In addition, herbicides used in conjunction with genetically engineered plants are often safer for the environment than the herbicides they replace. Bioengineered crops also may reduce the need for farming practices, such as tillage, that result in soil loss. Biotechnology has tremendous potential to help fight hunger. Biotechnology developments offer significant potential benefit for developing countries where almost a billion people live in poverty and suffer from chronic hunger. Researchers are developing varieties of staple crops to enable them to survive harsh conditions such as droughts and floods.
Biotechnology helps combat diseases.
By developing and improving medicines, biotechnology helps fight diseases. Biotechnology has given us new medicinal tools to treat heart disease, multiple sclerosis, hemophilia, hepatitis, and AIDS, among other illnesses. Biotech foods are being developed that may enable the world's poor to receive low cost and widely available important vaccines and vitamins. Biotechnology could yield significant benefits to health. By boosting the nutritional value of foods, biotechnology can be used to improve the quality of basic diets.