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Comment by beat | Hacker News Reader

Earth's population has more than quadrupled in the past century, and yet food scarcity is farther away than ever, and food prices are cheaper than ever. And somehow, we did that without GMO. So I'm not convinced that GMO is the only way to solve the modest 25-30% population bump we'll get over the next century.

(Before you flip out, I'm not saying GMO is a bad thing. I'm saying this is bad logic.)

edit: Selective breeding is not GMO. If your argument is "We've always done GMO", you're wrong. Would you be willing to ban CRISPR and similar tech and do it all the old-fashioned way? No? Then GMO is not selective breeding.

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> And somehow, we did that without GMO.

I think you're confused. You probably eat genetically modified food on a daily basis. It's everywhere.

The question isn't "should we genetically modified food?" because we already are and have been doing it for centuries.

The question is "which GMO techniques should we use?"

And even if you are not, the animals you eat most probably do.

But yeah parent comment underlines all the pathetically common misconceptions and broad ignorance about GMOs.

How long have genetically modified foods been around and common? Did they coincide with a population boom or did most population increase come before the use of genetically modified foods? Just because larger population exists at the same time right now it doesn't mean their times coincided with each other.

When I say "GMO", I mean laboratory manipulation of genetics, not selective breeding. The tech was first done experimentally in the 1970s, and didn't become commercially viable at all until the 1990s, and it wasn't until quite recently that it became easy and inexpensive. Most of the 20th century population explosion happened before that, and the expected rate of population growth over the next century is an order of magnitude lower than the previous century.

What does "laboratory manipulation" even mean?

In what way is what I posted "pathetically common misconceptions and broad ignorance"? I'm curious.

Firmly believing that we got there without the use of GMOs when it's not the case at all. And this thought is sadly very common.

Maybe anti-GMOs movements that might lead to believe that they are not used yet and that it's still completely up to debate ? I don't really know.

I assume you're arguing that selective breeding is the same thing as GMO. It is not, and the article was not talking about selective breeding.

If that's your argument, it's very common, as seen in this thread. It's still wrong. GMO is specifically about laboratory manipulation of genes, including cross-species gene insertion, which is not possible via selective breeding.

> GMO is specifically about laboratory manipulation of genes, including cross-species gene insertion,

It's actually about a specific narrow range of techniques, not laboratory manipulation generally.

> cross-species gene insertion, which is not possible via selective breeding.

Cross-species genetic transfer occurs in the wild and, as such, is one of the forms of genetic drift on which the selection in selective breeding acts, so this claim is false.

It is not one of the mechanisms that is accelerated by modern methods of accelerated genetic change that are frequently paired with selective breeding as a similarly-rapid, far less controlled, and more label-friendly alternative to “GMOs”.

Covering a point not covered by my earlier reply:

> I assume you're arguing that selective breeding is the same thing as GMO.

This seems to be just repeating the mistake pointed out upthread; no, current agricultural productivity is not a result of selective breeding alone without transgenic technology; GMOs are a real and significant thing in current agriculture, and part off what the current food productivity is built on.

No, it's not. GMO still is out there in fields. Why do you assume people are talking about selective breeding ? Also, GMO is not only based on CRISPR, why do you keep bringing that up ? Gene insertion was done before, although the random factor was probably more prevalent since you couldn't focus special loci.

Saying that we managed to feed people so far without the use of GMO is wrong since they're used, even if not everywhere on earth, even if not all techniques, end of story.

It looks like according to Wikipedia and different authoritative bodies, the definition of GMO varies quite a bit from a narrow definition that (sometimes) excludes selective breeding, to a broader definition that includes it.

Selective breeding is just one way to enhance expression of particular genes.

And GMO is another - one that enables genetic expressions not possible with selective breeding.

GMO isn't really an alternative to selective breeding,strictly speaking. GMO refers to a set of methods of inducing individual genetic change, selective breeding is a process to affect the population distribution of genetically-controlled traits independent of the mechanism by which individual genetic change occurs.

>we already are and have been doing it for centuries

Now you're conflating traditional crop breeding such as selection and hybrid breeding with GMO crops, which is dishonest. The article is specifically about GMO crops.

