Suppose your relationship is falling apart and you want to save it. To find the best counsellor, you might search online or ask your friends. It’s no different in agriculture. The rational response to any food or farming dilemma is to test and compare different options to see which is most effective as a solution.
Except when it comes to genetic modification (GM). I have yet to hear of a research trial where a newly developed GM crop has been compared with other approaches to address the problem it claims to solve. If the goal was to identify the most effective solution, this would be very odd – but if the real goal is to find a use for the technology, it makes perfect sense.
Here’s an example from my work in the subtropics (I better not name the country). In the 2000s, one region experienced several consecutive years of severe drought. The worst affected area saw over 3,000 wells dry up, and over 2,000 of its cattle lost. Many farmers were unable to sow their staple maize crop. The easy culprit was climate change, since temperatures had risen half a degree in recent years. What was less frequently pointed out was the poor condition of the soils: 60% suffered from erosion, 40% had low water retention, and 45% had low fertility – all the result of several decades of industrial agriculture.