we produce enough food to feed everyone on earth.GMO can be useful, but 90% of the time it is used to sell herbicide resistant crops, GMO and herbicide sold by the same company like Bayer.
It's not about health issues. I don't care if some poor guy with fish allergy dies after eating GMO potato. It's about licencing issues! GMO has potential to literally enslave humanity. GMO should either be public domain or banned. There is no middle ground!
Rejection of GMOs and rejection of large corporations controlling food sources, are different issues that are completely tied up in each other. Most of the problems with GMOs are problems with the patenting of crops, suing farmers for ridiculous reasons. The rest of the problems are people screaming "but the chemicals!" with no real scientific basis.
We definitely need more GMO crops to feed the planet. We most likely need less of Monsanto et al meddling in the farming industry.
I also find there's an opposite view of organic crops – there's this glorified notion that "organic" crops are better, but they're only better along very specific axes, namely the lack of pesticides, of which some may be dangerous (but often regulated). In reality, organic crops use more land, more water, and produce less for sale, in many ways making them worse for the environment than (responsible) pesticide usage.
Everyone just needs to take into account their externalities. Right now industry and (some) eco campaigners don't.
> We definitely need more GMO crops to feed the planet
That, too, is debatable. Google "Do we have enough food" - we could feed 10B people with what we produce. Feeding the world is currently more a matter of donating (who pays?) and distributing it, not so much of producing the food in the first place.
> namely the lack of pesticides, of which some may be dangerous (but often regulated)
There is also overfertilization, which puts nitrates into ground and ultimately drinking water, and the over-use of herbicide, which massively strains local ecosystems to their collapse. The farmer revolts in Europe over the last 1-2 years have shown how politically difficult any kind of regulation in this area is. The EU is now backing down. It seems to be very difficult to find a middle ground in the "excessive vs. organic" spectrum.
Yeah this is a complex problem. It does seem the case that we probably have enough food globally, but not at a national level. Also it seems that we don't have sufficient food for everyone to live at the level of the average American or European, so arguably there's benefit there in increasing food production. Also a large population still farm every day, being able to reduce the time input for farming could increase productivity by freeing people up to do other things.
> Feeding the world is currently more a matter of donating (who pays?) and distributing it, not so much of producing the food in the first place.
Yes, but if food can become X% more abundant do to increased yield or survivability in previously unsurvivable climates, distribution and costs can become that much less of an issue.
Sure, theoretically. But what does the reality on the ground actually mean for choosing organic rather than “”they could use 100x organic pesticides”, therefore no point.
“Consumption of organically produced food reduces pesticide exposure and is linked to a variety of health benefits, according to multiple studies, especially according to a large study from France.
Clinical trials continue to show that people who switch from non-organic to organic foods see a rapid and dramatic reduction in their urinary pesticide concentrations, a marker of pesticide exposure.
Other studies have linked higher consumption of organic foods to lower urinary pesticide levels, improved health outcomes, including reductions in maternal obesity and pregnancy-associated preeclampsia risks, lower BMI and reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes.”
Of course you can produce healthy kefir and cabbage at scale, just as you can organic produce.
But you can’t produce as much as Coca Cola and non-organic.
Which is why I’m specifically refuting
> organic crops use more land, more water, and produce less for sale
Because it’s still true that no matter how much scale your Kefir has, those properties apply to it more than Coke.
So let’s not talk about purely that you can make more non-organic, but about the tradeoff and what get from organic when you’re not making quite as much.
> in many ways making them worse for the environment
Not really, for refence I'm in a rural grain growing area with farm size averaging 4500 hectares.
Grain yields can be increased by many means, as they are, along with breeding for changing climate conditions, which they are (many thousands of ANOVA plots are grown about the region here every year) but the overwhelming practical attraction of GMO crops is glyphosate resistance .. this allows the application of weedkiller during seeding times in sufficient amounts to kill all plants save the crop.
Killing every plant across hundreds of thousands of hectares (with the exception of a very few desired by humans as food for humans) isn't exactly widely considered to be an environmental plus.
Near monoculture has knock on effects on the diversity of animal life, general environmental robustness, etc.
+300, it’s kind of tragic that the general public’s concern around GMOs seems centered on the perceived dangers of ingesting them, rather than Monsanto’s relentless track record of predatory litigation and their apparent mission to monopolize global agriculture.
I’d be interested to hear examples of large-scale industry players voluntarily accepting the costs of their externalities to any meaningful degree (i.e. more than just-enough-to-make-a-good-PR-campaign). My belief is that in the absence of regulation, the survival advantages conferred by socializing costs and privatizing losses are sufficient to eliminate larger conscientious (or so-called “socially responsible”) organizations.
