Exactafuckingmundo. Those PR scumbags in Monsanto have been extremely effective at equating being anti-GMO with being anti-science, and it'd be real nice to see some accountability for them.
Here's what is anti-science: being against using a range of methods available to modern biological science to engineer crops and demanding that we continue to use the less precise and inherently less safe methods that we used throughout the 20th century. This position is inherently anti-science because it is opposed to scientific understanding itself- when you realize that traditional techniques modified dozens or hundreds of genes in unpredictable ways, and now we can target specific genes that we understand the functions of, but you are opposed to doing so on some strange principle, you must realize the anti-GMO movement is anti-science itself.
It is exactly like being anti-programming because you heard about hackers stealing money from banks in the news. It's just too much of a risk, computers are complex systems that we can't always predict! It's just being safe! I hope that this analogy feels like a ridiculous stretch to you- that's how your position feels to me!
The reality is that we’ve always tested agricultural technologies in production. Sometimes with tragic results. But imagine you could control early 1800s European ag policy. Knowing both the Would you introduce the potato? Knowing the history of famine in 1780s France and the history of famine in 1840s Ireland, what policy would you set?
This sets a horrible precedent, I don't want to live in a world where corporate engineered, and patented, "super plants" contaminate the whole planet and people will end up being sued over patent infringement for trying to grow their own food.
But after that case, a number of activists with a political agenda decided to mischaracterize the facts of the case in order to smear Monsanto.
"In its report, called Seed Giants vs US Farmers, the CFS said it had tracked numerous law suits that Monsanto had brought against farmers and found some 142 patent infringement suits against 410 farmers and 56 small businesses in more than 27 states. In total the firm has won more than $23m from its targets, the report said."
And that's just the situation in the US, I don't think Indian farmers fare that much better. Disney is already on its way of gobbling up all entertainment "intellectual property", we don't need a comparable situation with companies like Monsanto and essential plants like crops.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto...
But then there are economies of luxury and scale, people like fruit, and meat, and spices, and stuff which can't be grown nearby. People cultivate the jackfruit instead of maize, Brazil's trying to extirpate a "jackfruit infestation," and olive trees are sometimes considered "weeds" in Australia.
The Neolithic Revolution is bonkers, basically.
I'm not an experienced farmer, everyone's land is different, and just today I learned that there are parts of the world where bushland edibles are so plentiful that the locals see no reason to farm at all. So perhaps I should shut up now :)