The world's six billion population should not have any problem with famine if the food available is distributed fairly, and hence there is no need to bring genetically engineered crops into the picture at all.

Participants at the `Science for the People: Challenging Genetic Engineering and Agrochemicals' in Kuala Lumpur today with top-notch scientists and peasants sitting together claimed the world can still support its population without resorting to the genetically modified organism (GMO).

The scientist said that the big companies involved in selling seeds and pesticides, or gene giants, are actually more interested in profits with their reasoning that "they are the solution to the world problems".

Speaker Devinder Sharma, who represented India's Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security, said that the northern countries whose farmers own thousands of acres of land each have always reminded others to produce more every year or the ever increasing world population would be starving to death.

"While one part of the world (southern countries) are producing the food, the other part is looking for the market. In the process, the latter multiplies their crop production (through GMO) and also has its subsidy increased," he said

"Even in the United States, where productivity is high, the farmers are still going for GMO because all they wanted in not productivity, but subsidy," said Sharma, who is also a policy analyst and author.