Why GM crops are vital

[Kuciwalker]

Try and find an example when world food has grown faster than world population

...

Almost always?

Notice how we have more food/person now than we used to?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
I'd challenge that. The biggest global problems in terms of food production are lack of water resources and desertification caused by attempting to impose unsustainable farming practices on ill-suited land. To make a real impact in the areas that really need it, do the following-

1- Invest in irrigation, wells and education in sustainable agriculture on marginal land.

2- Shoot every ****ing goat on the planet.

I'm all for shooting goats but it is simply not realistic that modern water management practices can be built in the third world. The best we can hope for is crops which use less water and that food production can be made so high in places with modern irrigation systems that food will still be affordable for the world's poor and slash poverty.

Even so we're going to need to boost farm output in a very real way if we're going to feed everyone.

The world needs fewer peasant farmers so that the consolidated farmers which remain are large enough to afford modern methods instead of bunches of poverty stricken people living on plots of land which has zero chance of feeding them much less their families.

In order to make this possible an transfer money to the poorest countries, via a market based system, we need an end to the western farm subsidies and open markets so the rest of the world can sell their farm goods. That more then anything else will lead to economic development in the third world.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
This is the pro-GM article in full.




Now here's a challenge to the pro-GM advocates. How many flaws and/or ludicrous statements can you spot in it?

That's a tall order really. Counting flaws and ludricrous statements won't really tell you anything about the critics views by itself because for all you know the critic will be holding views even more ludicrous than the article! I suppose I could parse the article down and comment on each item individually but that sounds like a lot of work and I'm not sure you ( or anybody else) would bother to read that. However, I am willing to give some more general criticisms of the articles more common mistakes. As it is that's going to take a lot of text just to avoid suggesting that each of my critiques constitutes a reason to oppose GM products.

The biggest problem with the article is the way it dumbs everything down. That's not helping them score points with anybody.

For example the article wastes a great deal of time at the beginning comparing recombinant dna techniques to traditional breeding techniques when such comparisons aren't really relevant to the objections of the anti-GM crowd. The dispute has never been about selection of genes from closely related species rather it has been about the anti-GM crowds irrational aversion to selection and insertion of genes from non closely related species by any means in general while sometimes also going so far as condemning the manner in which this is accomplished.

The article would be better served by pointing out that gene transfers between non closely related species can occur without any human intervention but that this is not often seen simply because the rate of transfer is low enough to appear as part of background genetic drift. For example, viruses can interact among non closely related species and through integration in host genomes directly transfer multiple genes at once, or failing that the mere presence by any means of large amounts of non self DNA in another organism can result in some foreign DNA uptake by germ line cells at a very low (but non zero) rate of transformation. Why don't we see a larger fraction of genes apparently 'borrowed' in this manner? because, as a blind process of gene transfer the process only has about as much chance of introducing a helpful gene as would a random mutation. Nonetheless, in prokaryotes especially we observe such gene transfers between distantly related prokaryotes occuring on relatively short time scales all of the time for easily transferrable genes (genes don't all have an equal chance of being randomly transferred and properly expressed).

Oddly this sort of 'natural' transferance is recognized periodically by the anti-GM crowd when they claim that recombinant genes in GM organisms will spread out to all manner of 'closely related' non target species. However, unless the two species are so closely related that they can interbreed to produce fertile offspring (in which case they usually can't even be regarded as distinct species!) or unless they are both capable of harboring a virus that can integrate freely into both of their genomes, such transfers are no more likely for closely related species as for distantly related species!

Consider this, if molecular studies were done between a GM organism, it's non-GM immediate ancestral organism, and the organism that donated the transferred genes no donor organism relation would be established to the GM organism and no difference would be detected between the ancestral organism and the GM organism. The presence of the transfered gene would be lost in the noise of normal intraspecies genetic variation. We wouldn't know unless we knew what to look for.

From whence comes this nearly universal assumption of the anti-GM crowd that genetic transfers between non closely related organisms are unprecedented?

(that was all to address just one general error of the article!)

Another general error is the apparent assumption by the authors that the anti-GM crowd would claim that GM researchers will intentionally insert a harmful gene into a GM product, when in fact the anti-GM crowd nearly always claims that researchers have limited control over what genes are transfered or how the gene will 'behave' and so they suggest that the results of the transfers are random crapshoots with an unknown chance of producing undesirable results. The article totally fails to address the real objections and instead wastes time assuring everybody that anti-GM researchers only intend to transfer safe genes. All the article had to do was tackle the issue head on and state that researchers do test the resulting products for allergens and their gene transfer techniques simply don't leave room for enough non targeted adjacent genetic material to be transfered to constitute an allergenic epitope of even the smallest size. They should also address the fear of effects of genes being inserted into unknown parts of the genome by pointing out that genomic interruption by transposable elements is constantly occuring in all eukaryotic organisms and that because of the viral ancestral origins of the vast majority of these elements eukaryotes have evolved to take such changes in themselves (much less the oragnisms they consume) in stride. For transposable elements or for recombinant genes alike, the vast majority of the time such an insertion occured in an area that had been 'silent' for millions of years and if by very unlucky chance it landed in a gene the result was always a defacto inactivation of one copy of the gene. Not some sort of new bizarre 'mutant compound gene' with unknown activity.

Those are the two most annoying errors. What two did you find to be the most important errors Laz?

