GMOs causing autism?! We report, you decide!
- Thread starter bhsup
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SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Yeah, that's precisely the issue I have with it. That the profit motive overrides the ability to replant seed.
Ensuring a harvest next year is on the same level as copying entertainment files. I'd say you need to work on your rhetorical technique.
Farm Boy
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That doesn't make any sense SS. Farmers have been planting one year products for over half a century because they're better products. They plant the new stuff now because it is also a better product. Farmers also contract to propagate that seed corn for seed companies, delivering patented seeds off their ground at a premium price which the seed companies will then sell to other farmers the next year so they can grow commercial corn. Just because you haven't been in the loop on the division of labor and specialization doesn't mean something new is going on just because you decided to pay attention!
Do you think it costs nothing to develop those seeds? You don't think the companies that do so should have any way to recoup the cost of doing so plus make some profit? They should just be doing it for poops and giggles?
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
So they choose the best option out of the ones currently available to them, of which replanting isn't one. Nothing new to learn for me there.
I am wondering if for-profit companies should be the ones at the forefront of developing biotechnology products. I like the characterization of billions of dollars as "some". Nice touch.
Farm Boy
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From what I think I'm getting is that people have a simplistic view of farming. Put seeds in ground, get more seeds in fall, keep some seeds for ground. Then they get kinda offended when they realize modern farming is highly specialized involving chemistry, soil conservation, tax management, real estate management, mechanics, futures speculation, and contracting.
If you want to back to varieties from the era where you 'just held the big 'ol seeds fer next year,' those plants suck. I want better plant genetics to stake my livelihood on. And I am not confused and offended that it takes a division of labor between seed companies, seed corn propagation contracts, seed corn sales, and commercial corn production, commercial corn delivery contracts and sales to do it.
I get the feeling there is a lot for you to learn here. Why, exactly, do you care so much about replanting here. What, exactly, do you think we're getting out of replanting, other than it sounds nice and historic and safe and in opposition to Monsanto? You get to keep assuming things are simple instead of complicated and robust?
They're big companies. The research takes heavy investment. They'll extract the level of profit they think the market will bear. And frankly, they're extracting a low enough price that their products are still a pretty darn good choice. They've helped reduce pollution and increase reliability. I like that product. If you want the US government to play a larger role in funding actual investment into crop production hells to the yea man. But people aren't going to want to pay for it. They're going to get bogged down on Dunning-Kruger(hey! I eat food too!), they're going to totally blank out on hybrid vigor, and they're going to vote in their millions on that ignorance.
classical_hero
In whom I trust
The problem is that you are have a dry year and you know that there isn't enough of the season to make an effort to plant and thus you just dig up your seeds and re-use them for next season, but with terminator seeds, you simply just can't do that, so you have to plant your seeds and hope for the best, when you know it isn't likely.
Tarquelne
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American "Big Ag" is the culmination of hundreds of years of high-input, high-output farming. It's doing what we, collectively, have been striving for for a long, long time, and doing it extremely well.
Farmers can get taken advantage of in a lot of ways - this is capitalism we're talking about - but economically there's nothing wrong with needing to buy new seeds every year. In principle, at least. Farmers took to it because it was advantageous, and as far as most are concerned, it still is.
The problem is that we, collectively, have also realized that in a lot of ways that type of farming isn't such a great idea. I mean, heck, other than cheap plentiful food that's often the difference between thriving and just scraping by, if not starving, it doesn't really have a damn thing to recommend it.
People who have the money to spare on better, more "sustainably" raised foods should vote with their dollars and buy it. That'll gradually shift more and more of the growers to producing those foods. In the meantime, the 90% (a wild guess) of the buying market that either can't or won't buy anything but "cheap" food - in every sense of the word, for good and ill - can continue to do so. Sometimes because they need to, sometimes because they don't know any better.
For America, at least, I think we've had a generation or few that grew up with the products of both Big Ag and the processed food mini-revolution that took place after WWII. A lot of us are just clueless about what food should be. But more and more are twigging on to the idea that there's a better way. At least when you have some disposable dollars. And, really, it doesn't need to take very many. The big price-hikes come in when, for whatever reason, Little Ag food goes upmarket. Partially this is simply supply and demand. All the more reason to vote with your dollars now. (Or seek to alter things politically.)
As far as GMOs go, as a concern I'd rank them well below issues with mono-cultures, pesticides, antibiotics, the general emphasis on calories over nutrition (or taste) in farming, the distorting effect of subsidies, and the costs in erosion, land, energy, and opportunity involved with Big Ag. Even then, increasing resistance among pests is more of an issue than GMOs being "bad" for you. They might be, but if you're really concerned about what's in your food there's plenty of things that should come ahead of GMOs.
If you're not already eating organically and sustainably grown, preservative free, primal or paleo, cruelty-free, free-trade food, you've got more important things to worry about than GMOs.
To use an example everyone can relate to, it's like worrying about the long-term effects of the filler your nosecandy dealer claims he's using.
Farmers can get taken advantage of in a lot of ways - this is capitalism we're talking about - but economically there's nothing wrong with needing to buy new seeds every year. In principle, at least. Farmers took to it because it was advantageous, and as far as most are concerned, it still is.
