Apologies for the excess of links below. I find posts that spam links annoying, but if somebody believes GM products have saved millions/billions of lives, then they won't (and shouldn't) believe rando internet guy, and all the points are pretty distinct.
---
GMOs were first made available in 1994 [1]. You can find data on famine deaths over time here [2]. Global famine deaths were near zero per 100k before GMOs had been developed. As an aside on this, the reason for historic famines was often not a lack of food or crops, or even weather - but war, which disrupts supply lines and may damage production.
GMO products are also primarily only grown in the USA and Brazil. [3] Of the two largest countries in the world, India has a complete ban on GM products except cotton, and China previously had a complete ban but lately has been in a state of flux, in no small part because of trade concessions - the US really wants to sell GM soybeans to them.
The vast majority of GMOs are used to feed Americans, Brazilians, livestock, and cars. If you don't understand that last one - US/Brazilian corn is often turned into heavily subsidized ethanol fuel. Which absolutely sucks as a fuel in every possible way [4], but has found a place in the market thanks to governmental regulation.
We don't use that much corn to make ethanol here in Brazil. The share of corn in our ethanol production is only 13% of the total[1], the rest is from sugar cane. According to the research institute Embrapa, most of our corn is for human or animal consumption.
As for your affirmation that it sucks for fuel, the growth of corn as a competitor for sugar cane in the production of ethanol here in Brazil is not "thanks to government regulation". In our country, sugar cane farmers have a lot more pull with the government than corn farmers. If government meddling was an issue, it would make the use of corn as a source of ethanol more difficult, not easier.
If ethanol producers here are turning to corn, is because it has economical benefits.
---
GMOs were first made available in 1994 [1]. You can find data on famine deaths over time here [2]. Global famine deaths were near zero per 100k before GMOs had been developed. As an aside on this, the reason for historic famines was often not a lack of food or crops, or even weather - but war, which disrupts supply lines and may damage production.
GMO products are also primarily only grown in the USA and Brazil. [3] Of the two largest countries in the world, India has a complete ban on GM products except cotton, and China previously had a complete ban but lately has been in a state of flux, in no small part because of trade concessions - the US really wants to sell GM soybeans to them.
The vast majority of GMOs are used to feed Americans, Brazilians, livestock, and cars. If you don't understand that last one - US/Brazilian corn is often turned into heavily subsidized ethanol fuel. Which absolutely sucks as a fuel in every possible way [4], but has found a place in the market thanks to governmental regulation.
---
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavr_Savr
[2] - https://ourworldindata.org/famine-mortality-over-the-long-ru...
[3] - https://sci-hub.ru/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007...
[4] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2016/04/25/why-a...