[Odin]

Isn't some of the Anti-GM stuff from European farmers who have a vested intrest in keeping crop prices high? I swear I heard that somewhere.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Odin
Isn't some of the Anti-GM stuff from European farmers who have a vested intrest in keeping crop prices high? I swear I heard that somewhere.

wouldn't matter if it was. What matters is the reasons the public opposes GM-crops and addressing those arguments. It is obvious that most opposition to Gm crops isn't composed of greedy farmers. At worst they play an enthusiastic lobbyist role in the fiasco.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by JohnT

I(and most of europe if you believe the polls) would most likely support GM if they stopped this sterile seed production technology.

The stuff is sterile because of fears about "mutated" organisms "reproducing wildly" that were being thrown around in the seventies, eighties.

Actually, no, that's not why. The stuff is sterile because companies don't want farmers to be able to save seed from their crops for replanting. Instead, they want farmers to have to buy the initial seed from them, every season. The main GM companies have also bought up many large seed banks and stopped selling non-terminating seed, as well.

GM isn't about feeding the world, despite what its corporate liars would have you believe (and why am I surprised that once again, Oerdin is a sucker for the right's lies?). GM is about making money.

If we need more grain to feed the world, then all we need to do is stop feeding it to our food animals. Sure, animal protein will become scarce, but you will increase the amount of available grain by about a factor of 20 (95% of all grain produced in the US is animal feed).

In a socialist society, GM foods would be used to help people and reduce the amount of necessary farmland. In a capitalist society, it is for the opposite.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Oerdin
How likely is that to actually occur? We can be 99% certain that by 2035 the world population will be 10 billion which is 66% larger then it is today.

WHO projects the world population to peak at nine billion in the year 2050, so I would suggest you are misinformed . . . yet again.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Also the quant little notion that farmers save part of their crop as seed stock virtually only happens in the poorest and least developed parts of the world these days.

That's because, in the U.S., big agrobiz uses GM terminator seed. Most of the seed banks from which farmers can buy seed have been bought up by the likes of Monsanto and have stopped selling fertile seed. A lot of farmers, the majority of poorer farmers who eek out livings, still try to save seed. It's the big farms, which account for most production in the U.S., whih act as you describe.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Oerdin
That's mostly been phased out. There simply isn't a lot of spare farmland just laying around waiting for farmers.

Where I grew up, i.e., the MidWest (you may have heard that they grow some crops there), still does crop rotation and letting about 1/3rd the land lie fallow. Course, I haven't lieved there for four years, so maybe it's competely changed.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp


I'd challenge that. The biggest global problems in terms of food production are lack of water resources and desertification caused by attempting to impose unsustainable farming practices on ill-suited land. To make a real impact in the areas that really need it, do the following-

1- Invest in irrigation, wells and education in sustainable agriculture on marginal land.

2- Shoot every ****ing goat on the planet.

1. irrigation tends to salt up the land over time. ie, it's not truly sustainable.


HOWEVER, it should be possible to develop by recombinant DNA techniques salt tolerant crops that could be grown in such areas so that they wouldn't have to be surrendered to the desert. Unfortunately some people believe nothing is more important than stopping companies from developing and selling sterile-GM crops or pesticide tolerant crops so they accept blanket bans as the lesser evil and in so doing prevent salt tolerant crops from being developed.


2. Destruction of all trees at the edge of a desert is by far the biggest culprit and goats play a role in that secondary to human activity. Simply confining the goats should be sufficient to end their role in desertification.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Where I grew up, i.e., the MidWest (you may have heard that they grow some crops there), still does crop rotation and letting about 1/3rd the land lie fallow. Course, I haven't lieved there for four years, so maybe it's competely changed.

Fallow means you don't grow anything there. That hasn't been done since the middle ages. Perhaps people were referring to growing crops such as Alfalfa that are rotated in every 3rd year in place of the primary crop to prevent soil depletion?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Any proof this has happened any where?

Some doctors are blaming resistant-tuberculosis on the overuse of antibiotics in cattle (guess where we get tuberculosis from).

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Geronimo
Fallow means you don't grow anything there. That hasn't been done since the middle ages.

Let's see if you can handle the concept of where I grew up. Year 1, corn, year two, soy beans, year three, weeds, grass, and the occassional soy bean that didn't get caught in the combine.

Thank you, come again.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Geronimo
What two did you find to be the most important errors Laz?

The ones that bug me most are this one-

It is probable that GM foods will make positive, instead of negative, contributions to eliminating food allergens.

Allergen-free wheat is currently being researched and will hopefully become available in years to come so that individuals with wheat or gluten allergy can use GM wheat without being exposed to the allergens associated with this staple food. Given the chance, genetic engineers will come up with allergen-free milk, eggs and peanuts in future.

Which fails to address the question of why we are seeing such a growth in food allergies in the first place, and how great a role over-exposure to limited food-groups such as wheat may be a contributory factor (aside from the genetic issues). It strikes me that the obvious answer is to seek greater variety in diets by using more oats, barley, millet, maize and quinoa. Funnily enough, the industrial farming industry heavily committed to wheat appears to disagree. Whether that's down to bias due to vested interests, or simple inability to think outside the box, is a moot point.

Secondly, that great statement "this will never happen again" with regard to allergies is a bold one, creating the comfy impression that all the medical issues here, now and forever are fully understood and no mistakes will be made again. That takes some selling to Europe in the wake of the BSE crisis- which wasn't a GM issue, but was certainly a catastrophic failure in intensive agriculture.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by General LuddThere is a difference between efficient and profitable.

More importantly, there's a difference between efficient and tastey and healthy. "Efficient" chicken production has led to the toxic chicken (not a concern to you, the vegan). After preparing a bird you have to send in a hazmat team to sterilize your kitchen (note: hyperbole). Also, you can't eat raw eggs anymore (no more real egg nog, caesar salad, etc.). Efficient doesn't necessarily mean better.