Skip to main content

How does genetic engineering affect the environment?

There are at least two ways we can approach this question: by asking how the GMOs themselves affect the environment, and evaluating how their use affects human practices that impact the environment.


One of the most common targets for criticism and application of GMOs is the agriculture industry. Companies are successfully engineering new types of crops, sold in seed form, that offer a variety of benefits, such as resistance to pesticides or higher crop yields. One of the downsides of this, from the consumer perspective, is that farmers are sometimes not allowed to keep seeds from one year's harvest to plant in the next; the seeds and their genetic content are technically the property of the company that creates them. Further, it's entirely possible the seeds and crops could be intentionally or accidentally transported beyond the areas they are intended to be planted in, displacing native species due to superior traits. This would be another form of human-caused invasive species potentially leading to an ecological collapse.


On the other hand, the use of modified organisms may have positive effects on the environment due to factors such as the aforementioned built-in resistances, or they could be modified to require less water, less nutrients in the soil, or resistance to infection. All of these factors would reduce the ecological impacts demanded in order to care for them. Increased crop yields would also reduce the amount of land necessary to grow food, or increase the yield of the land used, which is a necessary consideration in light of the expanding world population and the limited space available for agriculture.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more