The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has estimated that, due to the growing world population and changes in diet and income, food demand will increase by 70% by 2050. This means that, in order to reach worldwide food security – which the WHO describes as having access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food supplies at all times – food supply will have to increase as well despite many challenges, including water shortages, climate change and geopolitical conflicts. But achieving food security worldwide has already proven to be extremely difficult: between 2009 and 2012, 12.5% of the world’s population, 870 million people, were chronically undernourished, most of them in developing countries. At this Policy Dialogue, a panel of experts focused on one of the possible solutions to shortages in nutritious food: biotechnology and innovation in agriculture, including genetically modified crops. They discussed the role of agricultural biotechnology in increasing the productivity and efficiency of agricultural produce and how it can help to tackle the challenges posed by food shortages and climate change, while also considering some of the concerns related to use of GM crops.