Comment by noam87 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by noam87 | Hacker News Reader

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Irrational? The problem isn't replacing "engineered via slow selection" corn vs "efficiently GMO'ed corn".

The problem is replacing over 300 unique varieties of corn, and over 40,000 unique varieties of rice with 3 or 4 patented, flavourless, often less nutritious varieties.

Stop pretending all opponents of GMO food are scientifically illiterate new-age types. I owe my life to GMO (cancer immune therapy)... hell, I am GMO. But there is nothing inherently good about progress. Nuclear technology can be used to provide clean, cheap energy to entire cities... or it can be used to eradicate an entire town in a matter of seconds and bring decades of unimaginable human suffering.

Using GMO to help third world countries grow foods they otherwise couldn't? Great. But that's not the full story, is it.

Where is the great progress in getting the same bland, flavourless, overly-sweet two or three varieties of rice, corn, and potatoes in every friggen store? Is driving Indian farmers to suicide and suing small farmers who accidentally grow your crop because the wind blew progress? Is destroying thousands of years of man-driven biodiversity progress?

Coming from a country where real vegetables are sold, it's depressing. Everything tastes the same in North America. Every salad, every sauce. Same shit.

People don't oppose Monsanto because they hate science, they oppose monsanto because it's the Enola Gay of GMO.

Your comment is a pretty accurate depiction of the irrational opposition to GMOs.

Monocultures have been an agricultural practice since the 1800s, long before GMOs and Monsanto. It's for sure a risky practice, but even if you removed Monsanto or even GMO technology from the agricultural industry, you would still have farmers monocropping hybrids.

It seems you're more upset at what agriculture has become under capitalism and economies of scale, because the majority of consumers select for food based on lowest price, and not flavor or variety like you prefer.

Because monocultures have been around for over a century, opposing them is irrational? That doesn't make sense. If your goal is to increase biodiversity, it would (at least on the surface of it) seem entirely rational to boycott GMO products. Would you care to elaborate why this is not the case?

See this sentence:

>[Monoculture's] for sure a risky practice, but even if you removed Monsanto or even GMO technology from the agricultural industry, you would still have farmers monocropping hybrids.

Attributing monocultures to GMO is irrational.

> It seems you're more upset at what agriculture has become under capitalism and economies of scale

And even then, it has to be pointed out that it is specifically the economy of scale that is irking the grandparent, not capitalism. The USSR was certainly not capitalist, but its vast centrally planned agriculture was optimized towards efficiency, not towards feel-good/organic qualities, and exhibited all the problems (except perhaps GMOs because they were not developed at the time) that people who rail against contemporary capitalism tend to complain about.

You're right that monocultures are a dangerous way of producing food, but I almost never see that criticism made in forums for non-technical audiences. The popular discourse is absolutely focused on GMOs-as-carcinogen.

Also, I've never entirely understood all the venom directed specifically toward Monsanto. There are a handful of other companies doing basically the same thing. Where's the hate for Cargill?

My guess would be that Monsanto has show itself to be a overly litigious, generally "evil" corporation. While it does not pertain to GMO crops, look at what they did in Anniston, AL. The effects are still quite visible even today. Disclaimer: I live in Anniston

Cargill and ADM are just as bad. Monsanto gets most of the public vitriol for its vile lawsuits against small farmers for unwillingly growing their genetically modified shit. Kind of like having someone who infected your computer with malware then suing you for patent infringement.

I'm pretty sure Cargill has filed similar suits, but I'm not sure about ADM.

Then the problem isn't GM technology itself--it's an economic system that considers taste to be worth little and diversity nothing.

>"...suing small farmers who accidentally grow your crop..."

The Wikipedia page seems to paint a much different picture regarding Monsanto's legal cases. Everything that I'm reading seems to indicate willful infringement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases

"...Monsanto has stated it will not 'exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seed or traits are present in farmer's fields as a result of inadvertent means.' The Federal Circuit found that this assurance is binding on Monsanto, so that farmers who do not harvest more than a trace amount of Monsanto's patented crops 'lack an essential element of standing' to challenge Monsanto's patents." ... "The court record shows, however, that it was not just a few seeds from a passing truck, but that Mr Schmeiser was growing a crop of 95–98% pure Roundup Ready plants, a commercial level of purity far higher than one would expect from inadvertent or accidental presence. The judge could not account for how a few wayward seeds or pollen grains could come to dominate hundreds of acres without Mr Schmeiser’s active participation, saying ‘...none of the suggested sources could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality evident from the results of tests on Schmeiser’s crop’" – in other words, the original presence of Monsanto seed on his land in 1997 was indeed inadvertent, but the crop in 1998 was entirely purposeful."

That's not to say that they haven't pulled any jerk moves: "In 2002, Monsanto mistakenly sued Gary Rinehart of Eagleville, Missouri for patent violation. Rinehart was not a farmer or seed dealer, but sharecropped land with his brother and nephew, who were violating the patent. Monsanto dropped the lawsuit against him when it discovered the mistake. It did not apologize for the mistake or offer to pay Rinehart's attorney fees."

If it's patent law that we find outrageous, then we should be directing our rage at patent law.

Edit: I hadn't heard of the Indian farmer suicide problem before reading your comment, but to lay it at the feet of Monsanto ignores many other potential contributing factors: "Activists and scholars have offered a number of conflicting reasons for farmer suicides, such as monsoon failure, high debt burdens, government policies, public mental health, personal issues and family problems."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India

> The problem is replacing over 300 unique varieties of corn, and over 40,000 unique varieties of rice with 3 or 4 patented, flavourless, often less nutritious varieties.

Huh? If monoculture is the concern, should the solution be encouraging more varieties of GMO? I mean, creating more varieties of corn with genetic modification seems so easy.

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