Biotechnology
Biodiversity is the multitude of different living beings in a particular ecosystem or on the whole Earth. Biodiversity can be seen and studied at different organisational levels: genetic, organisational and ecological. It touches upon both native environments on land and sea as well as agricultural and other man-made surroundings. In agriculture, 7000 species of plants are used by farmers somewhere in the world, critics of Genetically Engineered Food (GE food) claim that the products of biotechnology threaten biodiversity. Every year hundreds of millions of pounds of organophosphate insecticides are sprayed on crops. These broad-spectrum insecticides kill virtually every insect on contact. The run-off from the sprays kills even more organisms in the soil and waterways. In an ideal world, we could just stop all use of these chemicals. But, unfortunately, such drastic measures would reduce crop yields.
Biotechnology has shown that it can reduce the impact on the environment while maintaining or increasing yields. Therefore its incorporation into world of agriculture will help protect biodiversity.
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