The Second Agricultural Revolution: GMO Farming

The Second Agricultural Revolution began at the end of the 1700s with the inventions of the barbed wire fence, harvesting machines such as Cyrus McCormick’s reaper, and tractors. The ultimate success of this era was the reduction of human laborers needed to work on a farm. The Third Agricultural Revolution, beginning many years later in the late 1900s, was a phenomenal success in terms of growing economies in underdeveloped countries. The division of economic activities was eliminated, intensive machinery was improved, and the adoption of biotechnology greatly spurred on a new era of agriculture. With the new agricultural revolution on the rise, the split between organic farming and synthetic farming was at its highest. The world needs to answer

Plants and animals that have been genetically modified can become more resistant to the unexpected problems of disease. The beneficiaries have also been the agrochemical industry (pesticides, including insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and nematicides), large petrochemical companies (BASF, Dow Chemical, and ExxonMobil), manufacturers of agricultural machinery, dam builders, and large landowners. As stated by PG Economics, “The insect resistant (IR) technology used in cotton and corn has consistently delivered yield gains from reduced pest damage.” Pest control is very important to GMO farming and benefits the value of the crops. For others, the idea of GMO farming is a bad one because it leads to reduced genetic diversity, increased vulnerability to pests, soil erosion, water shortages, reduced soil fertility, micronutrient deficiencies, soil contamination, reduced availability of nutritious food crops for the local population, the displacement of vast numbers of small farmers from their land, rural impoverishment, and increased tensions and conflicts. Also, many of the farmers that use GMO for agricultural production do not follow all of the standards. According to S. Grant from Listverse, “A lack of training, resources, and enforcement means many farmers don’t follow the refuge technique and superbugs continue to

However, we must learn to combine the benefits of both and fix the fix the hole we dug ourselves. Despite casing groundwater depletion, monocropping, and costing too much money, GMO farming is an efficient way to produce crops on a massive scale. Organic farming may be more susceptible to diseases and pest damage, but it is cheap and healthy which allows poor farmers to grow subsistence crops. It is hard to determine which type of farming is a better way of agriculture. Nonetheless, it is not hard to see the negative effects on the world that both types of agriculture leave. The only answer that remains is that we need to change the way we feed our growing