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. So far, there no reason to believe that genetic engineering would be markedly better than these more traditional technologies in improving crops. But so far none of these seems realistic because most involve complex multigene traits. For the most part, genetically engineered crops are limited to one or two gene transfers and have relative few applications of use to hungry people. Those that are of use, such as insect resistance and virus tolerance, do not increase intrinsic yield and vary in effectiveness.