US says biotech key to easing food crisis

Originally posted by pexx421
its crap that americans wont do the work to grow food. In fact small farmers are intentionally put out of business by lobbyists forcing congress to level massive amounts of paperwork and fees that make small farms impractical while at the same time minimizing such requirements for large industry farming.

I don't think they want ANY small farmers.

There are plenty of people who WANT to farm but cant due to massive regulatory practices put into effect for the express purpose of crushing big agro's competition.

Also the cost involved will stop most people. If you are not born into farming, it is impossible to get into it. Every year I would borrow a quarter of a million dollars and have another quarter of a million in credit. At the end of the year you would be wondering if you were going to break even. Several years, just a thousand dollar breakdown would have completely stopped all of my harvesting because I would have borrowed all the money that I could. You don't need an expensive breakdown for it to be a thousand dollars. I know lots of farmers that borrow $1,000,000+ to farm every year.

Originally posted by Cyberbian
Sorry I don't have any links, but last year saw record high yields in the US for every grain except 1 which I believe was barley. I researched this subject months ago. For something like this you should satisfy yourself that you have reliable data. This is easily researched.

Those rumors about decreased yields were utter B.S. We can see now why the report which caused that news feed was falsified.

I can tell you from personal experience that this is false. My crop last year was almost a complete failure. Most crops in my area were the same. I have relatives in the corn belt area that told me that there were large areas that had crop failures.

The report caused concern over grain supplys, preparitory to the current panic. It was just another Psy Opp.

Farmers DO NOT TRUST government yield reports. The standing joke in farming is that if one bushel of a crop is harvested, there was an overproduction. Therefore, an excuse to lower prices.

reply to post by Karlhungis


Well Karl, I remember that study coming out. Life expectancy isn't necessarily due to GM foods. Probably more due to obesity and smokers (from before all the dangers of smoking studies came out). And in the years to come we'll probably find out GM foods and cell phone are the next wave of very bad things. The point is about supplying poorer nations who are starving and need food. The world is overpopulated and we need a solution to food shortages. GM foods is the future in agriculture. We should focus more on what these crops are modified to do, and less on the mindset that all genetic engineering technology is bad.

Originally posted by Scramjet76
.. GM foods is the future in agriculture. We should focus more on what these crops are modified to do, and less on the mindset that all genetic engineering technology is bad.

have you read a single page from this thread?

if you were so kind as to provide a single aspect where GM crops are better than conventional varieties in a holistic sense (they offer more profit to the biotech corp's, so what?) it would be greatly appreciated.

truth to be told i'd feel a bit relieved if the world's oversaturated, self centered rulers ran the show into the ground, because there are constraints in life which aren't arbitrary and the food supply is certainly one of them as you all will find out soon enough if things keep going this way.

ignore the evidence at your own peril, because 'feeling good' about famine won't change the outcome one bit!

reply to post by Long Lance

if you were so kind as to provide a single aspect where GM crops are better than conventional varieties in a holistic sense (they offer more profit to the biotech corp's, so what?) it would be greatly appreciated.

Not everything is just black and white evil biotech corp yada yada.

Proponents of current genetic techniques as applied to food plants cite the benefits that the technology can have, for example, in the harsh agricultural conditions of Africa. They say that with modifications, existing crops would be able to thrive under the relatively hostile conditions providing much needed food to their people. Proponents also cite golden rice and golden rice 2, genetically engineered rice varieties (still under development) that contain elevated vitamin A levels. There is hope that this rice may alleviate vitamin A deficiency that contributes to the death of millions and permanent blindness of 500,000 annually.

wikipedia

For all the evil corp's do wrong what about the things they do right? Ok so cancer rates climb but deaths from vitamin A deficiency goes down. FYI-It's an imperfect world.

reply to post by Scramjet76


i never claimed any of that, i just don't see much in the way of persuasive arguments in favor of modified crops, that's all. years of accumulation of links, news stories and other data led me to that conclusion and i can't for the h**l of it figure out why one should throw good money after bad just to give a technology yet another 'chance' to screw us when it's clear that it hasn't produced the desired results, in agriculture for more than an a decade? all the while devastating many farm economies around the globe, of course. search this board for 'bitter harvest' for a primer.

enough is enough. genetic engineering has its place in biofermenters, many pharmaceuticals wouldn't be available without it and even if there are risks, the food supply would remain unaffected, no matter what.

risk case in point: www.aquarianonline.com/Eco/UnnaturalHarvest.html

that's what bugs me, why not toy with inconsequential items and systems? wait, i'm taking all the fun out of the game, right?

