Building Better Bananas (2012)
gatesnotes.com
gatesnotes.com
If they're already buying bananas as a staple food, then I presume that the fix would be for the government to go to the local growers and either give the better banana plants for free, or at a discounted rate, or some other incentive. If that's what the growers grow, then that is what will eventually be available at the market.
If they're growing their own food then that's a bit harder, but you could probably come up with some sort of incentive scheme to get people to switch. You could try charging the same amount as normal, but tell people that the new ones prevent blindness and anemia in children.
Depends on location, I think. In the United States, yeah, that might be the case, but in other countries (I'm thinking parts of Africa), it is a distribution issue, particularly when dealing with corrupt governments.
Sen was originally motivated to study economics when, as a boy, he lived through one of India's famines while working at a grain/rice/? silo. He wanted to reconcile the fact that there was a large amount of excess grain left at the time the next crop was being harvested with the fact that he had seen starved corpses along the streets (and had heard that the famine was much worse elsewhere through the newspaper). He eventually came to the conclusion that the famine he had lived through, along with many others, was primarily economic (due to inequality combined with a few other triggers) rather than due to local food supply actually falling below what was needed to feed the population.
I don't know as much about Picketty (I had Sen as a lecturer -- didn't care much for him in that capacity, but his writing was top quality). I do know that I haven't been impressed or convinced by Picketty's arguments, which read as if they were written by someone who had never read Sen's book (he keeps raising objections that Sen thoroughly addressed >30 years ago).
That may very well be the case.
> If they're already buying bananas as a staple food, then I presume that the fix would be for the government to go to the local growers and either give the better banana plants for free, or at a discounted rate, or some other incentive. If that's what the growers grow, then that is what will eventually be available at the market.
I think that exactly is the distribution problem again: If the government has the means to do that, why is it not providing seeds/saplings etc. of vitamin A containing crops right now? Bananas are a really demanding crop, so the soil has to be of high quality.
Most probably the article just left this information out for the sake of readability, but given the current information my fear is that these GMO bananas are a solution for a problem complex that has not been researched deeply enough to have a firm understanding of the causes. Like a startup running with the mantra 'build it and they will come' :)
PS: Bananas will grow and fruit under poor soil conditions but will be less productive without deep, well-drained soil; forest loam, rocky sand, marl, red laterite, volcanic ash, sandy clay, or even heavy clay. The key element in soil type for successful banana plant growth is good drainage. Alluvial soils of river valleys are ideal for banana growing. Bananas prefer an acid soil.[3]
Why do people eat bananas as a staple food now? If you're poor, it's all about the efficiency of calories per dollar. You're hungry and you want something filling, but you don't have a lot to spend. You pick the thing that is going to fill you up.
If the staple food right now is the banana, it's because that's what is most efficient to produce. In other areas that is rice, in the US it is corn.
The goal is to make the staple food a bit healthier.
Sure, that’s like the fundamental principle of ecology. Earth’s population is increasing every year, and those people have to be made out of something.
What do you think the solution to distribution is? World-wide socialism, where all property is distributed based on need?
Often times, there is enough food already being donated to address the immediate food crisis, but it's being intercepted by warlords who sell it back on the open market and pocket the cash. Or just the mechanics of getting the food out into remote areas without it getting spoiled or rotten or whatever.
So, distribution, in this case, is an Amazon-type distribution issue, not a political wealth-distribution issue.
Genetic modification is one of the few ways we can keep the bananas we like while adjusting them for more recent diseases and pests. The only other way I know is to go back and find the ancestral species, and try to breed a fertile banana cousin.
IIRC the seeding ability was intentionally bred out of cultivated bananas because the seeds themselves were large, inedible, and comprised a significant portion of the fruit itself.
I don’t like some details.
The banana needs a little more energy to produce more Vitamin A, so the plant will yield fewer bananas and these bananas will be more expensive. You will get more Vitamin A but fewer carbohydrates. I’m not sure that this is a good deal in the very poor parts of the word.
The problem with the Iron content is easier to see. The banana has to take the Iron from the soil, unless it’s a very rich Iron zone, so you need to use a fertilizer to replace the Iron. This also makes the bananas more expensive.
While it is true the banana would use more energy, there is no evidence for lower crop yields.
The banana has to take the Iron from the soil, unless it’s a very rich Iron zone, so you need to use a fertilizer to replace the Iron. This also makes the bananas more expensive.
The gene they are using is from the soybean plant. Since there is a significant amount of iron in soil to begin with, I doubt fertilizer is required to supplement the soil with iron.
