GE Crops Yielded Massive Economic and Environmental Benefits

ISAAA News - April 22, 2020

The fast adoption of genetically engineered crops has brought significant benefits that exceeded expectations. This was mentioned by Dr. Nina V. Fedoroff, an Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor at Penn State University, in her four-part series on the progress on agricultural biotechnology published in Genetic Literacy Project (GLP).

According to a 2014 study on the cumulative global impact of GM crops reported that biotech crop farmers' yield increased by 22% and their profits by 68%. The economic benefits are due to increased yield and reduction in the production costs (65% and 35%, respectively). These economic benefits have been divided almost equally between developing and industrialized countries (48% and 52%, respectively).

As of 2018, GE crops were grown on 474 million acres in 26 countries. This shows over a 100-fold expansion in GE crop adoption since its initial commercial production in 1996. The adoption rates of major GE crops exceeded 90% in the top 5 biotech crop adopting countries (USA, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and India).

Read the following articles from the GLP series:

Viewpoint: How consumer fear and misguided regulation limit the progress of crop biotechnology

Low-hanging fruit: How the first generation of GMO crops yielded massive economic and environmental benefits

Next-generation gene-editing technology: Path to a second Green Revolution?

Will CRISPR spawn a new wave of crop biotech innovation despite regulatory hurdles?