if there were fewer mouths, you would need less rice. I realize it isn't an area the Gates Foundation is active in, but there is quite a bit of evidence that educating and empowering women reduces population growth[1]. In many parts of the world women are still treated like property, forced into marriage, and have no access to family planning or education.
1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-women-can-sav...
> President Recep Tayyip Erdogan encourages women to have at least three children.
> "No matter how successful a woman is, a woman who denies her motherhood, who gives up on looking after the home is incomplete, is only half, is at risk of losing her uniqueness," Erdogan said Sunday during a speech to the Women and Democracy Association.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/09/europe/erdogan-turkey-mansplai...
>> Invest in New Contraceptive Methods
>> Some women do not access or use contraceptives for a variety of reasons, even when they want to avoid pregnancy. They may have misconceptions about their risk of becoming pregnant, or be deterred by the cost, inconvenience, or concerns about side effects. ... "
The Gates Foundation is paying for "a reformulation of Pfizer’s Depo-Provera® (medroxyprogesterone acetate)" [1]. The usual side effect of this drug is gaining weight. Usually it's about 20 pounds. Some women gain 40+ pounds after a few rounds of this drug [2].
[1] http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2... [2] https://www.reddit.com/user/ihateyoudepo
I suspect that the Depo Provera injections at about age 20 is what turned my friend into a drug addict. Drug use caused her first psychotic episodes, and her first court-ordered psychiatrists weren't smart enough to make the connection between her previous use of a prescription endocrine disruptor (Provera) and the following depression that she self-treated with street drugs.
Anyone who uses Provera drug is ignorant of the harm it actually causes, or is malicious.
edit: fixed italics above edit2: changed txt above to 'endocrine disruptor'
The next call came from Australia in 2006. Biologists there
wanted an adaptation of Mouseopause for rats. Rats, they told
her, were eating 30% of the rice crop in Australia and
Indonesia. If she could reduce the rat population by even half,
they claimed, the crops that would be saved could feed millions
of people.
Agricultural output is always variable. The world needs more storage capacity [2], and to better support small farmers. There's the ancient parable about "seven years of abundance" preceding "seven years of famine". Only "old" grain should be fed to animals.
For the most part, genetic engineering has been used to sell pesticides. While this C3->C4 innovation might not be as harmful as Monsanto's, it would be better to deal with our other agricultural problems too. Getting rats' numbers under control, and other low-tech investments (such as was undertaken in Thailand starting in the 1960's [3]), would be just as effective as throwing new seeds at farmers...
Haiti demonstrates that politics is the most important factor for determining agricultural output. [4]
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_silo [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_production_in_Thailand [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12531999 - "Why Are Haiti's Coffee Trees So Tall?"
Well worth a listen: http://longnow.org/seminars/02016/mar/14/radical-ag-c4-rice-...
In the west it's a little more complicated since it's embedded in the food culture, and has a big systemic component (subsidies), but having a lot of meat at the table is traditionally considered a sign of prosperity here as well.
Honest question: can't we assume that, as population grows, people will just plant more rice?
Sure this cannot be done everywhere, but there's surely some arable land somewhere that can grow, and maybe technology can help in other ways than by manipulating the genome of plants.
For instance, if we had cheap energy or a very efficient desalinating tech, we could desalinate ocean water and cultivate normal rice where there are deserts now...
In France farmers are complaining that the prices of farm products are too low and it sounds like there are many places where we produce way too much for too few consumers.
Instead of playing god to reduce a risk in 2050, can't we try right now to find economical, political, or technical ways to take the surplus from one place and bring it to places where food is already dramatically lacking?
EDIT: formatting
Sadly, part of the reason why it's been delayed is due to fearmongering by groups like Greenpeace who are ideologically opposed to genetic engineering.
Some of the delay was calm objection to massive corporations. http://whqlibdoc.who.int/bulletin/2000/Number%2010/78(10)new...
Golden rice had a bunch of patents from over 20 organisations -- putting farmers at risk of licence violation. Pressure from Greenpeace and WHO (and WHO aren't known as a radical anti-GMO org) helped companies like Monsanto declare that they wouldn't be using terminator genes and would allow farmers to collect and sow some of their crop. (But only farmers who earn less than $10,000 per year).