It takes VERY little iron sulfate to provide the required iron for soil. It takes a lot of stuff to drop the pH a point or two.
If you research this you'll find that fixing iron deficiency in the USA caused by excessive use of certain fertilizers and it is REALLY EXPENSIVE and labor intensive because most of the money is blown on fixing the pH to make the plentiful existing iron available.
In the unlikely even you're low on actual iron in the soil, iron sulfate is ridiculously cheap and it doesn't take much, like a spoonful per 100 sq ft, so a $10 bag should be something like a lifetime supply for an entire village...
Also some fertilizers are good iron sources so supplementation is not necessary or even a good idea.
Given where I live banana cultivation isn't a serious issue so I don't know how bananas and their fertilizers interact WRT soil pH.
The TLDR is don't confuse soil pH repair with Fe supplementation (especially since one costs 100x more than the other) and iron may not even theoretically be a possible problem depending on local fertilization practices.
I take your point that calories aren't trivial for a developing world staple but it's difficult to see it counter-balancing that situation.
For the sake of argument I will make the ridiculous claim that vit A synthesis is 10000x less efficient than carbohydrate synthesis. This is absolutely laughable but I want to error on the extreme side of caution. So you trade the photosynthesis energy that could have been 1 g of banana mass for some micrograms of vit A.
A typical banana (whatever that means) weighs about a tenth of a kilo, or rephrased a bunch of ten weigh about a kilo. So a banana will weigh about 1 percent less. Bananas aren't all that calorie dense so figure a bit less than a calorie per gram.
So enough Vit A to prevent significant disease will cost much less than one calorie per banana. The numbers I chose were intentionally ridiculous worst case, so it should be far less than one gram per banana.
Some folks who have not done the research or math seem under the impression that a Vit A enhanced banana must somehow be 1/10 the size of a normal banana or something equally unlikely.
Gros Michel bananas were apparently sweeter and had a different flavor, and I've heard anecdotally that part of why artificial banana flavoring doesn't taste much like how we find bananas to taste is that it was meant to imitate the flavor of the older, rather than the modern, banana. I'm not old enough to have had a Gros Michel, though, so I can't confirm that from personal experience.
You can really taste the difference when you go to a farmers market and try a fresh tomato! Make sure the top of the tomato is orange so that you know it's fresh!
[1] http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacific/2013/08/activists-des...
[2] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2014/03/15/go...
Golden Rice is the first significant GMO that is not designed to benefit the farmer - it is designed to benefit the consumer. Until Golden Rice, seed companies developed GMOs which would be attractive to Farmers - by allowing them to plough less, use less pesticide, endure drought, resist disease and increase yield. Since all farmers operate on profit motive (pretty much like everyone else when it comes to their work) they buy the seeds which help ensure they do not go broke, and hopefully thrive.
This is why the CEO of Lululemons making an impolite statement causes a 15% drop in their stock price, but 1.5 million people marching in 600 cities calling for the death of Monsanto does not even budge their value or their revenue. Farmer are their ONLY customers, and farmers tend to be unimpressed by urban marches, buying the seeds they see as most profitable, even if they cost three times as much.
As well, the fact that the vast majority of urbanites are not really familiar with actual farming realities, it has been easier for NGO's and political forces to exagerate the danger, mobilize communities and raise funds and followers on the issue. There is no consequence for someone in the city to oppose GMOs, unlike cellphones, which also have a risk/benefit dynamic going on.
Golden Rice (and bananas) changes this conversation entirely, as now instead of being concerned with crop yields (Nobody in a city actually cares about this) the issue is the real blindness and death of millions of children in front of their parents who are doing their best to feed them. Everyone in the city cares about children.
So the Precautionary, Principle, when applied to Golden Rice, calls for comparing the risk of doing something ( permitting commercial cultivation) with the risk of not doing something (another 6,000 children dying each day)
Greenpeace's statement on the risk of Golden Rice is they are concerned about "unforeseen health and environmental problems". 'Unforeseen', of course meaning you cannot see it, and therefore do not know what it is or might be.
In their eyes that risk justifies blocking Golden Rice, which immediately ends vitamin A deficiency in whoever eats 60 grams a day of it. This has been proven beyond any doubt - lack of 150-year studies notwithstanding.
They say it is a quick-fix and that it costs too much money.
The WHO spends between 500 million and a billion dollars each year on vitamin A supplement programs. The entire Golden Rice development budget over 25 years has been 35 million dollars.