>eat genetically modified food on a daily basis. It's everywhere.

I was surprised how you could possibly believe this, it makes sense only with that overbroad GMO crop definition.

Selective breeding and GMO are different things, and will continue to be different things, until you can convince a squid to screw a cucumber. Please don't make that crap argument.

That being said, I pointedly did not say "GMO BAD". I said that the article is making a bad argument for its necessity.

Does this lie on the selective breeding side or the GMO side in your mind

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/science/28crop.html

It doesn't matter, because I am not arguing against GMO.

I'm not making a value statement. I am just wondering if you consider intentional irradiation of seeds as selective breeding, GMO or something else.

I'm rejecting the question. I consider it an irrelevant distraction to the actual point, which is that GMO has not been necessary to feed a quadrupling of the population in a century, so it won't be necessary to feed a 25% increase in another century.

> The question isn't "should we genetically modified food?" because we already are and have been doing it for centuries.

"Genetically modified" does not apply to selection and cross breeding. To create a variety of corn that can resist herbicides, you need some advanced technology that modifies the genes, hence GMO.

So, no, we haven't been genetically modifying our food for centuries. The process appeared a few decades ago in the agro-industry.

> You probably eat genetically modified food on a daily basis. It's everywhere.

It's everywhere in the USA and some other countries. In Europe , GMO are rarely directly present in food. But, indirectly, many animals are fed with GMO, especially GMO soybean.

That still doesn't mean that it's the only way and that the headline isn't hyberbolic.

>You probably eat genetically modified food on a daily basis. It's everywhere.

I assume that is only if you live in US? GMO Food are near non existent in EU.

Only if you don't count selective breeding as GMO. Which I do. We've "genetically modified" our food to have greater yields, better taste, pest resistance, etc. Just because someone in a labcoat wasn't hunched over a petri dish doesn't mean the genetics aren't being tweaked. The corn we eat today is all but indistinguishable from what we ate in our past.

Genes are genes, and changes to them are changes to them.

>Only if you don't count selective breeding as GMO

Well if selective breeding is GMO then there is nothing on earth that isn't GMO. We have been doing selective breeding since before age of industrial revolution.

Agreed, which is why I find the health scare rather silly. Are there arguments still to be had on the ethics of what we are changing? Perhaps. But the health risk has been basically proven (as much as anything ever is in science) to be nonexistent.

The majority of food in the US is already GMO, but not being American doesn't discount its usage when the scope is global population.

Are you sure? I thought the majority of wheat and grains have been modified across the globe.

Yeah, too bad we feed most of our cattle with south american soy though...

Are you saying that humanity is living within it's means?

It's like a 20yo with $500K in the bank simply giving up on everything and not working anymore thinking they'll be fine. As far as they are concerned "life is better than ever" at age 25. Just because you can't measure a debt certainly doesn't mean it's non-existent.

We aren't living within our means in energy terms - dependence on fossil fuel is a major problem. But as the economy converts to a renewable energy basis (and it inevitably will - it's already started and is accelerating), "living within our means" will become much less of a problem.

Did we do it without GMO food? Isn't a lot of today's food the result of GMO? What exactly is the definition of GMO?

"What exactly is the definition of GMO? "

Good question. I won't answer that.

"Did we do it without GMO food? "

If we only consider GMO as targeted modification of a DNA sequence using methods other than selective breeding, no we didn't. That technology has been around for maybe 30 years. The world's pop hasn't gone up 30% since.

"Isn't a lot of today's food the result of GMO?"

In the West, yes. But despite the promises of lower water usage, more nutritious crops, GMO foods seems to be mostly adding Round Up resistance to crops to enable more mechanized agricultural practices (not necessarily cheaper for the end user).

This is not necessarily robust and it promotes monoculture. Furthermore, financial considerations might make it more economical to farm something non-edible, or not farm at all [0].

[0] Yes, theoretically the price of food would increase to make it profitable again. However, the equilibrium would be at higher prices (pricing out the poorest) and lower Q.S. (i.e. it's good that the poor aren't eating, cause there ain't enough to go around). Besides, it takes time for the system to reach equilibrium, at which point there's a nice famine.