We already produce way more food than is needed to feed the all the people in the world. It's not about the amount of production but how we distribute the food and what are the intensives when doing that. Giving more power to ag-corporations haven't worked past 30 years and I have no reason to believe it will in the future.
> Giving more power to ag-corporations haven't worked past 30 years
On the contrary. World hunger has declined dramatically ever since the dawn of the industrial revolution, due almost entirely to large-scale mechanized agriculture and modern plant breeding.
It did take a jump in the last few years, but that was due to the pandemic, not a failure of agriculture.
Pretty much the only thing that can produce famine nowadays is war or a completely fucked-up government (sometimes war and a completely fucked-up government). Again, that's not the fault of modern agriculture.
We aren't going to go back to a world where guys with shovels and buckets of manure produce all the food. For one, they couldn't possibly produce enough food for the current population. For another, the "guy with shovel and bucket of manure" model was dependent on the guys being some type of unfree labor (serfs or outright slaves).
I like living in a world where 90% of the human race isn't digging turnips by hand, with an overseer standing nearby with a whip.
>In reality, organic crops use more land, more water, and produce less for sale, in many ways making them worse for the environment than (responsible) pesticide usage.
The issue I refer to as "conventional organic" involves attempting to farm like a conventional farm but without using pesticides. This approach is naturally problematic. However, there are alternative farming methods that can significantly boost productivity while also valuing biodiversity. For instance, permaculture is an excellent option for small farms in developing countries, and agroforestry enhances climate resilience. And crop mixing, such as planting wheat with broad beans, can increase yields by 16%. This method also improves soil fertility by fixing nitrogen and reduces the risk of pest infestations and diseases.
In addition to corporate control, I believe that consumer consent is a major issue. Sure, labelling something as a GMO is going to have a short term impact. Yet it is a fairly safe bet that the vast majority of people simply won't care whether a given product contains GMOs or not within a decade. And those who do care would have been choosing things like organic produce anyway.
Instead we have a situation where people feel compelled to lobby governments to place more stringent regulations on the industry simply because they are left with no meaningful choice in what they buy. Worse yet, it breeds suspicion not only of corporate motivation but of product safety. The latter of which is of greater concern over the long term viability of GMOs.
This is a purely anecdotal response so I don't think anyone should draw big conclusions from my answer. In my experience, the farms and outlets that adhere to organic labeling tend to care more about the quality of the product. Obviously in theory, being organic is orthogonal to being tasty. But if you're going for "air-chilled, organic, free range chicken breast" you're probably just shopping for a tastier product than regular chicken breast. Do be careful about which organic labeling is on the product as there's subtle differences to different organic labels.
Thank you, I suspected something along those lines because the reality in the mind of the consumer organic = tastier product, so in a certain way companies aiming for organic are aiming to appear "tastier"
Typically because they're varieties that need a lot of hand-babying, which the higher prices of organic foods can support. The cheap stuff consists of varieties bred for productivity and shipping ruggedness.
That's fine if you're privileged enough to afford the organic stuff. Not so much if you're a poor person in need of raw calories.
We have more than enough food for everyone. Actually, we waste most of agricultural land to grow crops to feed animals that we eat later on, which is extremely inefficient, like a 10 to 1 calorie conversion rate. It's also cruel, bad for the environment, etc.
I don't. I understand that some people like the taste of meat and they don't want to miss out on that, but the animal and ecosystem exploitation have unfortunately serious consequences that we can't ignore. If we can create alternative products that taste just like meat (or maybe even better), then this would be beneficial to everyone.
>More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Just 7% of soy is used directly for human food products such as tofu, soy milk, edamame beans, and tempeh. The idea that foods often promoted as substitutes for meat and dairy – such as tofu and soy milk – are driving deforestation is a common misconception.
If we stop that, we free up a lot of calories for human consumption. I'd say the total amount of pure grass fed animals would be way lower, which would be better for the environment of course, and meat would be much more expensive. Actually, I like that. Good idea!
GMOs are under patent and increase prices, they do not keep the poor hungry, they are simply resistant to more pesticides.
And pesticides like Roundup have been linked to neurological problems like Parkinson.
If you’d want to save the poor, you’d teach them about greenhouses and irrigation and soil enrichment, which are actually the biggest issues in these poor countries
Yes, general statements never (almost never? :p) deal with all edge cases.
Did you know they don’t need a patent on the crop? They can file patents on variations of the genes in question, meaning even other variations can be protected under patent laws.
I guess it would be more honest to say I think there are other, more pressing matters in agriculture than GMOs, and that I have serious problems with patents on basic needs like medicine and food sources.
