For thousands of years humans have been farming. Since the mass implementation of systematic agricultural dating back to almost ten thousand years ago, people have been dependent on the crops they grow for food and resources. However, recent studies have not exactly given us glad tidings. Rice, wheat and maize harvests have decreased by 9-10 percent as a result of human tampering and environmental issues (Paragraph 24, Source 3). This should obviously be a cause of great concern. As a response to these new challenges, the world community has been more initiative and active in recent times in the pursuit of protecting world food sources. There has been a raging debate that has arisen as these efforts continue. Proponents of these protection programs say that the programs are doing a great job. Critics have also been vocal, stating that these efforts are actually creating more problems than solving them. The truth is that the global community’s efforts to conserve world food sources are helping solve existing problems by providing food security, developing GMOS that help solve issues like malnutrition/food shortages and preparation for a potential doomsday scenario that could destroy millions of crop species.
The first reason that the protection efforts help is the fact that they provide food security. The fact that crops are vanishing is not unknown, from reasons such as “shifting local weather patterns to disuse by farmers adopting new hybrids..” (Paragraph 2, Source 1). This is a huge problem, but it can be prevented. There is a program that stores seeds in a vault and is a “remarkable facility set of a rugged Arctic Island...the ultimate global safety net for food security,” (Paragraph 1, Source 1). This is a very helpful program that contains all the seeds on the planet that is used for crops. If potentially there was an issue leading to a crop species dying out, programs like the vault would help us keep them for everyone. Even if the world food shortages and issues don’t drive some species to extinction, the food prices would skyrocket (Paragraph 26, Source 3) . That’s why initiatives to protect these cereal grains should be embraced- it helps the common people, which thereupon fulfills the tenets of populistic principles that already are the epitome of world policies attributed to food system. To wrap this point up, if the global community continues to save its crops by using programs such as the vault, we can keep these species protected and provide food security.
The second reason that the protection efforts help is the fact that innovations such as GMOs grow from it. For example, the benefits of GMOs are that “foods are tastier, more nutritious and resistant to diseases and droughts” (Paragraph 12, Source 2). From this we can extrapolate that the acceptance of the GMO programs can help the world population, especially poorer communities that find using GMOS to be cheaper, less time-consuming, and easier to grow in desolate areas. This is urgently needed in these countries. Some critics of the GMO programs say that they can cause “environmental damage and health problems...” (Paragraph 13, Source 2). However, this is just anti-intellectual fear mongering. To counter this fallacious claim further, the American for the Advancement Of Science (AAAS), that said rejection of GMOS were mostly “emotional rather than factual” (Paragraph 17, Source 2). The people trying to undermine the GMO programs are either very insincere or uninformed about the subject. No scientific studies show GMOs explicitly being the sole cause in any environmental or health issues. When looking through an objective lens, we can see the benefits of GMOs clearly outweigh the negative. In trying to better the betterment of the global community, GMO efforts must be injected into the mainstream. The GMO effort the global community is trying to use is solving actually existing problems.
The final point is that protection programs will prepare us from the danger of a doomsday event. In this doomsday like event, “like asteroid impacts and nuclear war,” up to 2.25 billion seeds could persih (Paragraph 1, Source 1). We must protect the Earth from more and more frequent potential threats. This ties back into investing in programs like the food vault and GMOs to provide a way to rehabilitation in a post-doomsday scenario. The Pentagon-funded think tank did a report where they say food issues can lead to unstable and weak governments to fall (Paragraph 29, Source 3). This could lead to another doomsday-type scenario as unstable countries without proper food would turn violent using militant strategies and ensuring world chaos. There is a viable solution, in “spending money now to avoid risks...for future” (Paragraph 30, Source 3). This is the mentality people must develop. Embrace the programs that the global communities are advocating. The possibility of a doomsday scenario and a messy aftermath will greatly diminish as a result.
