Organic farming methods a thing of the past. GM the future

[grapeman]

In a conscious effort to drag 3rd world countries into agriculture methods that can feed their own, the U.S.D.A. has a new spokesman for the effort.

Roger Beachy heads the fight to feed the world. GM seeds the future.

Scientific American

http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...orget-organic-farming-agricultural-technology

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=food-fight

 

[CannaExists]

Gaia, please forgive us.

I wish to ripple Positivity, Balance, Love and Faith, across the Planet and through the Cosmos.

We will start Healing now.

Love and Gratitude.

 

[CANNATOPIA]

isn't ddt illegal in the states?lol

 

[Dr_Tre]

Niice, american science trying to sell american bullshit to 3-rd world countries.Have we seen this before or am I having a deja vu?

 

[tr1ck_]

Some GM is really great, but most of it is purely for money.

Places like America where we already have abundant food does not need GM, its purely for profit (The wrong way)

Whereas there are places in Africa that could hugely benefit from GM but its not profitable so they don't get it.

For example in Uganda the poor farmers derive almost their entire diet from a local type of banana. It is a non-sweet banana sort of similar to plantains that needs to be cooked. Needless to say they have less food than people, and there is a terrible banana wilt disease that is decimating their crops. The National Banana Research Program in Uganda has managed to put a wilt resistant gene from 'Rice' into the banana's to prevent some of the wilt.

Of course the people actually trying to benefit society with GM are in the minority, because there isn't money to be made. DAMN YOU CORPORATE GREED, turning a potentially good technology, into a risky money making technology that gets no where near enough testing before going to market.

For the record, I am not Pro-GMO i just realize that every coin has two sides. Unfortunately the bad side is the one that makes money and thus everyone is focussing on.

Here is a good documentary on GMO, and the bad things that come with it: http://www.thefutureoffood.com/onlinevideo.html

 

[whodare]

if we start acting out of love for each other not for money the world will be a better place..

 

[geopolitical]

The ddt ban may have directly resulted in millions of deaths. Fun, no? As far as GM crops, they've been using them for more than half a century now, ever since someone figured out you could throw seeds in front of an accelerator and not ALL of them would die. Some of them would do interesting things.

This current trend of GM crops using single gene resistance however is complete horseshit. Not only will that breeding technique result in crops with jack for local adaptability, but often the SINGLE gene responsible for resistance can wander into the surrounding fields. If everything in the field is producing the exact same toxin as a pest response it takes a whole lot less time for bugs to figure out a way around it.

GM techniques that result in "horizontal resistance" are great, but I only know of two breeding programs TOTAL worldwide that use them.

 

[Suspect]

They are still trying to bullshit us, GM is honestly not the public's collective opinion about the future..All around me I see people complaining about high organic food prices and starting small scale farming at home to be able to eat fresh. Don't know how it is in America tho.

 

[Mountain]

Gotta love Grapeman!

 

[grapeman]

I was in AZ last week and saw many "center pivot" farms planting "round up ready" cotton.

I am not a cotton guy so I asked several and they all replied the same. Less tilling, less herbicide, less fertilizer, less water and more cotton for less money.

Hard to argue with that business model.

 

[Sam the Caveman]

GM cotton requires irrigation for good yields. Farmers in india were not told this and started growing monsanto cotton without irrigation and their yields dropped dramatically. Many of them committed suicide because they could not feed their families anymore. The cotton they were using didn't need as much water and yielded good for no irrigation. They say their old genetics won't grow in the same fields as the gm cotton was grown in anymore.

 

[pasporr]

GM crops should be left well alone, at least until we have some rudimentary understanding of the underlying genetic phenomena.

The problem with the GM business model is that profit seeking businesses are not normally willing to consider even the not-so-distant future; this makes it very difficult to ensure the continued functioning of ecosystems in the long term. In fact, in markets influenced by capitalist extremist interests (i.e. where much of the west and its vassals is at) where corporate regulation is non-existent or easily circumventable, it is counterintuitive for a corporate entity to concentrate on anything at all except the bottom line.

Unfortunately, money talks and so forth.