But the topic was about GMOs, so I phrased my response in this context. Do with it as you like.
Crops patents is not specific to GMO.
Calling the golden rice an edge case is showing you are unaware of all the GMO used to solve locals problems, that is a net benefit for the human and reduce the agriculture impact.
> The rejection of modern agricultural methods, genetic engineering, and the utilization of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides is exclusively the prerogative of wealthy humans living in developed, largely Western nations
Here we are. The article criticizes environmentalists against pesticides but never addresses environmental concerns. Convince me that "GMOs making pesticides resistant bad because most pesticides bad, because it harms the environment of which people are part" is false first.
What keeps the poor hungry is keeping the poor poor. The solution to this political choice is not a technical answer.
This is whats wrong with articles. You can never know the motive behind them. There’s no way this article is actually written organically and the big corps aren’t paying them to write this. There should be some regulation stopping this. Basically any company with money can now spread their own propoganda.
It’s not just this, you search about anything on google, any subjects there’s hundreds like this. You search if eggs are good you get hundreds saying how they’re great for you and if search if eggs are bad you get another hundred. It’s becoming impossible to be able to sort from good and bad articles. Even the research behind them many times can be paid by the corps. This is not good. There has to be a mechanism that changes this.
I learned recently theres a "biomass specific" cultivar of switchgrass.
If you've been around wetlands in the Midwest, switchgrass is the most prolific plant. You have to fight it to plant anything. The cultivar is a few percentage points better, but don't mistake it being better for anything other than marketing for the seed company.
You can't have something that just grows free and wild and is easy to propogate and to harvest with old square balers. You can't make biomass digestors palletized for home or community use to reduce our reliance on propane. No, you gotta make money from investor based corporate ag on a slightly different angle, mostly to grift clueless government green energy mandates.
I don't believe for a second modern agriculture companies give a fuck about the poor.
Could as well say that too little development into synthetic meats hinders human progress.
It is not that we can not grow enough food for humans. It is that we feed all the food to unethically treated animals in large warehouses, only to dig them down when the meat is unprofitable (looking at you, Australia).
My bet is that we increase agriculture free land, and utilize what we grow much better.
A lot of poor countries have a large proportion of subsistence farmers that are living off the land and are not participating in any form of formal economy. That is how you get those less than two dollars a day figures. They simply aren't using money. The food they produce and eat is definitely worth two dollars. When you look at the economics of commercial farming, most of the cost is spent on inputs such as synthetic fertilizer and seeds. There was a hybrid rice company telling you, you can earn a whopping $1000 per unit of land, all you have to do is pay them $800 for the inputs. You still have to pay for the land and the equipment. The seed and fertilizer companies are earning most of the money. Meanwhile if you are a simple subsistence farmer you don't have a thousand dollars, so you will have to borrow the money and if your country isn't self sufficient agriculturally and bleeding money because of trade deficits then what is it exporting to buy the inputs? It is not like you are selling basic necessities to some high tech country that is better off doing something else. So you borrow money from foreign countries in a foreign currency, a currency that is much more stable than yours. This is hardly a business model that works for the poor. Whenever people talk about GMOs, they think the fundamental problem of agriculture is that there is an insufficient quantity of food, when the actual problem is that the economy needs to formalise and poor people need access to markets to buy or sell things.
Crazy to consider we already forgot about other big ideas that ended in a pandemic because gain of function research conducted in a lab. And now companies like Montesanto want to push more such dangerous ideas by arguing it is to combat hunger.
Having more humans on the planet is not the solution to climate change. And science isn't going to save our ass from it.
Sustainable agriculture is not about monoculture farming GMO crops while the rest of the environment gets obliterated by the practice.
> Over the next 25 years, the development, and successful use of genetic engineering in the production of agricultural crops, will play a vital role in the support of human flourishing and save and enrich the lives of millions. This will, however, only be possible if we support the research, development, and use of GE technologies in a rational manner.
seeing the side-by-side comparisons of how much wheat has increased in yield from radiation-gardening made me realize that all we're really doing is speeding evolution / domestication using technology, and this was over 50 years ago! https://youtu.be/LPZqVSu_fu4?t=549
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening was close but I guess we can't have errant atoms running amok ("The Atomic Gardening Society utilized an early form of crowd-sourcing, in which members received irradiated seeds, planted them in their gardens, and sent reports back to Howorth detailing the results.")
As with almost all things, it's not really to have it, or not. It's a matter of how much, and in what way.
The overwhelming majority of GMO crops are modified to allow the increased use of "round up" type pesticides. More pesticides = not good.
Examples of other modifications include "golden rice".
