Earth Day: Get Green With Biotech's Role in Sustainability

Today is Earth Day, but look around – the technologies that can positively impact our environment have evolved dramatically since that first Earth Day celebration.

In communities around the globe folks are still cleaning up litter, planting trees, and encouraging their neighbors to recycle, but Earth Day in 2016 is also about embracing the incredible technologies that are empowering the most widespread move toward sustainable living we’ve seen to date.

There are solar panels on roofs across America. The fully electric Tesla is one of the most desirable cars on the planet. Wind power is helping to fuel a renewable energy revolution. Houses are using battery packs to stay off the grid. And genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are helping to create a new era of sustainability in agriculture and food production.

Did that last one catch you off guard? Are you skeptical about GMOs role in our sustainability story? Well, you wouldn’t be alone. According to a study by Health Focus International, more than half of consumers surveyed in the U.S. and around the world believe that GMO crops are worse for the environment than conventional crops.

The truth is, however, since the introduction of GMO crops more than 20 years ago, we have seen amazing enhancements in agricultural sustainability. From reduced CO2 emissions and fewer pesticide applications to better water conservation, biodiversity and land use, GMOs and biotechnology have played a key role in modern agriculture’s sustainability story.

GM crops help reduce agriculture’s eco-footprint.

Unwanted weeds, for example, are a problem that every backyard gardener knows well. In production agriculture, controlling these weeds on a large scale can be a massive undertaking. The traditional method of using a tractor to till a field to uproot unwanted weeds is both fuel intensive and releases large amount of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas contributor, from the soil.

Here is where herbicide tolerant GMO crops enter the picture. These crops greatly reduce the negative impact on the environment by greatly limiting the need for such labor and resource intensive production methods. Instead, these herbicide tolerant crops allow for weeds to be sprayed and left in the field to serve as mulch, protect the soil, increase water retention, and lower erosion and water pollution.

GMOs role in mitigating climate change.

According to agricultural economist Graham Brookes, these practices and other efficiencies gained by the use of GMOs, “have led to less time spent on a tractor, less fuel used and fewer emissions. As a result, GMOs have helped reduce CO2 emissions equivalent to removing 12.4 million cars from the road for one year.”

Not only have GMOs helped reduce CO2 emissions, despite a widely held popular belief that the adoption of GMO crops has caused an uptick in pesticide use, GMOs have also contributed to a 37 percent decrease in pesticide applications. This is in large part due to crops with the “Bt” (Bacillus thuringiensis) trait that improves a plant’s insect resistance. Again, according to Graham Brookes, the adoption of GMOs have, “led to 1.2 billion pounds less pesticides being used between 1996 and 2013.”

Yet while GMOs clearly play a central role in our sustainability story today, if allowed to, biotechnology and GMO crops will play an even larger role in sustainability in the decades to come.

GM technology increases crop productivity.

In the next 30 years, the global population is expected to increase by a staggering two billion people. More people means more food, and the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization claims that agricultural production will need to increase by sixty percent to meet the global demand in 2050.

This dramatic increase in food production required to feed the growing population has the potential to cause considerable strain on the environment. Biotechnology, however, will allow farmers to produce more food on existing farmland and with far less inputs.

We can use herbicide tolerant crops so that farmers plough and till less, therefore reducing soil erosion, water pollution and the use of fossil fuels. We can use drought-tolerant crops that have a GMO trait, which helps the plant cope with stress and deliver more yield under low water conditions. We can even reduce food waste by making perfectly good food more cosmetically appealing, as we have seen with the non-browning apple and potato.

It may fly under the radar, but GMOs and biotechnology are working right alongside wind power, solar farms, and electric cars in providing a holistic approach to creating a more sustainable planet.

On this Earth Day, we can take advantage of all the technological tools at our fingertips, including biotechnology, and use these exciting advancements to improve our sustainability, feed our growing population and lessen impact on the environment for generations to come.