One might ask, "What is the point of it all".

By 2050 the world population will have increased to the point that even with GM crops producing more food there will be even more malnourished people out there. I'm not against GM per se, there is too much hysteria about the technology, but all we seem to be doing with modern technology including medicine, is improving the survival rate and hastening the demise of homo sapiens in the process.

David

There is nothing really to object to in Campbell's article. Sure the world's poor are poor and malnorished for a host of reasons apart from not be able to use GM crops, assuming that they could afford them. The solutions are political, rather than technical. Permit rule of law and end civil wars in certain countries and see just how quickly the poeple will be able to feed themselves, and never mind whether they are using GM crops or not. Certainly there is nothing in the article to prevent the commercial use of GM crops, just a warming that they should not be regarded as a solution to poverty. Quite right. So is that it?

The question shouldn't be if GM crops can feed the hungry, but WHY are there people hungry at all?

Have a look at Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate . When I forst saw this, I thought it was a map og poverty... but no, it's a map of birth-rates... the poor are poor because they are having huge numbers of children... and sadly, the population is doubling, trippling or even quadroupling every generation.

Now that's fine if you can afford to build three times more roads, three times more schools, more hospitals and somehow make more farmland every 25 years...

Poverty and environmental destruction go hand-in-hand, both are the result of un-sustainable birthrates.

To save people from poverty, and to save the environment, we need to promote free contraception, marriage and sexual equality - not in Australia, but in the poor world.

Meanwhile the middle-class "developed" world is suiciing!
Australians are having only 1.8 children for every 2 adults - we are slowly suiciding. What is it about being middle-class that causes it to suicide? What causes middle-class people to fail to have large families? The middle class can't affort large families.

Solution: Remove the complex family payments etc... and just make families tax-deductible!
- 5% off your tax per kid? Or
- allow income splitting between all family members, so the middle class can finally afford the children!

Also fight feminism. Feminism is a middle-class thing... Middle-class wives enjoy a work-life balance, while dads carryt he double load of work long hours at woek and weekends trying to catch-up with their kids...

THen comes the divorce... Men know that divorce means everything they ever worked for. Worse still their kids they love are stolen from them...

So sadly, professional men are refusing to become fathers in droves...
In city offices you see hundreds of young-ish, professional women, unable to get husbands...

Men know marriage and fatherhood has been rigged by feminism and are refusing to marry... changing girlfriends every few years to avoid the risks of fatherhood and divorce.

Even at 1.8 children per family, the middle class is far from suiciding. Increased life expectancy is already taking care of that. The comment detracts from what are basically some reasonable propositions. We desperately need to get the world human population back to a sustainable number, so that we might then look toward adequately feeding and sheltering those species which are left, including our cousins in the jungles of Sumatra and Borneo.

David

partTimeParent - erm, I dunno where you've been but I think you'll find that Australian birth rates have been increasing. The latest is something like 1.5 per cent a year.. not sure what that works out to parent but it a lot more than the 1.8 figure you mention. I'm not aware of any analysis pointing to any reason for the increase in the past few years. Don't think that's broken up into social classes but the middle class isn't going anywhere just yet. Immigration has also been increasing..
There are people who say all this is unsustainable, but they have always been saying that. American academic Paul Ehrlich produced a book The Population Bomb baced in the 60s? forecasting mass starvation in the 1970s and 80s.. didn't happen..

Can GM crops feed the hungry? Yes they can . And they do .
Technology has changed Farming strategy to meet rainfall and grain Tec has changed to align with those strategy's.
Most people are blown away with the Technology involved in modern farming , today the Farmer sits in an air conditioned , sealed cabin the only reason he is there is to stop the Machine should something go wrong . All is controlled by Satnav as the machine that sews the
crop travels the field that has been previously mapped , the amount of seed and the Tyne depth and the speed of the machine is adjusted to suit the make up of the soil , all this is hands free . The tractor might be 350 horsepower , the size of the machinery is humongous and most importantly the acreage it can sew in a day is "unimaginable" this is the key to successful wheat farming
Once the soil moisture level is right the time it takes to sew the crop is critical , speed is the culture here to capitalize on that moisture , so the Farmer has embraced Technology at considerable expense the Farm doesn't fit the Machinery so he has to go big and buy out the next door farm , so having done all this you would expect the farmer to embrace the more efficient GM plant than the old Corn Plant we can see in Constables famous and beautiful Paintings ; seriously hysteria about GM is for people with three legs .