One of the biggest problems facing the world is our potentially growing world population and how we are going to feed it. With GM technology and research, we can feed the soon to be 10 billion people with the same amount of land we are currently using for 7 billion people. Two minutes into the video, Mark Lynas admitted that his anti GM movement was anti-science, and that his group denied scientific data in the process and focused on fear reactions. Lynas pointed out that GM cotton and maize both needed less pesticides and chemicals than the non-GM versions, which shows their benefit. Also, not all the money goes to the big corporations; billions of dollars of GM sales go towards small farmers, especially in developing countries. GM foods are much safer and precise than conventional breeding and takes out a large portion of the time it would take to create the hybrid naturally. Golden rice is a vitamin rich rice that is very easy to grow, and could help feed and give the essential nutrients to many starving people worldwide, but it can’t be distributed because it is labeled as a GM. In the beginning of any movement, change is not taken nicely, but once the facts get out to the public about GM, there will be a new perception, and we need to thank people like Mark Lynas for speaking out.

Mark Lynas gave a captivating speech on how his point of view on GMOs has dramatically changed since 1995. Back in 1995, when Mark first heard about Monsanto’s, Mark immediately made his conclusion. He believed it was just another large American company putting something experimental into our food supply without warning. He thought GMOs were the most unnatural thing you could make and that something was bound to go wrong with humans gaining too much technological power. These claims spread rapidly and soon made GMOs banned from Europe, even though there was no science backing up these claims. After digging into the claims he made many years ago and the consequences of these claims, Mark began to explain why his claims were wrong. Mark began by stating what he thought and following it with the science that counters his claims. Mark explained how dangerous he thought GMOs were, he followed that by explaining how GMOs are safer and more precise than conventional breeding. He also told us he thought GMOs would increase the use of chemicals but it turned out they needed less insecticide. Mark thought GMOs were only benefitting big companies, and turns out they were generating billions of dollars that were benefitting farmers. Mark goes on to talk about the benefits of GMOs and how they are effecting our world today.

In his farming conference speech at Oxford, Mark Lynas opens with an apology to the crowd for being anti-GM and working against all of the GM company’s hard work. He goes on to say as a politician he went more in-depth into the science behind many topics like oceanography and climate, and eventually GM crops.  His viewpoints of being anti-GM before were all due to his lack of knowledge. Now armed with knowledge he comes to say he believes in the future of GM crops and continues to go on stating why GM crops will be vital. One of his main points was about land use; without GM crops it would take about the same landmass as two Africa’s worth just to produce food for India’s population; one could only imagine how much resources would be needed for the rest of the world’s population. This statement then segways into the amount of pesticides and herbicides needed to maintain that enormous crop size or even our crops today. To have a technology which would allow plants the ability to genome switch to help fend off disease and pests and not use it would be wasteful. Thus, going into why organic farming should allow GM products to be considered organic. The amount of organic pesticides, time, and money people could save from GM crops being organic is also too significant to ignore. Finally, a harsh reality point Mark used was how without the world accepting GM crops, we are no longer moving forward. Since many of the higher income populations support farming practices stuck in the 1950s, the market for GMs have been in decline and rejected. For example, Ireland completely turned away a GM potato with genes from a wild potato with the ability to fight blight. A country that suffered a massive population loss due to a potato famine because of a fungus refused a new option. Without GM technology we could start to see a whole new potato famine and other famines across the globe.

I personally believe that GMO’s are helpful for our economy in food production to feed all the people that live on this earth. I don’t think that Mark Lynas makes a good case for his change of opinion on GMO’s. I think that he is in a tough position in the money making standpoint. Mark Lynas talks about how he used to tear up genetically modified plants but now he is saying that they use less pesticides which aren’t good for our food. Lynas also now realizes that millions of people are going to bed hungry each night and now thinks that GMO’s are benefical for people because it produces more food. I have always thought they were beneficial because they haven’t been proven to be bad but now Lynas changes his mind. I don’t think he is sincere about his change in opinion.