Evaluating claims GMOs and modern agriculture have led to a 75% drop in crop diversity

Economic development, human migration, urbanization, and globalization have further affected the diversity of food crops cultivated and consumed around the world. Most modern farmers seem to want uniform, mechanized production. Most eaters seem to want unblemished vegetables of known shapes and sizes, and inexpensive processed food products. In most of the decisions producers, food distributors, and consumers make, crop diversity inadvertently gets the short end of the stick.

This is ironic, since modern productive crop varieties are bred by wisely mixing and matching diverse genetic resources. The disappearance of old varieties thus reduces the options available to plant breeders, including those working to produce more nutritious and resilient crops. Genebank collections, such as the beans, cassava, and other staples conserved at CIAT, which were originally built to provide access for plant breeders to genetic resources, have therefore taken on increasingly important conservation roles.