip>

Where transgenic corn clearly excels is in reducing production risk. The researchers found that every GM trait package whether single gene or stacked genes helped lower variability. For farmers, lower variability means lower risk, as it gives them more certainty about the yield levels they can expect.

 

This makes sense, explains Lauer. "The traits themselves don't add to yield. What they do is protect the yield, so any kind of yield advantage we can get from [a variety of hybrid corn] will be protected from pests," he says.

 

Lauer equates choosing GM to purchasing solid-performing, low-risk stocks. Just as safe stocks have relatively low volatility, yields from GM crops don't swing as wildly from year to year, and most important, their downswings aren't as deep.

 

GM crops help reduce downside risk by reducing losses in the event of disease, pests or drought. Economists Shi and Chavas estimated the risk reduction provided by modified corn to be equivalent to a yield increase ranging from 0.8 to 4.2 bushels per acre, depending on the variety.

<snip>

The two factors quantified in this study, yield and production risk, are just a part of the overall picture about GM crops, says Lauer. He notes there are other quantifiable values, such as reduced pesticide use...

[supersmartguy70]

This is interesting seeing as using less pesticides is always one of the first pros listed while talking about GMOs. It is semi controversial because some people think that the genes from GMOs will spread into the wild population and could cause allergic reactions in human consumers. So far no reactions have been reported, and minimal occurrences have been reported of the wild population receiving the genes. As for feeding the growing population, GMOs can be "programmed" to grow with a lot more food yield than the original plant could provide. However, the problem will be more of preserving the food. Most of the impoverished areas dont have easy access to food, so unless preserving genes are added to the food, the amount of food generated will be worthless

[overtone]

 

 

At the positive end of the spectrum was the Bt for European Corn Borer (ECB) trait. Corn plants with this added transgene, which comes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, are protected from a damaging caterpillar. When the researchers combined the yield data from all of the ECB hybrids grown in the trials over the years, they found that the ECB plants out-yielded conventional hybrids by an average of more than six bushels per acre per year. GM hybrids with "stacked traits," or multiple transgenes, tended to have slightly improved yields an extra two or three bushels per acre. On the other hand, grain yields from hybrids with the Bt for Corn Rootworm (CRW) transgene trailed those of regular hybrids by a whopping 12 bushels per acre.

It doesn't say whether the "conventional hybrids" they used were equivalent - ideally, identical except for the engineered code - so the results are hard to intepret (Monsanto et al are stingy with their purchased and developed conventional seeds, the ones they have monopolized for engineering purposes, making comparison difficult without signing non-disclosure agreements etc), but by the evidence there the yield hit from the Bt code complex alone (and "stacked" Bt, see below) is about 8-12% for lepidopteran resistance code, which agrees with envelope-back estimates (the cost of the code expression) and other trials mentioned on this forum.

 

In the comparisons, of course, circumstances were not identical - the plants not engineered were not treated with Bt topically in some kind of intense program, neither was any comparison made with other pest handling regimes, so the comparison showing benefit is between plants cleverly and cheaply treated with a particular very effective specialty pesticide and plants left untreated with that one, when exposed to the pest.

 

The results depend on whether the pest shows up.

 

So in the absence of the specific type of pest a partucular Bt strain is designed to handle, that's what we are starting with in considering yield (per acre). That is relevant because any antibiotic used indiscriminately like that is all but guaranteed a short lifespan of effectiveness, and in normal circumstances the resistance mechanism evolved in the pest also handles closely related antibiotics. So the most likely future - the standard prediction and the norm one would have to argue against in ordinary scientific discussion, the way anyone here would bet in any similar circumstance (such as getting people to express some antibiotic all the time in case they meet a disease organism) - both the much reduced yields and the loss of a valuable pesticide type.

 

We have already seen the early signs of this, a bit worse than expected - resistance to Bt in cotton pests in India evolving in less than half the minimum time predicted, etc, (Monsanto has denied their program is likely to breed resistance at all - a clue to the reliability of Monsanto's PR).

 

Furthermore: setting aside the oddity of the notion that building pesticide into every plant in every field is "using less pesticide", we have the consideration that each Bt strain is a specialty killer - as the study report affirms, the highlighted one kills lepidopteran larvae of a couple of particularly damaging kinds. One way around this is to "stack" different Bt varieties into a single code complex or engineered seed variety - so a variety of pests can be handled. That of course increases the already high likelihood (and therefore the speed) of evolved resistance.