PS: please do not add http tags, because large volumes of referrals tend to take sites down, copy and paste the url. thanks.

edit: how much would it cost to give every vitamin A starved individual a supplement? compared to GM rice of course. maybe even grow carrots or similar provitamin sources, but wait, this not a solution with escalating potential for control, is it?

[edit on 3.6.2008 by Long Lance]

Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to pass out condoms? This is stupid, why help the population increase and cause even more food shortage, why not just help the birth rate decline in a civil way? Our world leaders today are stupid!

reply to post by Long Lance

how much would it cost to give every vitamin A starved individual a supplement? compared to GM rice of course. maybe even grow carrots or similar provitamin sources, but wait, this not a solution with escalating potential for control, is it?

All I'm saying is those folks have some REAL problems. These people don't just need a handout (flinstone vitamin), they need to get their economies going.

farmers can save and replant seeds, without having to purchase seeds every year. Poor farmers are therefore getting the benefit of hybrid rice without having to pay for it every year.

Source

There are a lot of poor uneducated people in that region of the world who just want something to eat. Are there risks? Of course, but what other alternatives are there? Life is a struggle my friend. What's wrong with feeding hungry people, easing burdens on poor African farmers, and participatory research by scientists in places where success is had?

Originally posted by Scramjet76

farmers can save and replant seeds, without having to purchase seeds every year. Poor farmers are therefore getting the benefit of hybrid rice without having to pay for it every year.

Source

There are a lot of poor uneducated people in that region of the world who just want something to eat. Are there risks? Of course, but what other alternatives are there? Life is a struggle my friend. What's wrong with feeding hungry people, easing burdens on poor African farmers, and participatory research by scientists in places where success is had?

as far as i could tell, no foreign gene sequences were inserted, they just blended vastly different rice species together and treated the rsult on a cellular level

'embryo rescue technique'

how's that in any way related to RR soy or Bt cotton? i just fail to see it. if this kind of biotech is considered a form of genetic engineering, it's misleading.

the true issue is not the technique anyway, it's the dominant business model, pesticide manufacturers should stay out of the seed business, just like electric power producers shouldn't own the grid and for the same reasons.

reply to post by Long Lance

if this kind of biotech is considered a form of genetic engineering, it's misleading.

It's not misleading. It's biotech making a difference. As for injecting chemicals into seeds to gain "x" attribute(s), that is why we conduct experiments on mice before humans.

A recent article published in Lancet examined the effects of GM potatoes on the digestive tract in rats32, 33. This study claimed that there were appreciable differences in the intestines of rats fed GM potatoes and rats fed unmodified potatoes. Yet critics say that this paper, like the monarch butterfly data, is flawed and does not hold up to scientific scrutiny34. Moreover, the gene introduced into the potatoes was a snowdrop flower lectin, a substance known to be toxic to mammals. The scientists who created this variety of potato chose to use the lectin gene simply to test the methodology, and these potatoes were never intended for human or animal consumption.

On the whole, with the exception of possible allergenicity, scientists believe that GM foods do not present a risk to human health.

www.csa.com

I understand people's concern but also grow tired of everyone blaming evil corporations led by the evil US empire.

Originally posted by Scramjet76


I understand people's concern but also grow tired of everyone blaming evil corporations led by the evil US empire.

it's irrelevant, evil this evil that, as long as these developments are used responsibly we won't have the need for such discussions in the future.

cloning is biotech, manipulating entire cells is biotech but the genome is not directly altered, that's why i always wrote GM xxx, usually denoting recombinant techniques. these come with a host of problems, many related to quality control, others are the result of poor understanding. making an entire plant toxic can be detrimental, especially if the roots aren't in any danger and the toxin comes in activated and dormant forms. (Bt. varieties)

wrt quality control:query.nytimes.com...

these are where the big $$ is at, these are the water guzzling, high base cost farmer killers, trojan horses employed by corp's (predominantly one corp), which just happens to be based in the USA. it doesn't really matter, though because courts anywhere are hard to deal with unless you have a few bns ready to join the fray.

luckily, one cross-pollination case appears to have been won by a farmer in Canada:

www.percyschmeiser.com...


PS: i have no doubt that time is eventually on the side of sanity, because insanity tends to eventually reveal itself. they said 'biotech' and we all know what it means to them. it's simply false, too because it took years of biofuel initiatives, fructose syrup sugar substitutes, EU - style planned economy and so on to bring on a food shortage.

people who warned against it were ignored or ridiculed, now everyone pays the price. making one mistake after another does not sound very smart to me, considering all i'd like to see is an honest evaluation of gathered experience. if a synthetic crop suddenly fulfilled or exceeded expectations, we can talk, but so far i haven't really seen it, which does not mean it does not exist, or that it won't happen of course.

[edit on 2008.6.4 by Long Lance]