Genetically-modified foodstuffs are here to stay. That’s not to say that food produced by conventional agriculture will disappear, but simply that food-buying patterns will polarize: there will be a niche market(瞄准机会的市场) for conventional foodstuffs just as there is for organic food. It may even be that GM food will become the food of preference because consumers come to appreciate the health benefits of reduced pesticide use.

Currently there are some 20,000 chemicals in use, but the scientists only have detailed information on around 1,000 of them. To see the advantages of GM food you have only to consider the recent press revelation that the average lettuce(莴苣) receives eleven pesticide applications before it reaches the supermarket shelf. I’m sure chemicals and their role in disease will become a big issue in the next century, as the population of the developed world worries increasingly about its health.

The reason GM food will not go away is that we need a three-fold increase in food production by the year 2050 to keep pace with the world’s predicted population growth to ten or eleven billion. It’s not just a question of more mouths to feed either. What is often forgotten is that all these extra people will take up space, reducing the overall land available for agriculture.

The world has 800 million hungry people. Until now, food supplies have been increased by improved varieties, pesticides and artificial fertilizers: the green revolution. Now we’re on the edge of a new revolution: a genetic one.

It may well be that in the long term it is the developing world that benefits most from GM foods. It’s true that for the next ten years or so GM crops may be too expensive. But the lesson of personal computers is applicable here—once the technology has been developed for money—spinning crops, like maize(玉米) and cotton, it will filter down and become affordable for all. This doesn’t mean, unfortunately, that famines will disappear, but severity and duration will be helped by an improved ability to produce and distribute food.

It can be inferred from the passage that ______.