Biotechnology Persuasive Essay

There is quite a bit of debate throughout the scientific community in regard to the issue of an ever-growing population and the lack of sufficient food production in many areas of the world. Already, with a world population of just over seven billion, there are at least one billion people that can be classified as malnourished because they do not receive adequate food rations. Analysts are predicting the population to increase to over ten billion people by 2050; with our current resources, this many people would be impossible to sustain. This fact becomes even more disturbing when taking into account that the majority of population growth is occurring in third world countries, where technology is already far behind the times. An increase in crop production …show more content…
The most logical solution to this problem would be to develop new ways to grow a greater number of crops containing superior nutritional value without increasing the acreage of land already designated for agriculture. This is where the term biotechnology comes in to play. Biotechnology is defined as the use of cellular and biomolecular processes to develop technology that improves the health of life on the planet. In the case of the food system, biotechnology is utilized through genetically engineering crops to be more productive and nutritious. Scientists already have the ability to enhance nutrition profiles of certain crops, which would lend to each consumer requiring lesser amounts of the now higher quality food. Crops that have been engineered to be resistant to pests and environmental stressors will have a higher overall yield per acre, as less of the field will undergo damage. Biotechnology has even given us the ability to engineer crops that require less nutrients due to their ability to absorb nitrogen from the atmosphere, instead of fixing the nitrogen found in soil. Research is continually being conducted in order to discover innovative methods of improving current standards of

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Biotechnology Persuasive Essay