The problem is that we, collectively, have also realized that in a lot of ways that type of farming isn't such a great idea. I mean, heck, other than cheap plentiful food that's often the difference between thriving and just scraping by, if not starving, it doesn't really have a damn thing to recommend it.
People who have the money to spare on better, more "sustainably" raised foods should vote with their dollars and buy it. That'll gradually shift more and more of the growers to producing those foods. In the meantime, the 90% (a wild guess) of the buying market that either can't or won't buy anything but "cheap" food - in every sense of the word, for good and ill - can continue to do so. Sometimes because they need to, sometimes because they don't know any better.
For America, at least, I think we've had a generation or few that grew up with the products of both Big Ag and the processed food mini-revolution that took place after WWII. A lot of us are just clueless about what food should be. But more and more are twigging on to the idea that there's a better way. At least when you have some disposable dollars. And, really, it doesn't need to take very many. The big price-hikes come in when, for whatever reason, Little Ag food goes upmarket. Partially this is simply supply and demand. All the more reason to vote with your dollars now. (Or seek to alter things politically.)
As far as GMOs go, as a concern I'd rank them well below issues with mono-cultures, pesticides, antibiotics, the general emphasis on calories over nutrition (or taste) in farming, the distorting effect of subsidies, and the costs in erosion, land, energy, and opportunity involved with Big Ag. Even then, increasing resistance among pests is more of an issue than GMOs being "bad" for you. They might be, but if you're really concerned about what's in your food there's plenty of things that should come ahead of GMOs.
If you're not already eating organically and sustainably grown, preservative free, primal or paleo, cruelty-free, free-trade food, you've got more important things to worry about than GMOs.
To use an example everyone can relate to, it's like worrying about the long-term effects of the filler your nosecandy dealer claims he's using.
Loppan Torkel
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If more and more are turning to organic, ecological, sustainable, non-ab, "animal-friendly", etc food, then I suppose it's reasonable to oppose an increased paced toward GMO. For political reasons if nothing else.
No risk that these uberplants outcompete the regular ones and then spread uncontrollably, forcing farmers to pay subsidies to Monsanto?
kramerfan86
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It is way too hipster cool right now to bemoan GMOs as the ultimate devil that is ruining everything and will make your body melt like its seen the ark of the covenant. Now I can see legitimate beefs with the way some of the companies conduct themselves business wise, but the actual visceral fear of the production itself is just bizarre. Unless the scientists really really screw up and somehow make the plant produce something toxic and somehow that screw up made it through all the testing it just doesnt make scientific sense to have this deep fear.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
I can't believe I was actually asked what is the benefit of not having to pay for something every year when it can be grown from previous stock. And I never did get an answer on what happens when seeds blow into another farmer's crops.
I think that's also used against single-payer healthcare. Not that it stops the concept from working.
The main problem is that most of the people (myself included in this specific case) operate on a basis of either unwarranted trust, unwarranted distrust, or are just wary of changes to food which may lead to pretty nasty effects on human health. The way to solve all that would be conclusive studies on very specific GM alterations to be done. Currently there seems to be a chaotic free-for-all for the companies to do what they want without even naming what they are doing (and not even naming their GM foods as GM foods), and on the other hand a pretty low level of 'trust the companies/scientists!', when the obvious reply to that would be GTFO, cause no one is to be asked to trust someone on issues of life and health.
And pattenting biological alterations is ultra-lame as well. I don't recall if Archimedes pattented his design for a helix-based lever. Maybe eastern Sicily can get trillions of dollars for that
(western Sicily should get nothing though; they were run by Carthage).
kramerfan86
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Like I said i completely buy complaints with the business practices. Like you said copyrighting genes and the sort of free for all nature business practices are bad. But there seems to be a lot of exageration on just how bad they are, I think there is a legitimate subset of people who even if this stuff were more tightly regulated like pharmaceuticals would still bemoan how devilish the things are when really scientifically they simply arent capable of a pile of the things people seem to think they could/are doing.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
You don't trust your doctor with your health?
The doctor is (at least in theory) accountable to a medical board, you can go to the hospital to bring your case there, and they are overall expected to operate on not only a scientific, but also a quite set manner, including what drugs they may prescribe for what kind of issue.
Furthermore there are more parts in that chain, cause even if a doctor gives a wrong medicine (for many reasons, including supporting the company making it or related interests) the pharmacists can pick that up.
Not that life-endagering (or life-ruining) situations don't appear in hospitals. But they are hospitals and they deal with those issues of life/death. A food company should never be accepted to maybe cause your health to deteriorate
kramerfan86
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Even without GMOs you already accept a food company having control over your health. Contamination either of a biological or chemical nature is always a risk. Most country regulate to reduce that, but at the end of the day unless you grow all your own food there is an inherent trust you are putting in the producer to not accidentally poison you or give you a heaping pile of salmonella.
^And yet large cases of contaminated/dangerous (non-GM) food are not that common. There were the main ones in west/northern Europe, involving the pig-based foods of some companies (and cow-based), and those were presented to have been caused by entirely un-regulated feeding of those animals by horrible and not at all allowed food.
