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In the September issue of Scientific American, which should be arriving on newsstands and in subscribers in-boxes right about now, there is a totally awesome and, sadly, totally paywalled article entitled Sowing a Gene Revolution: A new green revolution based on genetically modified crops can help reduce poverty and hunger--but only if formidable institutional challenges are met. In the table of contents of that issue, we invited you, the reader, to share your thoughts on transgenic crops here in the comments of this post. For those of you who aren't subscribers, there's a summary of the article after the jump. Here's the "Key Concepts" box from the article:
* Genetically modified crops can increase the profits of farmers in developing nations and reduce food prices for poor consumers, but they are not a panacea.
* Unlike the green revolution of the 20th century, in which public research institutes developed technologies and freely disseminated them around the world, today's "gene revolution" is led by multinational corporations.
* Reaping the full potential of biotechnology in the developing world will depend as much on institutional factors (such as intellectual-property rights and environmental and food safety regulations) as on the development of transgenic crops suited to the local conditions in each country.
