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Comment by nobrains | Hacker News Reader

I think everyone needs to learn from the ancient wisdom on the Punjab province in India and Pakistan.

Open Google earth and zoom into Punjab. It is the greenest agriculture zone in the entire world. Just look at it yourself.

Now I don't know the specifics, but it is a starting point. If we are able to get the knowledge from the locals there on their ancient farming techniques, that knowledge will be net positive for the world.

And one more thing. The GMO crops being introduced I that region needs to STOP. It will kill the best farming land we have and then there will be no ability to rewind time.

Read about the recent farmers protests there to also know more about the problems the farmers are facing.

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This is a frustrating, mystical simplification of agriculture. We can understand how these things work, and implement best practices, rather than appealing to tradition and eschewing things like synthetic fertilizers and GMO crops purely out of how "unnatural" they are.

Much of the woes in North American agriculture are down to the refusal of farmers to implement known best practices and the incredibly distortionary effect of endless layers of agricultural subsidies.

Ancient practices may have interesting things to teach us, but they're not inherently good. And to actually fix things, the people who control the land need to actually care about doing the right things.

GMO crops allow us to grow more food with less space/nutrients/etc. They are a solution, not a problem, and when people fear monger about them it hurts everyone.

So you'd prefer that farmers get screwed by the onerous IP clauses surrounding them?

This is a false dichotomy, and really just a red herring.

GP claimed "GMOs ... will kill the best farming land we have"

The parent you replied to refuted that point. Onerous IP clauses surrounding crop seeds is an IP issue, not one of agriculture and topsoil quality.

And quite frankly, if onerous IP was the cost we HAD to pay, compared to the depletion of a resourse that is "non-renewable in human timescales," [1][2] yes, that's easily worth it.

1: Food & Agriculture Organization of the UN, http://www.fao.org/resources/infographics/infographics-detai... "Soil is a finite resource, meaning its loss and degradation is not recoverable within a human lifespan."

2: US Forest Service, way back in 2003 https://web.archive.org/web/20170531160340/https://www.fs.fe... Section 11.2 "On human time scales, fertile topsoil is not a renewable resource."

No, just remove the onerous clauses rather than GMO crops.

The most interesting patents have already expired.

Most of the clauses you think of as onerous are non issues to real farmers. Hybrid seeds don't breed true, so no farmer is saving their seed in the first place.

Thanks for highlighting the protests-it’s getting really bad over there. My dad is a farmer from Punjab originally and while he’s in America now and doesn’t farm he has a slightly different perspective. He tends to be far more concerned about todays farmers using harmful pesticides and overworking the land than GMOs. Maybe Punjabis on HN can shed more light, but at least from what I’ve heard GMOs are not the big issue in contemporary Punjabi farming

Yes, the Punjab region is beautiful. But maybe you should read about it more: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/parched-punjab-20535 http://water.columbia.edu/research-themes/water-food-energy-... https://theprint.in/india/governance/save-punjab-from-desert... The region is not green because of the agricultural practices, it was always green and is now dying due to the destructive agriculture.

Thank you for the context.

The farming practices in the Indian Subcontinent are not as mechanized and not as geared towards profit maximization, which certainly helps.

However, the main reason why that region is always fertile is the immense amount of rich soil brought by the Indus River from its origins in the Himalayas. There is no such replacement mechanism for the US Midwestern plains; the soil was created over millennia and once it’s gone it’s gone forever.

You seem to think that GMOs mean scientists are injecting mutant genes into corn and wheat in order to increase yield. This is wrong.

GMO means the crop itself has been selectively bred over time to increase desirable qualities, yield being one of them. Taste, perhaps another.

Are you afraid of GMO foods? Perhaps you should avoid orange carrots, and sweet corn, then.

You are right, however at the same time, the vast majority of GMO work is done with the entire purpose of increasing yield, even if top soil is already being over-utilized and dieing. We could use it to make food tastier and more nutritious, but is a20% tastier apple going to sell 20% for more? 20% higher yield will. And having usable top soil in 50 years doesn't get the same financial incentive as using up in 20, selling off used up land to developers, then buying out the properly tended soil from struggling farmers who didn't fuck their land.

> GMO means the crop itself has been selectively bred over time to increase desirable qualities

That's one thing GMO means. It can also mean genetically modified species that are resistant to a specific herbicide. For example, Round-up ready crops.

That doesn't necessarily mean breeds that have been genetically altered are bad or worse than ones bred over time, but it's incorrect to say that GMO means breeding.

A genetically modified organism (GMO) is any organism whose genetic material has been altered using *genetic engineering* techniques.

Selective breeding is something else. It is very difficult to somehow selectively breed a marine mollusk gene into a carrot.

> Now I don't know the specifics, but it is a starting point. If we are able to get the knowledge from the locals there on their ancient farming techniques, that knowledge will be net positive for the world.

The locals' knowledge is likely highly specific to their local environmental conditions and crop varieties, so not exportable.

The Green Revolution in India refers to a period in India when agriculture was converted into an industrial system due to the adoption of modern methods and technology, such as the use of high yielding variety (HYV) seeds, tractors, irrigation facilities, pesticides, and fertilizers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution_in_India

Indian Punjab has used tube wells and free/low cost electricity to drain and deplete its aquifers far more efficiently than Pakistani Punjab (which has its own problems with waterlogging, salinity, maintenance of British canal system and lack of catchment for rain and floodwaters). Kalabagh Dam will probably get built the fifth of never if Sindh has any say about it.

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