It is sad that all of this gets rolled into one thing, since it's not. And I was not in favor of the Greenpeace campaigning to prohibit golden rice propgation.
But using this greenpeace mistake as an argument for all GMO crops is also a mistake.
The really sad thing is that the human primate is so bound to binary logic that actual good decisions are almost impossible to reach...
45 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer
We definitely need more GMO crops to feed the planet. We most likely need less of Monsanto et al meddling in the farming industry.
I also find there's an opposite view of organic crops – there's this glorified notion that "organic" crops are better, but they're only better along very specific axes, namely the lack of pesticides, of which some may be dangerous (but often regulated). In reality, organic crops use more land, more water, and produce less for sale, in many ways making them worse for the environment than (responsible) pesticide usage.
Everyone just needs to take into account their externalities. Right now industry and (some) eco campaigners don't.
That, too, is debatable. Google "Do we have enough food" - we could feed 10B people with what we produce. Feeding the world is currently more a matter of donating (who pays?) and distributing it, not so much of producing the food in the first place.
> namely the lack of pesticides, of which some may be dangerous (but often regulated)
There is also overfertilization, which puts nitrates into ground and ultimately drinking water, and the over-use of herbicide, which massively strains local ecosystems to their collapse. The farmer revolts in Europe over the last 1-2 years have shown how politically difficult any kind of regulation in this area is. The EU is now backing down. It seems to be very difficult to find a middle ground in the "excessive vs. organic" spectrum.
Yes, but if food can become X% more abundant do to increased yield or survivability in previously unsurvivable climates, distribution and costs can become that much less of an issue.
lack of synthetic pesticides, you can use as much organic pesticides as you want.
“Consumption of organically produced food reduces pesticide exposure and is linked to a variety of health benefits, according to multiple studies, especially according to a large study from France.
Clinical trials continue to show that people who switch from non-organic to organic foods see a rapid and dramatic reduction in their urinary pesticide concentrations, a marker of pesticide exposure.
Other studies have linked higher consumption of organic foods to lower urinary pesticide levels, improved health outcomes, including reductions in maternal obesity and pregnancy-associated preeclampsia risks, lower BMI and reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes.”
https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/faq.php#
Arsenic is organic.
You could say the same thing about grass grazing cows and free range chickens.
But anyone who’s had fresh home grown eggs, milk, or a 1/4 cow out in the country knows how much of a difference there is.
Just because something is maximally efficient, doesn’t mean it’s healthier. Just like Coca Cola isn’t healthier than Kefir.
The reality is that free range animals take up an incredible amount of resources for a small percentage of the population who can afford such luxury.
But you can’t produce as much as Coca Cola and non-organic.
Which is why I’m specifically refuting
> organic crops use more land, more water, and produce less for sale
Because it’s still true that no matter how much scale your Kefir has, those properties apply to it more than Coke.
So let’s not talk about purely that you can make more non-organic, but about the tradeoff and what get from organic when you’re not making quite as much.
Not really, for refence I'm in a rural grain growing area with farm size averaging 4500 hectares.
Grain yields can be increased by many means, as they are, along with breeding for changing climate conditions, which they are (many thousands of ANOVA plots are grown about the region here every year) but the overwhelming practical attraction of GMO crops is glyphosate resistance .. this allows the application of weedkiller during seeding times in sufficient amounts to kill all plants save the crop.
Killing every plant across hundreds of thousands of hectares (with the exception of a very few desired by humans as food for humans) isn't exactly widely considered to be an environmental plus.
Near monoculture has knock on effects on the diversity of animal life, general environmental robustness, etc.
I’d be interested to hear examples of large-scale industry players voluntarily accepting the costs of their externalities to any meaningful degree (i.e. more than just-enough-to-make-a-good-PR-campaign). My belief is that in the absence of regulation, the survival advantages conferred by socializing costs and privatizing losses are sufficient to eliminate larger conscientious (or so-called “socially responsible”) organizations.
On the contrary. World hunger has declined dramatically ever since the dawn of the industrial revolution, due almost entirely to large-scale mechanized agriculture and modern plant breeding.
It did take a jump in the last few years, but that was due to the pandemic, not a failure of agriculture.
Pretty much the only thing that can produce famine nowadays is war or a completely fucked-up government (sometimes war and a completely fucked-up government). Again, that's not the fault of modern agriculture.
We aren't going to go back to a world where guys with shovels and buckets of manure produce all the food. For one, they couldn't possibly produce enough food for the current population. For another, the "guy with shovel and bucket of manure" model was dependent on the guys being some type of unfree labor (serfs or outright slaves).
I like living in a world where 90% of the human race isn't digging turnips by hand, with an overseer standing nearby with a whip.
