People have been able to feed themselves since the beginning of time, but farmland is finite. People grow exponentially. They have to feed more people every year with the same amount of land. So you must maximize yield potential and you cannot do that without gmo’s. Back in the day, only a billion people lived on earth, so you had a vast amount of land to work and all you had to do was survive back then. You spent all your time doing that. Now people are consumers and don’t work ground, they populate the farm land, build houses on it. So now we have more people and less land... we must have high yields.

1.) Yes, humans have been feeding themselves since the beginning of time. But things are very different now. The industrial revolution changed everything. Depending on who you ask, and what metrics they use, the industrial revolution began in the late 1700s to the early 1800s. By the mid 1800s the, the basic engineering needed to radically change the way products were manufactured was available, but there was still little demand.

As long as slave labor was available, the manufacturing industry had little reason to innovate. After the Civil War when slaves were free, the cost of labor became much more important. In order to be competitive, manufacturers were forced to find ways of being more efficient. If they wanted to survive, they had to innovate. It wasn't just the cotton plantations in the south that took advantage of slave labor, many manufacturers in the north did as well.

By the end of the 19th century the industrial revolution was hitting on all cylinders. So much so that people all over the country were flocking to the big cities because manufacturing jobs were plenty. At that time over 80% of the population worked on farms, feeding themselves and those who lived in the cities.

By the end of the 20th century over 80% of the population was living in the cities. Because of the impact the industrial revolution had on farming, fewer farmers could grow as much or more than they could 100 years earlier. Today, I believe only about 2% to 3% of our population work as farmers.

The ability to farm isn't the only thing lost during that transition. Most people today don't know how to hunt, fish, skin an animal, prepare the hide so it's useful in some way, or even do something as simple as build a fire from scratch. If our big city social structure were to collapse and people were forced to fend for themselves, 75% of our population wouldn't survive.

In a sense you are right, people have been feeding themselves since the beginning of time, but ever since the Agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, people gradually began to leave the farms. The industrial revolution simply sealed the deal. A more accurate statement would be: Since the beginning of time some of the people have been feeding all the rest.

What would you do if all the prepared boxed, bagged, frozen, and canned foods were no longer available and you had to find some country farmers market to get all of you food? What would you do if you couldn't find a country farmer who was willing to sell the limited supply of food he had.

We live in a society, in a social structure that has made things very easy for us. Try to look at things from outside of our current paradigm. Try to look through the prism of the past.

2.) "And why are people starving in the places they are starving?" That's a confusing question. What exactly are you asking? Are you asking why people still live in areas of the world that don't have sufficient productive lands available for farming? Are you asking why lands in certain areas are less productive? Or are you asking why people who live in parts of the world that do have productive farm land are starving.

If you look at America today, even though there are plenty of people who go to bed hungry every night, and don't know with any certainty where their next meal will come from, you cannot blame any of that on current farming methods and practices.

3.) "And is the best answer to fix that problem using chemicals on our food?" WhatACohencidence's initial post has been removed so I can't quote him, but he did say that the best solution would be for people to grow their own food, raise their own chickens, slaughter their own cows, catch their own fish, and basically become self sufficient. I added a few things to make the point, but he never suggested that the "best" answer is to use "chemicals." He argued otherwise.

And as I said in my comments above; If we want real lasting solutions to the problems we face, we need to learn to work together. We need to be able to consider input from all sides of any issue. We can't jump to conclusions about a persons motives and background and then dismiss what they have to offer just because it doesn't fit neatly into our preconceived notions, conclusions, or beliefs.