Meanwhile, we are approaching limits in arable land and productivity and are employing practices that are destroying the soil's capacity to produce food. Some see biotechnology as the answer to the problem of enabling this much larger population to feed itself. But biotechnology, if by this we mean crops engineered to contain new genes, is not essential . It would be a tragedy if other necessary actions were not taken because of a mistaken belief that genetic engineering is some sort of a panacea for hunger. Some of the reasons biotechnology should not be relied on to enable the world to feed itself are outlined below.
More productive crops are only part of the solution to the world's food crisis.
There are many reasons for the current and projected food crisis. Among the most important are lack of income to buy food, lack of infrastructure like roads to get products to market, trade policies that disadvantage farmers in the developing world, lack of inputs such as fertilizer, lack of information, and low-yield farming practices. More productive crops will do little to alleviate hunger if deficiencies in those areas are not addressed as well. Many technologies can increase the yields of crops. All of these could help improve the productivity of crops in the developing world, but currently only limited resources are available for applying them there.