Farming has been around for a long time, ten thousand years according to many experts. And ever since the first humans learned how to plant and harvest crops, they’ve steadily been improvements over the years. These improvements helped them to get more food out the same piece of land. And as the world’s population has grown, farming has helped out by continuously increasing the capacity of a finite piece of land. The latest technological developments in farming include genetic engineering, which promises to not only increase the amount of food grown, but to increase it’s nutritional value as well. But is this a good thing? In this article I’ll go over the advantages and disadvantages, so that you can decide for yourself.
To begin with, it’s important to understand that farmers have been genetically altering foods for hundreds, if not thousands if years. Cross pollination is simply mixing two different kinds of plants together to make a new one, or to alter the original plant. The corn of today looks and tastes nothing like the wild corn that was first eaten thousands of years ago. In the past, good was changed so it would taste better, but today, we have the capability to engineer food so the nutritional content will be healthier. For example, most Americans eat a diet that includes too many carbohydrates in the from of grain based foods. This can lead to a lot of ailments, including diabetes and heart disease.
However, with genetic engineering, it may be possible to alter the carbohydrate/protein ratio, giving allowing for grain based foods that don’t contain an overabundance of carbohydrates. Modern plant oils are another problem. Most modern plant oils don’t contain the proper balance of fatty acids, which can lead to high cholesterol. However, with genetically altered foods, these modern plant oils can contain a much better blend of fatty acids, which can lead to better cardiovascular health.
The genetic engineering of today is much different than it was in the past. In the past, it took several years to make small changes. One small change per year, and then it took farmers several years after that to include the altered food in their crops, just to make sure there wasn’t any hidden dangers. However, today, genetic changes are made much quicker, and some feel that this might make it much harder to see any negative effects.
By drastically changing any one plant, any negative effects might not make themselves pronounced for some time. This could lead to devastating side effects such as cancer or other diseases that take quite a while to fully manifest themselves. Also, any genetically altered crop that is taken up too quickly by any one farmer can have terrible economic consequences if the crop fails.
It’s clear that genetically altered food does have advantages. Finite plots of land can produce more and more food, plants can withstand harsher weather conditions, and the nutritional value of the food can be increased. However, it’s important to make sure that these changes are done slowly, so that no ill effects become widespread.
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