GMO crops reduce environmental impact? Further impoverish Africa?

Boy, a Royal Society report on the future of agriculture, and the chair, Cambridge University’s David Baulcombe, come close to doublespeak, in claiming GMO crops will reduce farming’s environmental impact.

Actually, in a number of ways, GMO crops could increase environmental problems:
1. Accelerated bug resistance to pesticides;
2. Accelerated mutation of plant infections;
3. Intensification of effect of bugs or infections.
That’s not all, either. By continuing to lessen the diversity of crops, and increasing the possibility of 1, 2 or 3 happening, too much GMO crop usage could increase the vulnerability of modern farms and farmers. Also, who in places like sub-Saharan African can afford GMO seed?

The Royal Society’s ideas would likely drive a lot of peasant farmers off the land and thereby increase urban poverty, possibly destabilizing more governments in the process.

Beyond that, the program the Royal Society calls for doesn’t sound totally realistic:

The world must develop over the next 16 years through genetic modification and conventional breeding varieties of crops resistant to disease, drought, salinity, heat and toxic heavy metals, the report said.

Right now, crops are genetically modified for just a couple of characteristics. Doing all of the above on a 20-year time frame sounds highly ambitious.

Plus, getting back to a point above, if Monsanto or whomever could design GMO crops to meet all of those issues within 20 years, you know what the asking price would be, compared to today’s GMO prices, let alone those for non-GMO seed.

In short, the Royal Society appears to have tackled this issue solely from a Western technology and capitalism point of view.