Yeah, there's the rub I didn't want to get into in my original post. The problems with the food chain are more about sustainability than producing enough food, and GMO crops that we've seen so far tend to aggravate rather than solve the problems of monocropping, excessive tillage, etc. That's because the goal of GMO so far hasn't been to improve the food supply, but rather to improve vendor lock-in for megacorporation agribusiness and the associated financial interests. It isn't to solve the needs of either farmers or citizens.

GMO is defined per EU :

“an organism, with the exception of human beings, in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination.”

Which is sane definition in my view and accepted in most part of the world. Somehow only in some places (cough) is the definition arguable.

The definition of GMO, for me at least, is laboratory manipulation of genes using tools like CRISPR. This allows cross-species genetic insertion. Selective breeding is not GMO, because it's not cross-species and happens through natural breeding, not laboratory genetic manipulation.

> And somehow, we did that without GMO.

No, we didn't. We did it with GMOs. You might argue we could have done it without GMOs, but that's a hypothetical not what actually happened.

Also, even with GMOs, we haven't done it sustainably—one thing new GMOs are looked to as a solution for is maintaining output with the worse conditions resulting from existing large-scale agricultural practiced without further worsening them as current practices would.

And the USA already wastes 40% of the food it produces [ref: http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/14.FOODWASTE.pdf]. Even ignoring the systemic risks monocropping of GMOs already pose the sheer amount of waste shows theres already more than enough to go around

I agree and believe we’re seeing it now, and have been seeing it. Here are the other changes I can think of:

-Greater prevalence of plant-based diets

-Steroids and hormones in farmed animals

-Pesticide development and usage

-Vitamin/nutrient supplementation

-Less whaling :)

Exactly.

Simplot's potatos are GMO and they used to be an advantage in yield and hence lower price, that is until Climate Changes and your breed and farm land couldn't adapt to the changes as quickly. And yield were no were as good as it used to be.

Netherland spend large part of the past 10+ years perfecting their agricultural output without resorting to GMO. Using good old fashion technology ( old Fashion in the case of HN ), Greenhouse, Temperature Control, lots of sensors, Big Data. Basically farming in modern industry scale. McCain, and Lamb Weston has since been following the same foot steps and getting great results.

Most of the Food Production in China, India, and many parts of the world still has a long way to go in terms of efficiency and capacity. There is still a lot could be done in Food Industry with Technology without resorting to GMO.

As a Dutchman, I was actually under the impression that we used genetic modifications. Think I heard something about that in high school. Only later did I start to hear of "gmo free" food from the USA and assumed it was the same group as those who deny the moon landing. You're telling me we do zero GMO? I don't remember any sources of course (this is decade old information, perhaps even from a physical book), but it seems like you know better than me so I figured I'd ask instead of trying to prove that negative to myself.

Generally speaking EU and European are extremely cautious of GMO. And by GMO, it is defined as per EU,

“an organism, with the exception of human beings, in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination.”

i.e Cross Bleeding is not GMO, which it seems to be the case in some part of the world / some HNers / somewhere in Silicon Valley circle.

I am not sure if it is actually ZERO, since I remembered even in the very few approved GMO products in EU, each member state can grant and deny them on their own. And from a high level overview I doubt there is even 1% of GMO food.

So as someone who doesn't really like GMO Food, you should be proud of yourself.

And it is one reason why European products tends to be more expensive before from a World wide perspective, and doesn't do well in export. But ever since these GMO Free and Organic Food popping up in US, EU products were able to ride along with the tide.

I'm sure that if you pour enough money into something, you'll always get what you want, especially for something like agriculture that's largely a solved problem (and just needs to scale).

GMO might not be the only way, but it's probably the only economically viable way.

Genetically modified foods are already in the food supply, thats why you see that "GMO free" logo on things. Its also why some company can sue a farmer for patent infringement by growing crops from last years seeds/harvest.

Don't we've climate change breathing down our neck which can potentially evade our agricultural output over night?

Well it IS a bad thing if it isn't needed. You're basically saying we created frankenfood, but we didn't need to. but hey. EAT

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