Introduction to the Issue of Coexistence

In many ways, the debate about coexistence is about the future of the global food system and its capacity to meet the rapidly growing demand for food and nutrition. Since their commercial introduction in 1995 and 1996, genetically modified (GM) crops have been adopted by farmers around the world at impressive rates. In 2014, over 180 million hectares of GM crops were cultivated by more than 18 million farmers in 28 countries. Soybeans, maize, cotton, and canola are the primary GM crops worldwide, representing 50, 30, 14, and 5 %, respectively, of the global area devoted to GM production. Soybean producers have adopted GM varieties at the highest rate; over 80 % of global soybean area is planted with GM varieties. Nearly 70 % of cotton area, 30 % of maize area, and 25 % of canola area are produced using GM varieties. Overall, of all crops for which GM varieties are available, nearly half the production area is planted with GM varieties (James 2014). In the next decade, global adoption is expected to grow further as the research pipeline for new biotech traits and crops has increased almost fourfold in the last few years (Stein and Rodríguez-Cerezo 2010).