According to a report in the Sri Lankan newspaper “The Morning”, the country is paying the price for opting for a 100% organic agriculture strategy. That organic production, while desirable, will not currently feed the planet was also reported in the study by Morais and colleagues. Yet, with appropriate additional measures, this can be a long-term prospect, thinks John Reganold, Professor of Soil Science & Agroecology at the Washington State University.

One of the major challenges is the reduced yield that results mainly from the non-use of industrial, nitrogen-based, fertilisers and the non-use of synthetic pesticides.

And on the latter point, new research shows that – at least for insect-caused yield losses, other ways may be feasible to reduce these.  And that is based on gene editing, a precision technology that allows the easy manipulation of DNA. The research led by Ming Li and team developed a method to create male-sterility using gene-editing. This means that the insects will no longer be able to propagate. This was successfully tried on mosquito populations but can apply to insect pests like corn borer or the invasive fruit fly (Drosophila suzukii).  Especially the latter is very difficult to control since the eggs are deposited in the growing fruit, and pesticides applied to the plants have limited effect. So here, gene editing can contribute to reducing pesticide use.

In addition, a publication by Pradhan and colleagues estimated that the yield of some crops can be increased by up to 80% through minor changes in the genome. And hurdles for the approval of gene-edited agriculture and aquaculture products keep falling. Most Commonwealth countries have already dropped approval requirements for gene-edits (without new inserts), and even in Europe, we are likely to see a de-regulation for gene-edited products after a report found that the current regulations for genetically modified organisms (mainly 1829/2003 and 1830/2003) are “not fit for purpose”, i.e. not fit to regulate gene-edited products.

And there are already several commercialised outside Europe: Japan approved gene-edited tilapia and sea bream, and gene-edited corn has been approved in Canada. We are likely to see many more gene-edited products on the market with the continuing de-regulation in different jurisdictions, given the reduced cost, time and ease of generating gene-edited plants, especially with the CRISPR/Cas technology.

The key question to ask is if this technology will primarily be used to generate profits for multinational corporations or if it will be used to alleviate hunger in the world. One does not necessarily exclude the other, but the priority should be on the latter.