Today there is abundant food, yet an eighth of the world's population is chronically undernourished.
In the next 20 years, the global population is likely to double. To keep even, the food supply would also have to double, but to feed people adequately it would have to come closer to tripling. Some believe biotechnology will enable this larger population to feed itself. Thus it is important not to pour all resources into developing genetic engineering while neglecting other necessary actions and technology that will do more to address this problem. Some biotechnologies, for example marker-assisted breeding, in which breeders take advantage of information about what variety of a species carries which genes, might be considered an extension of traditional breeding technology.