The seeds of Golden Rice are true and grow more Golden Rice - unlike vitamin pills which you need to come back with every week.
All farmers earning under $10,000/year will pay no royalty, so it will cost them ( virtually all the poor farmers in Asia and Africa) the same as normal rice. And the distribution is controlled by government and NGO organizations, so there is no corporate involvement.
Yet, it was ready for distribution in 2004, and only the political, legal and social activism of Greenpeace and other groups which hold a zero-tolerance position on all GMOs has blocked it.
There is only one difference between normal rice and Golden Rice and that is the presence of beta-carotene in the grain. Rice leaves are already full of beta-carotene but are inedible. So there is not even a new nutrient or element in Golcen Rice, just the corn gene that allows it to put the beta-carotene in the grain ( the same way it does in a corn plant)
I highly respect the statements about civil discourse above, and will do my best to say this without vilifying anyone: I have only encountered two underlying dynamics within the opponents of Golden Rice: Either they lack the critical thinking capacity to grasp the science which confirms its safety, and concurrently believe the unsubstantiated claims about its danger and the unrealistic 'better ways' that should be done, or, they are cynical enough and lacking in compassion to the extent they think it is better to continue to deny families this cure, as long as GMO do not 'win'
After six months of campaigning to support Golden Rice I can report with certainty that 80% of the public understand the issue and immediately favor an exemption for Golden Rice on Humanitarian grounds. So we will see it in fields and the immediate drop in death from vitamin A deficiency that will accompany it.
I invite all conversation on this issue, either here or by email. Many thanks, Michael Moore Executive Director Allow Golden Rice Society www.allowgoldenricenow.org mmoore@allowgoldenricenow.org
Please don't use inflammatory language like this when arguing on HN. It's unsubstantive (because it overstates things for agitation effect) and tends to provoke low-quality subthreads.
Here's something PG once wrote that clarifies this principle:
[HN comments] should be written in the spirit of colleagues cooperating in good faith to figure out the truth about something, not politicians trying to ridicule and misrepresent the other side.
There are places where inflammatory, provocative language does well: in the rough and tumble of political debate, for example, or battles of literary wit. The trouble is that if we have much of it here, it rides roughshod over everything else. It's a tradeoff. The values of HN are intellectual substance and personal civility, and those are fragile in a public anonymous forum, so we all should consciously protect them. This still leaves lots of room to make one's point (albeit at the cost of a certain blandness), so it shouldn't be a problem.
Vitamin A deficiency is rarely an isolated phenomenon but usually coupled to a general lack of a balanced diet. It seems like a too first world centric solution to say "you eat mostly rice? Lets alter the rice" rather than looking into the reasons why you eat mostly rice. And vitamin A is a single nutrient.
I'm not sure if there was any other unforeseen consequences taken into account as nothing exists in a vacuum. Will encouraging golden rice consumption lead to discouraging a varied diet? Who knows. Did they take into account that vitamin A is a fat fat-soluble vitamin and there should be fat in the diet for proper absorption? I honestly don't know on the second question.
Would farmers even be willing to plant the rice?
Also, what do you want people to "find a cure" for? The growing population of humans? Climate change, which will radically alter geography especially in Africa, the Middle East, and India? Wealth imbalance, which has existed since the beginning of agriculture? It's extremely naive to suggest that "millions of dollars" is sufficient to "find a cure" for whatever it is that causes the "symptom" of human malnourishment.
>in non-white rice
People eat white rice because it doesn't spoil as fast, especially in the tropics.
Education, treating poverty, and encouraging biodiversity and a varied diet among the population. Teaching things like backyard farming, hygiene, breastfeeding. Also vaccines since infection drains vitamin A deficiency and a large cause of mortality from infectious diseases is due to vitamin A deficiency.
Other problems like political instability and poverty are more difficult to find a solution to. I'll let other people study that one.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11761/
> The overall prevalence of VAD is decreasing markedly because of increased awareness of VAD as a public health problem and increased measles immunization and vitamin A supplementation or fortification programs. However, the prevalence of VAD is increasing or is unknown in some regions because of political instability, high rates of infectious disease, and increasing poverty.
http://www.cehjournal.org/article/do-vitamin-a-deficiency-an...
>Children grow and develop well when they have access to affordable, diverse, nutrient-rich food, appropriate maternal and child care, adequate health services and a healthy environment including safe water, sanitation and good hygiene.