 

Any conclusion of net benefit, then, even short term, rests on the assumption that there is no other way to handle that pest - say, one that does not damage yield. As we know of at least the possibility of other ways - including other forms of genetic engineering (sterile male releases, engineered diseases or predators, etc) - that assumption is hardly safe. Quite a bit of evidence would be required to throw out the standard considerations of evolutionary theory and the track record of indiscriminate antibiotic deployment - right?

 

Also, any conclusion that by using Bt engineered code we would be "using less pesticide" even of other kinds runs into the specialization of Bt strains - one still needs a full inventory of pesticides for the ones not handled by the particular type or types (if "stacked") of Bt being expressed, in industrial agricultural (the only kind being supported by these industrial engineering efforts). Since expressed code like this diverts plant resources from all other functions, the standard prediction would be that the plant is now more vulnerable in some way to other stresses including other pests - whether we are likely to end up using more pesticide of other kinds, or less, in the short term, is unknown as far as I can tell. In the long term of course we almost certainly will need something to replace the Bt. - the alternatives are less benign in several ways.

[overtone]

 

 

This is interesting seeing as using less pesticides is always one of the first pros listed while talking about GMOs. It is semi controversial because some people think that the genes from GMOs will spread into the wild population and could cause allergic reactions in human consumers.

Allergic reactions in people are

 

1) among the least of the problems with feral engineered code, as well as being among the most easily guarded against and checked out - my guess is that's why they are so frequently mentioned in mass media GMO promotions

 

(the original scare may have come from the famous incident of nut allergens engineered into soybeans a few years back, to provide protein balance in animal feed - that was not an example of feral code, but deliberate engineering: the beans were not only approved by every scientist and executive involved, but were actually grown, harvested, marketed, and being sold retail as animal feed in several countries before an outside scientist happened to notice. Whether or not anyone was killed by that product is not known - no investigation was ever done)

 

2) not available for discussion here - there is no such danger from any GMO past, present, or future, under any circumstances, by executive decision.

 

 

 

and minimal occurrences have been reported of the wild population receiving the genes.

No investigation of the actual odds and rates of horizontal (cross taxa) transfer of even the most problematical features of the most common engineered code complexes into even the dozen or so most likely of the hundreds of visible and known targets, in the most frequently encountered of the various real world circumstances, has ever been proposed, let alone accomplished. The sheer size of that problem seems consistently underestimated by several orders of magnitude. Keep in mind, for example, that unlike in other arenas rare events don't stay rare - feral code can reproduce, exponentially, and spread. So research capable of assuring a lack of trouble from horizontal transfer has to account for very unlikely events, which takes a lot of imagination, ingenuity, money, work - - and time. Many years. For each different kind of GMO, in all of its deployments.

 

One of the first hurdles is that the past couple decades of research into such transfer in the wild, slim pickings in itself, is not reliable for extrapolation or extension - engineered code is engineered to be horizontally transferred in operational form as easily as possible, much more easily than natural code normally is. So the code for bacterial antibiotic resistance so often included in engineered complexes, if it gets into the intestinal bacterial flora of the gut of some animal, was and may still be already attached to code designed to enable its transfer into an alien taxon. The code for glyphosate resistance in soybeans is already packaged for mechanical transfer and shotgunned into an auxiliary organelle of the soybean leaf cell easily available to, say, the mouthparts of a sucking insect or a fungus hypha working its way into the leaf. How much, if at all, that changes its odds of transfer into any disease, pest, or parasite organisms present, is a matter of current (underfunded) research.

 

That is not a danger to human beings - even human beings in regions that market antibiotics over the counter and suffer from bacterial plagues such as cholera - by executive decision here.

 

 

 

As for feeding the growing population, GMOs can be "programmed" to grow with a lot more food yield than the original plant could provide.

This is very likely in theory, although no current examples exist. The question is whether and by what means that theoretical likelihood can be realized.

 

My own guess is that the first concern of the OP - greater yield, more food per plant - is a more likely benefit than the second concern - fewer pesticides. One would presume that plants can be genetically manipulated to divert resources currently devoted to features unnecessary or even undesired in a crop - height, thorns, toxic seed coatings - into greater mass of edible stuff; and agribusiness might easily profit thereby. But I don't see the same profit potential for agribusiness in pesticide avoidance.