[Expatriot]

In the U.S., any multiple item food can be labeled "organic" if at least 95% of its contents are organic. The other 5% could be derived from crops sprayed with the most hellacious shit imaginable.

This is all rearranging deck chairs on the T.

When gasoline gets to 10 a gallon, only the uber-wealthy will be buying organic food from supermarkets.

Regarding GMOs - their main risk is causing mono-culture. The molecular risk has never been shown to amount to anything.

Again, deck chairs. When gas is at 10 a gallon, you could put maggot bung-hole genes in corn and people would eat it up if it was a few cents cheaper.

SLG is people.

[Loki]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', 'L')oki, what is your opinion of Golden Rice?
And what of the Hawaiian papaya industry that have been saved by GE?

Are you sure that 7000 years of selective breeding has created the perfect crop?
And what of past societies that experienced famine, but only farmed organically?

[scas]

Your stance is that all GE foods are bad and should never be used? Black and white.
You also don't know much about anything I asked, and make multiple false assumptions, not just about me.

The world will continue to raise yields using GE foods; you'll continue to rant about it. Enjoy.

[Homesteader]

Interesting that apparently the only path "science" can take is the GMO path. If you are against GMO's then you are "anti-science".

Sorry, that doesn't pass the sniff test on so many levels.

<------teaches biology and business. Grew up on an organic farm.

[scas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Homesteader', 'I')nteresting that apparently the only path "science" can take is the GMO path. If you are against GMO's then you are "anti-science".

Sorry, that doesn't pass the sniff test on so many levels.

<------teaches biology and business. Grew up on an organic farm.

[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', 'I')'m guessing it's the people without PhDs that are bashing the scientists though. Funny that you should accuse me of not caring for the poor. I was actually interested in pursuing a degree for the purpose of increasing crop yields, precisely to alleviate world hunger. Maybe if people weren't anti science then this wouldn't happen. http://www.worldpress.org/Africa/737.cfm

[scas]

Everything today is wrong.

Genetically engineered foods are no good
Nuclear power is too dangerous and expensive
Renewable are too hard to scale up
Water is being depleted
Geoengineering is too risky
Methane is pouring out of the Arctic
Climate change is proceeding faster than the worst case scenario
People in Africa are starving
AIDs is rampant and climate change is spreading disease
Fertilizers are ruining our oceans, and were fishing them clean.
The economy is just a pyramid scheme


Can someone devise a plan that will stop climate change, mitigate peak oil, and keep the population fed? All without using those technologies which are so detested? Because everything gets shot down, but no plan is offered here. Here's to hoping GE can fix the latest wheat rust - for our sakes.

When I started learning about peak oil, climate change and environmentalism, I played a game called follow the PhD. It's how I avoided all the bunk and myths...I generally respect scientists opinions, so if you are well educated ranger then I am inclined to weigh your opinions more heavily.

[scas]

Here is an opinion from Stewart Brand. Even if you disagree, people should be open to inspecting the pros/cons of new ideas.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')ngineered organic

Organic farming teacher Raoul began the joint presentation with a checklist for truly sustainable agriculture in a global context. It must:

Provide abundant safe and nutritious food…. Reduce environmentally harmful inputs…. Reduce energy use and greenhouse gases…. Foster soil fertility…. Enhance crop genetic diversity…. Maintain the economic viability of farming communities…. Protect biodiversity…. and improve the lives of the poor and malnourished. (He pointed out that 24,000 a day die of malnutrition worldwide, and about 1 billion are undernourished.)

Organic agriculture has made a good start on these goals, he said, with its focus on eliminating harmful pesticides, soluble synthetic fertilizers, and soil erosion. Every year in the world 300,000 deaths are caused by the pesticides of conventional agriculture, along with 3 million cases of harm. Organic farmers replace the pesticides with crop rotation, resilient varieties of plants, beneficial insects, and other techniques.

But organic has limitations, he said. There are some pests, diseases, and stresses it can’t handle. Its yield ranges from 45% to 97% of conventional ag yield. It is often too expensive for low-income customers. At present it is a niche player in US agriculture, representing only 3.5%, with a slow growth rate suggesting it will always be a niche player.

Genetically engineered crops could carry organic farming much further toward fulfilling all the goals of sustainable agriculture, Raoul said, but it was prohibited as a technique for organic farmers in the standards and regulations set by the federal government in 2000.

At this point plant geneticist Pam took up the argument. What distinguishes genetic engineering (GE) and precision breeding from conventional breeding, she said, is that GE and precision breeding work with just one or a few well-characterized genes, versus the uncertain clumps of genes involved in conventional breeding. And genes from any species can be employed.

That transgenic capability is what makes some people nervous about GE causing unintended harm to human or ecological health. One billion acres have been planted so far with GE crops, with no adverse health effects, and numerous studies have showed that GE crops pose no greater risk of environmental damage than conventional crops.

Genetic engineering is extremely helpful in solving some agricultural problems, though only some. Pam gave three examples, starting with cotton. About 25% of all pesticide use in the world is used to defeat the cotton bollworm. Bt cotton is engineered to express in the plant the same caterpillar-killing toxin as the common soil bacteria used by organic farmers, Bacillus thuringiensis. Bt cotton growers use half the pesticides of conventional growers. With Bt cotton in China, cases of pesticide poisoning went down by 75%. India’s cotton yield increased by 80%. Pam pointed out that any too-succesful technique used alone encourages pests to evolve around the technique, so the full panoply of “integrated pest management” needs always to be employed.

