With shift to non-GMO sugar, farmers will abandon environmental and social gains
weedcontrolfreaks.com
weedcontrolfreaks.com
Funding for Dr. Kniss’s program at the University of Wyoming has been provided by the following sponsors:
Arysta LifeScience, BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, FMC, Hatch Act Funds – USDA, Loveland Industries, __Monsanto__, NovaSource, Repar Corporation, StateLine Bean Cooperative, Syngenta, United States Department of Agriculture National Insitute for Food and Agriculture, University of Wyoming Department of Plant Sciences, University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources, Valent, Western Sugar Cooperative, Winfield Solutions, Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Station, Wyoming Crop Improvement Association, Wyoming Department of Agriculture, Wyoming Seed Certification.
These are not so significantly different.
Especially when we are talking about herbicide, we're not actually talking about something for which there is no alternative. Manual labour will work just as well (actually probably better because you can be more selective). Anyone who has grown a garden knows this. The question is, how much more expensive is it?
Just randomly googling, I notice an article stating sugar beet is 20.30 GBP per tonne. That's apparently 1.3 US cents per pound (gotta love google calculator). Sugar is trading at 16.7 US cents per pound. Apparently standard sugar beets yield 130 kg of sugar per tonne, which handily comes out to 10.0 US cents out of the 16.7 US cents per pound of the sugar.
I don't live in the US, but it's looking like the retail price is somewhere around USD $2.50 per pound (ha ha, got the price from Amazon). So the breakdown is $0.10 for the beets, 0.07 for the processing and $2.33 for distribution and packaging.
The amazing thing for me is that back when I brewed beer as a hobby in Canada, I bought bulk malt directly from the maltster. 55 pound bags delivered across the country only cost a couple of dollars. There is a huge loss happening somewhere in the middle.
I guess what I'm saying is that we are pinching the farmer more and more and more to shave a few cents off the price of our produce. We could double the production price and it still is an order of magnitude lower than the distribution price. Avoiding manual labour at potential cost of the environment seems insane to me. It would make much more sense to see if we can fix the distribution problem.
Semi-related reading: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
While I am certainly for using GMOs (there is too much great science behind it) this article just screams "someone paid me to write this".
I would have loved to see something much more focused on the topic at hand: large companies switching to non-GMO sugars to appease the current market forces and what this may mean as far as food production, etc could go. I mean the article touched on that a tiny bit here and there but not in any satisfying way in my opinion.
Personally, I see genetic engineering as the path to apotheoses. The risk of it leading us the opposite direction is very real, though. The solution is not to avoid it all together, but rather to tread carefully.
Mutagenic crops devised with stuff like cobalt 60 was never tested. Also you can breed a potato to be poisonous. In the end its a case by case basis
Edit: spelling
Is it typical to grow sugar beets in what is basically pure sand with no humic matter?
Bleak.
Think of it as hydroponics. It's even done for non-root crops. All tomatoes in Florida grow in pure sand. Just add water and fertilizer.
BTW, this is partly because we turn our best farmland into condos. San Jose was the best place in the world for apricots; now look at it.
You're describing a pretty reductionist model of plant growth.
Plants don't just need NPK and a few micronutrients. The interface between a healthy plant and its soil involves millions of microorganisms. And a healthy carbon content in the form of humus etc. in the soil is extremely important for water conservation and consistent root growth.
Not to mention getting carbon into the top soil is a great way of getting it out of the atmosphere...
Roundup is carcinogenic. All Roundup-Ready sugarbeet means is the farmer uses a different type of toxic chemical.
To be fair it's a useless distinction to simply say something is "carcinogenic". There are 5 groups of carcinogens and many foods that people eat even have chemicals that fall into those groupings ("organic" or GMO).
Yes part of roundup falls into Group 2A which means it's probably carcinogenic to humans but you forget that these chemicals are both usually gone by the time the food is shipped (though you should always clean it just in case) but also in such low quantities that many studies are showing it's likely not harmful in the typical, or even heavy, usage.
Regardless I don't think it's fair to try and paint is as black and white.
> All Roundup-Ready sugarbeet means is the farmer uses a different type of toxic chemical.
Not really. Roundup Ready means the seeds will continue to live when Roundup is used. Without that trait you have to use something much weaker (and therefore much larger quantities) to achieve something near the same affect.
You should talk to some farmers. It will help shape your perspective :)
Only Monsanto is capable of arguing that the most environmentally friendly option for agriculture is GMO.
You should talk to some farmers. Seriously, it's a great way to get another perspective of someone that has to do "organic" and GMO based farming. Monsanto gets a bad wrap but a large majority of the negative press they get is simply false [1]. Regardless there are plenty of other organizations doing GMOs even if you do have an axe to grind with Monsanto.
