I was just hunting down links re the IAASTD report, and was about to read the Global Summary, so thanks for this diary.

Concerning GM crops' capacity to produce more and so "feed the world", apart from the obvious objection that producing more in productivist terms means increasing petro- and aqua-inputs, interesting evidence comes from Kansas State University that GM crops (in this case, soy) don't perform as well yieldwise as non-GM. (See today's Salon). So Beachy's "the over-precaution on the issue of GM in the face of strong scientific evidence to the contrary was partly to blame for the current world food crisis" looks even more unbalanced. The notion that GM crops have higher yields is a commonplace, but false.