Her second example was papayas in Hawaii, where the entire industry faced extinction from ringspot virus. A local genetic engineer devised way to put a segment of the virus genome into papayas, thereby effectively innoculating the fruit against the disease. The industry was saved, and most of the papayas we eat in California are GE.

Rice is Pam’s specialty at her lab in Davis. Half the world depends on rice. In flood-prone areas like Bangladesh, 4 million tons of rice a year are lost to flooding—enough to feed 30 million people. She helped engineer a flood-tolerant rice (it can be totally submerged for two weeks) called Sub1. At field trials in Asia farmers are getting three to five times higher yield over conventional rice.

The cost of gene sequencing and engineering is dropping rapidly (toward $70 a genome), and our knowledge about how food crops function genetically is growing just as rapidly. That accelerating capability offers a path toward truly sustainable agriculture on a global scale.

Returning to the stage, Raoul doubted that certified organic farmers would ever be allowed to use GE plants, and so he proposed a new certification program for “Sustainable Agriculture,” that would include GE.

-- by Stewart Brand

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', ' ')Food production must match the population bulge as it reaches 9 billion and begins its natural descent due to falling fertility.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '[')b]The wholefoods scene is something of a fashion statement with a market with more money than sense.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Homesteader', 'I')nteresting that apparently the only path "science" can take is the GMO path. If you are against GMO's then you are "anti-science".

[PrestonSturges]

If you want to grow local food, then we need to understand and manipulate disease resistance in plants, because plant disease varies from county to county. We have been doing this for thousands of years. That's more sophisticated than making things roundup resistant, but not nearly as pie in the sky making grapefruits grow in North Dakota and fix nitrogen.

[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', 'W')hen I started learning about peak oil, climate change and environmentalism, I played a game called follow the PhD. It's how I avoided all the bunk and myths...I generally respect scientists opinions, so if you are well educated ranger then I am inclined to weigh your opinions more heavily.

[scas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rangerone314', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', 'W')hen I started learning about peak oil, climate change and environmentalism, I played a game called follow the PhD. It's how I avoided all the bunk and myths...I generally respect scientists opinions, so if you are well educated ranger then I am inclined to weigh your opinions more heavily.

[Homesteader]

Just as a start, GE or GMO puts more of the food supply in the hands of a few MNC's who have already a demonstrated disregard for anything but profit and increasing control of the planet's food supply.

That is only for starters.

[rangerone314]

The point is take what politicians or "scientists" or mainstream media or corporations tell you with a very large grain of salt, because there is usually money at stake. Money tends to distort modern science.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Homesteader', 'J')ust as a start, GE or GMO puts more of the food supply in the hands of a few MNC's who have already a demonstrated disregard for anything but profit and increasing control of the planet's food supply.

That is only for starters.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rangerone314', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', 'W')hen I started learning about peak oil, climate change and environmentalism, I played a game called follow the PhD. It's how I avoided all the bunk and myths...I generally respect scientists opinions, so if you are well educated ranger then I am inclined to weigh your opinions more heavily.

[Loki]

OK, looks like the server is finally temporarily back up. First day I've had unlimited internet access in almost a year and PO.com is down all day....

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('scas', ' ')People can make personal assumptions about me, that doesn't change any of the underlying things I said about GE. Certainly, if i were a genetic scientist (my present course direction at uni) trying to raise yields, i would be very discouraged after reading this thread.

[Homesteader]

Here is some thoughts on GMO's from an honest to god Phd in the field.

Link: http://www.acresusa.com/toolbox/reprint ... _WanHo.pdf

Snip:

"Mae-Wan Ho obtained her B.S. degree in biology in 1964 and her Ph.D. in biochemistry
in 1967 from Hong Kong University. She was a postdoctoral fellow in biochemical
genetics from 1968 to 1972 at the University of California in San Diego, during
which time she won a competitive fellowship of the U.S. National Genetics
Foundation. She then became a senior research fellow in Queen Elizabeth College in
the United Kingdom, and after that a lecturer in genetics and a reader in biology in
the London Open University. In 1999, Ho founded the London-based ISIS — the
Institute of Science in Society — to promote her views and those of like-minded scientists.
Dr. Ho retired in June 2000 and remains a visiting reader in biology at the Open University and a visiting biophysics professor in Catania University, Sicily. Today, she has close to 300 publications, including 47 experimental works.
Dr. Ho has been one of the most influential figures of the last decade in the debate within the scientific community regarding the use of genetically modified organisms. She is a highly consulted scientific figure with many theories relating to her powerful anti-GM stance. She is also a well-known critic of neo-Darwinism and reductionist thought in biology and physics."

edited to add snip:

"ACRES U.S.A. Is that report available?
HO. Yes. It is being published by Vital Health in the United States. As scientists again, we would say take into account all kinds of scientific evidence, and if you really look at all the evidence carefully you know that GM hasn’t lived up to its promise. All the benefits are still “potential.” In fact, a lot of small family farmers who have taken up GM are now completely devastated, especially in Argentina, which is the second largest producer in the world after the United States. You know there is now a very, very strong global uprising against the introduction of GM crops that was brought to a head a couple of years a go, when Zambia refused to accept GMmaize as food aid from the United States and opted instead to purchase surplus food from other parts of their country, and now it is doing so well that it is exporting food surpluses to Angola. That has inspired a lot of Third World countries. So the message, basically, is that there is no future in GM crops. Now they are trying to use GM crops to grow pharmaceuticals, and that’s even more dangerous, because some of these pharmaceuticals are immune-suppressive, and some of them are very serious allergens that can kill people."

The Case for a GM-Free, Sustainable World, is available as a free PDF download
at the Independent Science Panel website http://www.i-sis.org.uk/ispr-summary.php