[Quinny]

I understand Sca's point that we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater, but IMO GM is primarily about big business controlling food production and should be opposed.

[pedalling_faster]

all of a sudden, food with an expired date code before the BP oil spill is beginning to look real good. the goal there being to obtain Corexit-free food.

getting back to Monsanto's toxic food - there are still a lot of farmers who use non-GMO products. i just bought 45 pounds of white wheat and 45 pounds of pinto beans from one of them.

test samples from both batches sprouted. the pinto beans sprouted faster than any plant i've ever seen - less than 12 hours.

[ian807]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'I')'d rather we genetically engineer ourselves so we can live on photosynthesis, like Swamp Thing.



That's my version of the singularity for you. Fat chance.

[SilverSlippers77]

I'm kinda new here but I figured I would try and throw my 2-cents in on this GMO v. not debate. GMOs are a powerful technology that can easily be mismanaged. We ought to remain cautious about them, I think an outright ban on them is a bad idea as well as an outright green light for all of them. Can they solve our problems of hunger? Likely not right now as the higher yields they are producing are mostly not going to feed people but to feedlots, ethanol,ect. A lot of the problems they are being made to fix are problems that could have been fixed with better practices in the first place - its like we haven't learned the lesson of the Irish Potato Famine.

A few issues I have with the our monoculture-based culture

Issue 1: Most livestock companies especially the really big ones are all located within a fairly tight geographic area of each other, this causes some areas to have really high concentrations of available manures as fertilizer and some areas to have virtually none. The areas where there are high amounts of such large heavily concentrated animal farms will have excesses of manures and will often apply it to fields not as a fertilizer but as a disposal mechanism. So they will apply too much. You can over apply organic fertilizers and cause quite a bit environmental damage - its just that it takes more to over apply with organic fertilizer v. artificial. Manures in and of themselves often have issues for being applied as a fertilizer to an organic certified field because they can contain all sorts of things that were in the animal feed (I'm not exactly sure why these things are in feed - I'm soil science major not animal science - but feed companies do tend to overload animal feeds with lots of things that just get excreted), things like excess copper, antibiotics, various other things that the animal couldn't digest. Also manures typically have an off balance Phosphorus-Nitrogen ratio (also typically due to their feed - it often contains excess Phosphorus because they have trouble digesting in whatever form its in). In short the animal operations need to be much less concentrated and need to think about how what they feed to the animal can end up in the soil.

Issue 2: Price motivations can often cause really bad rotation cycles - high corn prices due to a combination of demand from; feedlot beef, HF Corn Syrup, and ethanol production caused many producers to stop doing a soybean rotation. This causes a need for much more chemical fertilizer and pesticide. The soybeans were providing N and were helping to break pest cycles. We could produce more food with less environmental damage if producers based what to plant on sustainability and long-term health of their field.

I hope that wasn't too long or tedious - I've done quite a bit of work in some of my classes about the first issue.

[Pops]

There is one GM crop I really like, it's the e Coli bacteria modified to produce human insulin!

Monsanto is a perfect example of how technology outpaces regulation. But aside from that, gm crops - roundup ready types especially but also the bT traits, conserve soil and eliminate the use of pesticides and herbicides proven to be deadly - proven.

There are a lot of things I'd rather see but unfortunately they aren't gonna happen. My hope is GM use gets us over the population hump without widespread starvation and with a little topsoil left.

We could eliminate them today and just get it over with I guess.

[DomusAlbion]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'T')here are a lot of things I'd rather see but unfortunately they aren't gonna happen. My hope is GM use gets us over the population hump without widespread starvation and with a little topsoil left.

We could eliminate them today and just get it over with I guess.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DomusAlbion', 'I')t's Nature's way.

[Expatriot]

GMOs aren't the problem.

Problem is central control of the food supply.

Most people are far too ignorant about the biology involved to even understand what a GMO is.

Don't fear non-native protein.

Fear Monsanto controlling your ability to grow what you want.

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Expatriot', 'F')ear Monsanto controlling your ability to grow what you want.

[Pops]

Monsanto's Roundup Ready trait goes into the public domain when the patents expire in '14 - '12 in Canada.

http://www.farmgateblog.com/article/buc ... more-years

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', 'B')ob could grow his seed stock in a greenhouse, or buy heirloom seed each year from a seed producer; but how is that all that different than just paying Monsanto for the higher producing GM seed to begin with?

[rangerone314]

GMO probably wouldn't be an issue if the 3rd world discovered condoms or birth control pills.

We are trying to resolve a problem caused by the stupid human species, by relying on the same defective human intellect that allowed the problem to come to exist in the first place.

Screw with mother nature at your own peril.

An Icelandic volcano, a Haiti, Chilean and Japanese earthquake later, and humans still don't understand we are stupid primates that barely have the wisdom or foresight to cope with what mother nature does now, and we want to WARP it?

Maybe a GMO-disaster or a Yellowstone Caldera eruption is necessary to convince humans of their place on this rock.

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'I')f i grow plants for their aesthetic or any other value, and it get's contaminated with Monsanto's IP from Bob's field, whom do I sue, Bob or Monsanto? And who exactly will be cleaning out Monsanto's IP out of my plants?

[DomusAlbion]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DomusAlbion', 'I')t's Nature's way.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'I')f i grow plants for their aesthetic or any other value, and it get's contaminated with Monsanto's IP from Bob's field, whom do I sue, Bob or Monsanto? And who exactly will be cleaning out Monsanto's IP out of my plants?

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'S')o if I will fart in the same elevator with you, I guess you'll say " Well , I chose to breeze it in, didnt I, luck of the draw.. perhaps his fart molecules stayed out of my lungs". Now how about some Round UP vapors.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SilverSlippers77', 'I')'m kinda new here but I figured I would try and throw my 2-cents in on this GMO v. not debate. ...A lot of the problems they are being made to fix are problems that could have been fixed with better practices in the first place

[Vogelzang]

Monsanto has done more to liberate mankind that anyone else, except for Bush and Cheney.