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Comment by rglullis | Hacker News Reader

Weird. Both of these should be textbook examples of how to tell lies using only "scientific" truths.

It's very easy to look at both at these data points and think "oh, so it's okay to just go and support GMO and ignore organic farmers". In reality though, the criticism against GMO is how its wide-scale adoption destroys genetic diversity, and how this lack of diversity is a huge potential source of systemic risks.

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Always worth remembering that our staple crops are already GMO - just done by hand over thousands of years. Corn used to look more like wheat does today. All of the derivatives we've created from the wild mustard plant. Bananas used to have seeds.

That is also another "technically correct but completely missing the point" argument used by GMO proponents.

The problem is not with genetically modification, the problem is with the scale that is done.

Moving goalposts is a common argument used by GMO opponents. People absolutely do disagree with the genetic modification. All the time. Even throughout the comment threads in this submission.

And if we want to talk scale, do you see corn that looks like wheat being planted and harvested? At all? Of course not - it wouldn't provide enough yield to be useful.

>Bananas used to have seeds.

Bananas is also an example of this process of “GMO-by-hand” stopping due to economic reasons, leading to monocultures susceptible to disease, twice as I understand it.

For the curious:

Early corn: https://tdaynard.com/2020/01/12/how-corn-began/

Yeah but of the thousand of times I heard "GMOs are bad", 999 were followed by "to your health".

> In reality though, the criticism against GMO is how its wide-scale adoption destroys genetic diversity

That's only one possible outcome, and I think it's not a very likely one long term. Genetic modification can create large numbers of variants, so could potentially increase genetic diversity significantly.

I think more of a criticism is the unknown consequences of modified genetic material escaping into other species by horizontal gene transfer.

GMO was banned in France after a study was made on rats showing all sort of health issues: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5044955/

You did not provide any links.

What links do you need?! By definition, GMO crops all come from the same genetic seeds.

Links showing that the primary criticism is as you say; most critics of GMO and proponents of organic that I know are all about "only putting natural stuff in my body"

> "only putting natural stuff in my body"

That's not a belief, this is a stated preference, and you would be fully entitled to ignore it as "invalid criticism" due to the confusion between facts and opinions.

The belief that you are actually asking me to "back up with links" is that GMO reduces genetic diversity. Do you really need a link for that?

There's no need to get so worked up. But yes, you have to provide more evidence than just a claim, expect everyone to assume that it's somehow logically congruent, and that all skeptics are stupid.

There is no biodiversity in agriculture. Whether or not the seeds you purchased have been edited to add drought resistance or high vitamin A content or other fantastic benefits to humankind you are still growing a monoculture, just as you were with non-GMO crops.

On the local level, yes. But I pointed out that the issue is with "wide-scale" adoption. GMO manufacturers make it so that the same, e.g, rice or carrots or tomatoes are grown in different parts of the world.

To re-iterate: there is no biodiversity in agriculture. As an example, "non-GMO" bananas are cloned from a single species the world over. If you'd be concerned about a single disease destroying genetically-identical crops worldwide, that happened with the Gros Michel cultivar in the 20th century. Competing GMO banana products would introduce more diversity than exists today.

> there is no biodiversity in agriculture.

That is (a) a bit hyperbolic, (b) more applicable to large-scale, "industrial" farming and (c) not exactly desirable, right?

> Competing GMO banana products would introduce more diversity than exists today.

A good example of "it's the dosage that makes the difference between the poison and the medicine".

It could be that 10 different heirloom crops have been displaced by 10 different GMO varieties (perhaps each optimized for water usage, pest tolerance, nutrition depending on regional needs).

I don't know if this is what actually happened, but it's certainly not true that the existence of GMO crops will by definition significantly decrease overall biodiversity.

I think the parent's point was providing evidence that the lack of biodiversity causes harm. To put this plainly - if every banana that is harvested in a farm and consumed by a human is identical, then so what? It doesn't mean bananas that aren't harvested by humans also will share that same DNA.

Even then, if every banana in the world was genetically identical what harmful effect would this have? I can probably speculate, but I'm genuinely curious what the science says.

I'm not sure if this was an unfortunate accident but almost every banana worldwide is essentially genetically identical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_banana

Haha, yup, I've heard that was the case (but didn't double check) so i just used it as an example.

Biodiversity effects on yield and unsown species invasion in a temperate forage ecosystem (2009)

- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2707887/

Grass-legume mixtures sustain strong yield advantage over monocultures under cool maritime growing conditions over a period of 5 years

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29790908/

Biodiversity loss in Latin American coffee landscapes: review of the evidence on ants, birds, and trees (2008)

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18759777/

Temporal changes in genetic diversity and forage yield of perennial ryegrass in monoculture and in combination with red clover in swards (2018)

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30408053/

These are indeed links but quite random ones. Mostly they are reporting that growing two things together in a field can give higher yields than growing a single thing. None seem to be related to GMOs, which could obviously also be grown with complimentary species to increase yield.

Correct, these are papers on monocultures vs non monocultures. But GMOs are inclined to be grown in monocultures.

All crops are inclined to be grown in monocultures. That's because even if you'd get more yield pairing with other species — as in these studies — pragmatically the time and cost of sowing, harvesting and separating multiple species outweighs the theoretical yield gain per unit area of a monocrop.

All this seems to be about agriculture in general, not GMO

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