* I really doubt GMO has raised the standard of living for the average person.
* I really doubt people in less then stable economy have any less salt towards the rich, the government, or polluters.
* I really doubt there is a correlation between the standard of living caring about your neighbors.
So to answer your question. No. I have never noticed that countries where people are pissed at the rich are the people that live in stable economy. To prove you wrong, take a look at Greta Thunberg’s twitter feed. She is constantly retweeting people from poorer countries being pissed at the rich for ruining our climate.
Then you are absolutely not paying attention at all whatsoever. In fact, the majority of the impact of GMO crops has been felt in countries where there was literally not enough food to go around. You’re welcome to your organics in a country as food secure as in the west but starving poor and middle income countries is not okay.
However this doesn’t really take away from my point that GMO didn’t fix world hunger. Farmers can save money by using less pesticide and have better crop yield all they want but that still doesn’t fix food not going to where it is needed.
This—on its own—doesn’t even take away from my weaker claim that „I doubt GMO has raised the standard of living for the average person“. Sure it has raised the standard of living for the farmers that have the option of swapping to GMO crops that previously needed a lot of pesticide. But unless you believe in some trickle down economic theory that will not automatically raise the standard of living to anyone else.
That all said I do find it a little handy that the quoted study only talks about maize, soy, and cotton. One of these is not even a food crop. And the two food crops here are notorious for giant industrial scale farms where much of the yield isn’t even for human consumption, but turned into feed for the meat industry. See it’s a problem of distribution. The profits of more maize and soy yield grown with less pesticide will most likely stay with the farmer, and even if they reduce the price of their price product, the profit from the cheaper crops will more likely go to the cattle farmer up stream with the cheaper feed. The standard of living for the average person will just remain the same, or—at best—marginally improve.
I mean sure. If GMO can help people, sure go ahead and grow them. But the fact is that so far GMO crops are limited to large agriculture giants and is not used to help with the global food safety net. Particularly not for feeding the poorer parts of the world.
In addition, dietary vitamin A deficiency can easily be fixed now (as well as 20 years ago; and even 120 years ago) with better food distribution. We have been shipping food for millennia. We don’t need golden rice or any other GMO to fix this problem.
Just to clarify, I’m not against them researching and growing golden rice. I am against them lying about how this crop can save the world from a problem that can be already easily be fixed with existing methods.
Advancements in technology (including GMO crops) and productivity in general have massively raised standards of living in the developing world.
Raised standards of living are what permit people to give a crap about things like oppressed people in the next village over and climate change. Reducing the cost of commodities, like energy and grain, by any means raises standards of living, especially at the margins, and is what permits more people to care about abstract things.