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> The real travesty of the current state of GMOs is that things like "Roundup-Ready" plants do nothing to reduce the usage of chemicals.

In my understanding, this is not quite accurate. The perception of "organic" farming is that they do not use pesticides, but this is not accurate. Organic farming does use pesticides, but they just happen to not be synthetic - that is, the pesticides happen to be "naturally" occurring. But that does not necessarily make them safer.

So, if you have a crop which is engineered to be resistant to a very particular, effective pesticide, then it is possible that you will end up using less overall pesticides when compared to organic farming. See http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/organic-pestici...

Sure, there are many, many nuances surrounding the whole GMO debate. It turns out that while bt-Corn could pose a threat to Monarchs, in practice (in the wild) the risk is negligible. (One might also ponder how to weigh protection of an insect species against providing food for humans.) And, as you point out, the whole pesticide/GMO equation is not as simple as it might seem.

Nuance, moderation, and caution are the orders of the day, but these values seem to be increasingly scarce in a world of self-selecting echo chambers...

I garden organically , and I use no pesticides. What "organic" pesticides are you thinking of?

Edit: changed farm to garden

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/28/sure-...

Any chemical that is naturally occurring is considered organic. To be specific here: https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/national-... is the USDA's list of chemicals that can be used and still be labeled organic.

Lots of them [1]. Anything you buy at the store labeled "organic" could involve any of these substances, among others. In addition, because organic pesticides are less effective per unit, much more is applied to get the same benefit. [2]

[1] http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&SID=9874504b6f10...

[2] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogss...

From the piece I linked to, http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&SID=9874504b6f10...

When "gardening", you can probably do just fine without using pesticides. But when you farm crops as a business, you have to do something.

> But when you farm crops as a business, you have to do something.

Several family farms at my local farmers market claim their crops are pesticide free. Now granted they are probably 10s of acres, not 1000s of acres, but they are still making a living.

Off the top of my head: Bt proteins, copper. There are many more, you can easily google and find a long list.

And yes, that's the same Bt that's in Bt crops, by the way (proteins from Bt bacteria). Organic farmers use it in a spray. It's a natural substance, and they argue the spray causes less resistance than the GM varieties. I really don't have the domain knowledge to say whether they're right.

Not all organic farmers are the same, and over time the meaning of 'organic' has been diluted. Smaller, more idealistic organic farmers mostly don't use pesticides, but there are large commercial organic growers out there who meet the bare minimum for certification and will use whatever pesticides are allowed.

Nicotine, rotenone, pyrethrins are just a few examples [1]. They are mostly derived from other plants so are regarded as organic although they can be quite toxic to humans.

[1]http://www.colostate.edu/Dept/CoopExt/4dmg/VegFruit/organic....

Nicotine is also believed to be an issue with declining bee populations.

but why do you garden with transgenics! It's unnatural!

> Of course, a large part of the Green Revolution was the usage of new fertilizers and pesticides, which we now understand have significant impact on the environment. GMOs provide a way to continue to realize the benefits of the Green Revolution without all of the chemical-related downsides.

Yes, but there very well may be other downsides. A lot of the utopian ideas for GMOs basically involve creating invasive species. We here about the potential of making species that can easily grow in areas where they couldn't grow at all before. But doing so could well pose an environmental risk (if these end up growing so well in areas that they end up disrupting the ecosystem).

It might seem strange to think that too many edible plants could cause a problem, but it wouldn't be the first time (Kudzu is a good example). We're also not nearly at that point yet with current GMOs, but it seems to be what a lot of people are advocating. It'd be nice if we thought of the environmental downsides ahead of time, so that we don't keep saying "we now understand the environmental downsides of the tech we were using 30 years ago; but this new tech should be just fine" every few years.

FYI, the whole Kudzu thing is completely overblown. It's mostly a myth.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/true-story-kudz...

It was specifically planted in many visible areas like highway banks etc, so people's perception is wrongly skewed towards it being everywhere, when it's really not.

Thanks, though that doesn't seem to be saying that kudzu being a problem is a myth, but rather that there have been myths exaggerating the problems with kudzu (“I thought the whole world would someday be covered by it, that it would grow as fast as Jack’s beanstalk, and that every person on earth would have to live forever knee-deep in its leaves"). There does seem to be a consensus that kudzu is a problem (you can look at the USDA page about it), and the article doesn't dispute it.

An aside: Organic farmers use Bt too. As a spray. Bt proteins are a naturally occuring substance, after all.

They argue the spray is not as bad as the GM crops due to the timing of exposure. I really don't know enough about insect biology to say if that makes sense.

Glyphosate is certainly not a sustainable weed control solution but it's no worse than the herbicides that it replaced.

I wonder if the biggest negative impact of biotech firms is not the chemicals but on IP and patents, hindering the positive development of GMOs, and to what extent proprietary software IP and patent rulings paved the way for them.

"There's also the cautionary lesson of bt-Corn and its impact on Monarch butterflies."

What is/was the solution to that ?

If it is indeed a "cautionary tale" there is some response that we should be involved in, which, as far as I can tell is simply the anti GMO sentiment that (100 nobels) decry.

What other response has there been ?

The USDA has a good page on this: https://www.ars.usda.gov/sites/monarch/

The "cautionary tale" is that releasing GMO crops before their full impact has been studied and assessed only adds fuel to the GMO/anti-GMO fire. When it was found that bt-Corn could pose a risk to Monarchs, those in the anti-GMO camp had all the ammunition they needed to start shouting about GMOs being unsafe. When it was later found that the risk was negligible in practice, the GMO camp had all the reason they needed to continue turning a deaf ear to the anti-GMO camp.

4. Have less people to feed

5. Redistribute food more equally