We Need G.M.O. Wheat
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Plain English Translation:
"We want to soak the soil with even more chemicals, to harm even more people and wildlife with various known effects that we won't admit to, & unknown effects that we'll try to suppress to stay unknown."
I can see the argument with having lower-water consuming variants. But why not grow one of the 100s other grains that can grow in such soils?
I don't care if there is a scientific consensus that GMOs are safe or if millions of people would starve without them but I won't change my opinion despite new information.
Force produce that's GMO to be labelled as such and let the consumer decide. Many will decide they're happy to eat GMO foods and many will decide they're not.
It should be left to an individual to make the decision themselves.
Oh wait. That is how our food is labelled at the moment. Now we can save the millions of dollars on the cost of regulation of labeling, that could go to say, education. Phew.
Second, 'scientific consensus' have been wrong many times before. Eg when they said cigarette smoking was not bad.
Third, there is plenty of food out there now. The mains issues with starvation is logistics, greed, & power struggles.
Super saturating soil with herbicide will only help western farmers, as its expensive, So is buying GMOs, as they tend to be mules (that is they do not breed effectively and the farmer needs to buy more seed every year)
the people that really need this are the third world, and they need cheap practical husbandry skill (rotation, water management, sympathetic planting, soil improvment)
There's a couple of myths in there. The issue of having to buy new seed every year isn't a GMO or not-GMO thing, it's about hybridization. Hybrid corn has been around since 1926. Farmers plant hybrid seeds to improve their productivity - to get crops that grow better. The seeds are a cross between specific parent strains designed to grow especially well given the local conditions. The resulting crops aren't "mules" - you could just use their seeds to plant the next generation if you wanted to - but if you did so you would lose all the benefit of hybrid vigor. It'd be a dumb thing to do. (If you want to re-use seed, buy normal seed, not a custom hybrid.)
Farmers choose to buy hybrid seeds - GMO or not - because doing so is on-net cheaper than using regular seeds when one includes the value of the resulting improved productivity - in the case of corn, you get ~30% more corn per acre from hybrids.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/corn-info3.htm
As for where the myth came from, it's true that some people have talked about possibly using GMO technology to prevent accidental seed reuse - there have even been patents issued related to that idea. But as far as I know the tech didn't work well and the idea has never resulted in any actual commercial product - there is nobody who is today buying and planting seeds that have been deliberately designed not to allow re-seeding. It was just a scare story that made the rounds for a while.
The point I want to bring up, which the article didn't, is wheat is an incredibly hard organism to deal with bioinformatically, since wheat has an incredibly complex genome owing to its polyploid nature. Therefore, making GMO wheat will be extremely hard. So even if there is a consensus on attempting to make GMO wheat. I pity the scientists who have to work on such a task and it will take a LONG time.
So there are ample evidence for the safety of their consumption. But is that the only criteria for safety? Is GMO safe for business? Are there social risks? Is there a risk of monopoly? Is it safe for the environment? Are butterfly spices at risk? Are less thorough plants loosing migration from escaped GMO plants?
I'm asking since there seems to be a really anthropocentric definition of "safety" at work here. In fact, there seems to be a really western centric definition. Is it really safe for the food production of this world to invest such time and money in an unsound production process, that is likely to leave the business of food production in few hands with minimum diversity for land use? Or is "safe to eat" enough to conclude the debate?
That being said, I do think GMOs are as safer overall then most other technologies at the moment.
Environment: We do have research on the environmental effects of disposable of computers/electronics, plastics, cars, pesticides ect. Being scared of GMOs as a environmental factor seems reasonable, but this should be applied to everything. I am surprised people attack GMO for this reason, when there are obvious other technologies that are doing some real scientifically proven harm.
Business: Yes. I do think GMOs can be dangerous as a business, especially with the patenting issues of a large corporation. The patent issue is the same issue that most developers and small businesses have to battle with all the time. So I do not really see this as a GMO specific issue either. The problem is that the more GMOs are attacked, the harder it is for a small business to have enough power and credibility, as a small business to even have a chance.
Social Risks: Not sure what you mean by this.
The last bit about GMOs being the best way: I totally agree. I personally think it is not the best option. Monoculture, seems is causing some real problems. Not to mention GMO production has a low and slow success rate, considering how so much money and research goes into it. Land use practices, I believe is our best bet to solving some of our problems.
I still think GMOs have potential of being a really innovative technology, I just want science to have a fair shot.
We need either GM food or population control, preferably both.
Is a study into GM necessary: yes, do we need to let monopolies decide policy for the people? no f'in way...