- Shashank Venkatesan
Genetically modified crops have been hailed as a permanent solution against pests since time immemorial. The problems of pests have always been a huge pain for the farmers to bear. Advents in biotechnology led to the introduction of genes that produce proteins that kill the pest. The crops gained a huge power that made sure pests would not come again. However, this problem has returned to haunt the industry, in a much fiercer form.
To begin with what exactly caused this, we need to remember basic evolution. Organisms with stronger resistances to hazards will outlive those that don’t and this will eventually lead to the dominance of the resistant population. In case of pests, the pests that had developed resistance to the stat boost survived and procreated to create resistant pest populations, dubbed ‘superbugs’. Another major problem is the average farmer spends way above their budget so as to plant these crops as they have very specific requirements.
Countering these problems is easier said than done. Most solutions are still in their infancy. On one extreme lies sustainable farming, wherein natural predators of pests are employed around the crop fields. This uses the evolutionary mechanism of co-evolution to its advantage, as if the pest evolves, the predator will evolve along with it. On the other extreme, lies an adventurous idea, being to introduce genes into crops to mimic the workings of the human immune system and introduce plant-vaccines that train the plant to fight against pests like vaccinated humans fighting polio.
For quicker solutions, the government needs to flow more funds towards research and development and subsidize the rates of seeds and maintenance so as to keep the farmer economy going.
At the end of the day, nature is the strongest force to reckon with. There is no way to go around it. GM crops are a lesson for humanity that one must not try to outwit nature, but attempt to inherently fuse with nature if we ever hope of improving our odds.
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