Genetic engineering has been promoted as an important means for dramatically improving the yields of staple food crops, but there is little evidence to support such a claim. In Failure to Yield, the Union of Concerned Scientists provides the most comprehensive evaluation to date of more than two decades of U.S. genetic engineering research and commercialization aimed at increasing crop yield. Our analysis shows that despite tremendous effort and expense, genetic engineering has only succeeded in measurably increasing the yield of one major food or livestock feed crop—and this contribution has been small compared with other available methods.

Failure to Yield also considers the substantial theoretical and practical challenges to increasing yield via genetic engineering in coming years, provides an evaluation of more promising approaches that would also minimize environmental harm, and recommends policy changes that would maximize our ability to improve crop productivity in a sustainable manner.