[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top...
On the other hand, GMOs have saved countless lives where if it weren't for GMO I'm sure millions of people would be suffering.
The truth is the whole world can't shop at Whole Foods.
Sustainability might eventually push out the need for GMO. But GMO despite the nastiness of Monsanto has helped many lives. I personally shop local and support local farms (that's easy in SF with the Ferry Building, Divis, and Clement). But until local farms make a resurgence worldwide, it will be difficult to push out GMO.
(In fact, the seeds of a lot of GMO products cross-pollinate with so-called non-GMO; soy is one of those products where it is difficult to find unadulterated variants, despite being labeled "organic.")
I'm not criticizing you here, because clearly you're trying to look at both sides of the issue (though I'd argue there's an empirical side, and an imagined one). But that's incredibly rare. People are scared of genetic modification, manufacturers and stores are jumping on the bandwagon so they don't lose customers, and everyone loses out without even realizing it.
Anyhow, sustainable agriculture is--for better or worse--a very politicized term. It means different things to different people. But if the general idea is an approach to agriculture that seeks to minimize ecological impacts, then there's no reason to argue that genetic modification is in opposition to it. They're not. Every goal of sustainability can be furthered through genetic modification. But too many advocates of sustainability refuse to even consider the possible benefits of genetic modification.
But one area where I feel uncomfortable is whether or not GMO can be sustainable. I've read that GMOs have created issues with biodiversity and caused ecosystem shifts and can become weedy in certain conditions. In short, there is potential for GMO crops to become invasive species. We still don't completely understand what it means to tinker with biodiversity. Spanish colonists brought in their own grass to California and much of the native California grass is gone (it's an endangered species as a result of the European grass brought over). I will concede that most farm operations (GMO or non-GMO or otherwise) also impact the environment significantly.
Having said that I'm not against GMO, but for taste reasons, I'd rather buy local farmed (indigenous if possible) products that haven't traveled thousands of miles to me (which may or may not be GMO) because I like eating produce and vegetables from the natural growing season--nature still makes certain things taste best in the right season and when they're plucked when ripe. I am fortunate enough that I can support local farms and products seasonal to an ecosystem. I have a hard time eating fruits in general, and shopping at the Farmer's Market over Safeway ensures I get my supply of nutrients--and in many cases, the fruits from Ortiz Farms or Rodriguez are just as cheap as ConAgra Corporation yet they taste sweeter. (Ever tasted a strawberry in winter? Doesn't taste as good as the local farm's summer strawberries.)
No, plenty of objective scientists argue it as well. It's just common sense.
You don't need a PhD to understand that for crops, you will have to choose between GMO or heavily pesticided products. The equation is that simple.
The author of the article certainly has its own agenda but you can make up your own mind about some of the points he makes, in particular the cycle of around the clock pesticide spraying that non-GMO seeds require in order to produce an acceptable crop.
It's time to step back and be a bit rational about all this, the anti-GMO movement is reaching levels of absurdity and hysteria approaching the anti-vax movement.
You're right, I made a false dichotomy there, sorry about that.
There is at least a third choice here (non GMO, no pesticides) but it costs a lot more money, so it's not viable for farmers or anyone involved in mass producing tons of crops each year.
> Seed control is another interesting thing about sugarbeet. Monsanto doesn’t own any sugarbeet germplasm, meaning they don’t sell or control sugarbeet seed. They certainly make money from Roundup Ready beet seed, since they’ve licensed the trait to the seed companies. But Monsanto doesn’t have much say in how sugarbeet seed is bred and sold.
Also,
> Only Monsanto is capable of arguing that the most environmentally friendly option for agriculture is GMO.
Science is actually quite capable of arguing a similar point as well:
http://www.cell.com/trends/biotechnology/pdf/S0167-7799(12)0...
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871678410...
> when societies industrialize, their birth rates drop
How long will it take society birth rate drop to cause population to reach 1600s levels. Like they say don't hold your breath. Some day all this stuff will lead to salvation, but other than rhetoric, not in my life time or those of my children. It's a good story, but in real terms, our impact is not in any way getting better it's getting worse. And using technology, green tech, whatever, to fight technology to make everything alright just slows things down it does not actually fix anything. I doubt it ever will. Call me a pessimist about these sorts of things.
And while reproducing is literally what we do, when societies industrialize, their birth rates drop. More efficient agriculture allows workers to be shifted to other sectors, a critical step in improving the quality of life in least developed countries as well as developing countries.