>Underlying these causes are factors such as household food insecurity (due to poverty or other reasons), inadequate care and feeding practices, unhealthy household environments and inadequate health services
> Improving the availability of affordable, nutritious foods requires a broad approach, encompassing all the farmers, businesses, institutions and processes (such as supply chains) which produce, process and make foods available to communities.
>In the short term, vitamin A supplementation is the most effective way to reduce vitamin A deficiency and child mortality (see page 70). Doing something about vitamin A deficiency on its own, however, will not deal with the larger problem of undernutrition and deficiency of other micronutrients essential for growth, health and educational development. This is why, in this issue of the Community Eye Health Journal, we suggest that vitamin A deficiency must be addressed – not just with supplementation – but also by working with mothers to address the immediate and underlying causes of chronic undernutrition. This will improve their children’s health and diet and therefore also their general nutrition. In particular, we should encourage improved hand washing practices and work with families to overcome customs associated with inadequate complementary or weaning foods.
That being said, I don't actually believe that giving golden rice to farmers is currently a bad idea as it is already there. I just think the whole initiative was tackling the problem the wrong way. I also worry about any unintended consequences.
It isn't a popular opinion around here because there is a view that science will fix all the world's problems. Too often the societal problems that cause those problems are ignored. Even suggesting that GMOs might not be the answer we are all looking for gets you lumped in with the loonies and a flurry of downvotes.
This makes sense when you have only a few minds working on the problem and the root cause can be tackled directly and simply. However, there are many minds with many different specialties and the root cause is complex enough that it makes sense to divide it into individual problems. Especially since those symptoms contribute to the cause. Obesity causes joint pain and joint pain causes lack of exercise. And so it sometimes sounds silly to criticize someone for just dealing with joint pain rather than the larger problem.
But it now sounds like you are actually saying "We shouldn't forget that there are also other problems to solve here." And this is very true.
I believe a lot of people have a mindset that technology can/should solve all the world's problems. The mindset can be misguided. When we pump hundreds of millions of dollars in a technology that might not take into consideration the human elements of the problem it is trying to solve - or the unintended consequences of such technology - we should be looking objectively and asking questions. Even if those questions don't have immediate answers.
It seems like if someone brings up any rational doubt or even QUESTIONS about GMOs they are instinctively labeled an "anti-science loon" and dismissed. Dismissing doubt by saying "you want children to go blind and die" isn't productive.
Everything has a trade-off as there isn't finite resources or time. I believe golden rice was misguided and the time and resources spent on it could have been better spent elsewhere, even on cheaper and more proven supplementation programs. It was over engineering.
I read an article in a magazine about how problems might not be solved in a straightforward manner and there is a lack of testing for various interventions to see which one works best or even works. There is a movement to science based aid. The example given that there was a trial for the best way to increase a child's education. Many things were tested such as free textbooks, more teachers, teacher education, etc. Do you know what worked the best for increasing children's education? Anti-parasitic medications. Children lose significant school time due to parasites. Which is in NO WAY obvious.
I'm totally willing to believe that golden rice was over-engineering and was imprudent allocation of resources, but I thought we didn't yet know enough because it was still in testing. Has it actually been deployed?
Science based aid is great if you can choose your metrics successfully.
I think we are in broad agreement.
Even so, it can be dangerous if we eat too much of it. Eg, beer has been around for many years and have been seen to be healthy in some circles, but too much of it can be fatal.
So how do you really know for sure? Would it not be possible that the plant we eat has gone through nature's version of modification known as evolution and has become toxic for consumption?
As for the health of the consumer, there is more variation and deviation between two species of banana (of this same kind) than there is between the modified and cultivated varieties. And keep in mind too that the cultivated varieties as we currently eat them are so far removed from their genetic capacity to survive as to actually be sterile.
A single, more efficient protein from a similar species was imported from a non-cultivated species into the more common, sterile, cultivated species to shift the fruit's own biochemical equilibrium along a single metabolic axis towards a few-fold increase in the production of Vitamin A.
On the scale of risk, this one is very near the bottom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine#History
It was mostly about making a fat spread that was cheaper than butter. Relatively recent marketing probably made lots of health claims.
I suppose that makes the development a closer parallel with golden rice (or bananas), but I think you are underestimating the understanding that the developers of these organisms have.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-30/unilever-add...
It helps that butter tastes so much better. I grew up on margarine and butter was like a forbidden fruit to my mom because it was "so bad for you." I grew up thinking butter was death in stick form. I always bought margarine as an adult because you do what your parents did unless you have a reason not to. Well, at some point a few years ago I questioned it and switched over to butter. Guess who also switched to butter recently after decrying it my whole life? My mom.