. That’s pushing agricultural operations to rely increasingly on groundwater reserves in many places, further straining aquifers.
Exacerbated droughts are particularly worrying. A major one could kick off a vicious cycle of agricultural collapse, rising food prices and famine in some parts of the world. Even the U.S. may not be immune: One study examining the effects of a potentialfound that a similarly catastrophic drought could cause the country’s corn and soy yields to drop by around 40 percent and what yields by around 30 percent in just a year.
Those perils come amid a rapidly expanding global population that will require higher crop yields. Our planet could host nearly 10 billion people by the year 2050, according to UN estimates. That’s another roughly two billion mouths to feed. The challenge for humanity is painfully clear: improve our agricultural practices, or suffer the consequences.Humans have altered the crops we eat since nearly the dawn of agriculture.
Crops like Kernza, which has been bred selectively for generations, are just the latest iteration of a millennia-old process. Today, newer tools like artificial intelligence and genetic sequencing enable scientists to mix and match crop varieties with unprecedented precision. Researchers are already exploring ways to create hybrid crops: More drought tolerant here, more resistant to local pests over there.
As our technological capabilities have expanded, they've also brought new ways to shape plants. Hybridization between species has offered farmers a way to introduce new traits into their crops for decades. Four decades ago, scientists began using a type of bacteria calledby way of horizontal gene transfer. By the 2000s, a number of crops, from cotton to soybeans to tobacco, had been approved for genetically modified varieties. Today in the U.S.