The issue I refer to as "conventional organic" involves attempting to farm like a conventional farm but without using pesticides. This approach is naturally problematic. However, there are alternative farming methods that can significantly boost productivity while also valuing biodiversity. For instance, permaculture is an excellent option for small farms in developing countries, and agroforestry enhances climate resilience. And crop mixing, such as planting wheat with broad beans, can increase yields by 16%. This method also improves soil fertility by fixing nitrogen and reduces the risk of pest infestations and diseases.
Instead we have a situation where people feel compelled to lobby governments to place more stringent regulations on the industry simply because they are left with no meaningful choice in what they buy. Worse yet, it breeds suspicion not only of corporate motivation but of product safety. The latter of which is of greater concern over the long term viability of GMOs.
That's fine if you're privileged enough to afford the organic stuff. Not so much if you're a poor person in need of raw calories.
But yes, distribution is the real problem
I don't. I understand that some people like the taste of meat and they don't want to miss out on that, but the animal and ecosystem exploitation have unfortunately serious consequences that we can't ignore. If we can create alternative products that taste just like meat (or maybe even better), then this would be beneficial to everyone.
https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation
>More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Just 7% of soy is used directly for human food products such as tofu, soy milk, edamame beans, and tempeh. The idea that foods often promoted as substitutes for meat and dairy – such as tofu and soy milk – are driving deforestation is a common misconception.
If we stop that, we free up a lot of calories for human consumption. I'd say the total amount of pure grass fed animals would be way lower, which would be better for the environment of course, and meat would be much more expensive. Actually, I like that. Good idea!
And pesticides like Roundup have been linked to neurological problems like Parkinson.
If you’d want to save the poor, you’d teach them about greenhouses and irrigation and soil enrichment, which are actually the biggest issues in these poor countries
Did you know they don’t need a patent on the crop? They can file patents on variations of the genes in question, meaning even other variations can be protected under patent laws.
I guess it would be more honest to say I think there are other, more pressing matters in agriculture than GMOs, and that I have serious problems with patents on basic needs like medicine and food sources.
But the topic was about GMOs, so I phrased my response in this context. Do with it as you like.
A weed|plant-killer (not a pesticide) that grain crops are modified to be resistant to.
Here we are. The article criticizes environmentalists against pesticides but never addresses environmental concerns. Convince me that "GMOs making pesticides resistant bad because most pesticides bad, because it harms the environment of which people are part" is false first.
What keeps the poor hungry is keeping the poor poor. The solution to this political choice is not a technical answer.
This particular piece is hot garbage, and the entire operation has many hallmarks of astroturf.
If you've been around wetlands in the Midwest, switchgrass is the most prolific plant. You have to fight it to plant anything. The cultivar is a few percentage points better, but don't mistake it being better for anything other than marketing for the seed company.
You can't have something that just grows free and wild and is easy to propogate and to harvest with old square balers. You can't make biomass digestors palletized for home or community use to reduce our reliance on propane. No, you gotta make money from investor based corporate ag on a slightly different angle, mostly to grift clueless government green energy mandates.
I don't believe for a second modern agriculture companies give a fuck about the poor.
It is not that we can not grow enough food for humans. It is that we feed all the food to unethically treated animals in large warehouses, only to dig them down when the meat is unprofitable (looking at you, Australia).
My bet is that we increase agriculture free land, and utilize what we grow much better.
Having more humans on the planet is not the solution to climate change. And science isn't going to save our ass from it.
Sustainable agriculture is not about monoculture farming GMO crops while the rest of the environment gets obliterated by the practice.
Utterly stupid.
seeing the side-by-side comparisons of how much wheat has increased in yield from radiation-gardening made me realize that all we're really doing is speeding evolution / domestication using technology, and this was over 50 years ago! https://youtu.be/LPZqVSu_fu4?t=549
the most democratizing step would probably be distributing CRISPR kits (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR_gene_editing) to farmers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening was close but I guess we can't have errant atoms running amok ("The Atomic Gardening Society utilized an early form of crowd-sourcing, in which members received irradiated seeds, planted them in their gardens, and sent reports back to Howorth detailing the results.")
The overwhelming majority of GMO crops are modified to allow the increased use of "round up" type pesticides. More pesticides = not good.
Examples of other modifications include "golden rice".
It is sad that all of this gets rolled into one thing, since it's not. And I was not in favor of the Greenpeace campaigning to prohibit golden rice propgation.
But using this greenpeace mistake as an argument for all GMO crops is also a mistake.
The really sad thing is that the human primate is so bound to binary logic that actual good decisions are almost impossible to reach...