Is genetic engineering (GE) the only way of increasing food production?
No, it is not. It is only one of the tools we can use to increase food production. However, it is a powerful tool that will significantly increase our ability to produce the quantities of food that our growing world population will need. Whether the genetic alteration is done haphazardly by selective breeding or in a more systematic way by directly altering the genome, increasing the useable food content of an organism requires some form of genetic engineering. For grains and oilseed crops, increasing food production most often means the ability to produce better yields under the same conditions or, more generally, the ability to better resist weeds, insects and diseases. Many important improvements have been achieved by ordinary breeding, but it is a slow process. Given the rate at which the demand for food is likely to increase in future years, substantial productivity enhancements will still need to be made. In conjunction with other methods, GE can help agronomists make the product
