GMOs and Waste

Waste is another red herring in the GMO debate that often comes up. That's not to say that food waste is not a huge global problem. It is. As Rebecca Smithers writes in The Guardian,

In the face of United Nations predictions that there could be about an extra 3 billion people to feed by the end of the century and growing pressure on the resources needed to produce food, including land, water and energy, the IME is calling for urgent action to tackle this waste.

Their report, Global Food; Waste Not, Want Not, found that between 30% and 50% or 1.2-2bn tonnes of food produced around the world never makes it on to a plate.

In the UK as much as 30% of vegetable crops are not harvested due to their failure to meet retailers' exacting standards on physical appearance, it says, while up to half of the food that is bought in Europe and the US is thrown away by consumers.

And about 550bn cubic metres of water is wasted globally in growing crops that never reach the consumer. Carnivorous diets add extra pressure as it takes 20-50 times the amount of water to produce 1 kilogramme of meat than 1kg of vegetables; the demand for water in food production could reach 10–13 trillion cubic metres a year by 2050.

It would be really nice if we could solve of the problems in the global food system using only waste reduction policies. And I would love to see more food saved as it would lead to more environmentally sustainable outcomes in general.

Unfortunately, there's a couple of problems with ending food waste as a perfect panacea. Both are economic in nature. A good portion of the food wasted was purchased and then spoiled, so there is no way to stop that. The food wasted due to farming practices might not have any use since you would expect farmers to sell this at any available market if they could.

Expanding the market is an option, but understand that this is hard with perishable things like food products. (Non-perishable food items, by definition, are not easily wasted so they have to be ruled out of this issue). Without expanding the market, you need to somehow alter behavior in the West. This would also be hard, since they derive no direct benefit from this (you're doing this to feed the poor). Look, for example, how hard it is just to make Americans recycle.

There is a second economic issue. It does not benefit people in poor countries much to have Westerners flood their markets with cheap food. This reduces their GDP, for example, and it probably ensures that they continue to suffer from poverty. Instead, you would want them to adopt farming practices that increase yields, as this leads directly to economic benefits for poor farmers. This is the primary benefit of using GM products, and we have seen this happen across a range of technologies. A report from PG economics has some of the impressive conclusions,*

• Mexico - yield increases with herbicide tolerant soybean of 9 percent.
• Romania – yield increases with herbicide tolerant soybeans have averaged 31 percent.
• Philippines – average yield increase of 15 percent with herbicide tolerant corn.
• Philippines – average yield increase of 24 percent with insect resistant corn.
• Hawaii – virus resistant papaya has increased yields by an average of 40 percent.
• India – insect resistant cotton has led to yield increases on average more than 50 percent.

This isn't to say that people concerned with food waste are wrong, per se. The West would benefit enormously from saving more of its food, as it would allow us to grow enough food to feed ourselves with the minimum amount of inputs (the very definition of sustainability). Sustainability will also be important in poorer countries too, since they will want to preserve as many of their resources and natural places as possible.

But most importantly, if you care about malnutrition in poor countries, you want to help them develop. GMOs are not the exclusive cure to this issue (institutions, trade and capital expansion are also crucial too), but it is a technology that helps provide that possibility.

*Although being in the biotech industry themselves, PG Economics has incentives to overstate the benefits of its products. Buyer beware.