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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On October 22 2014 07:04 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2014 03:33 WhiteDog wrote:
I personally consider that protecting nature should be one of our top priority in this day and age, and GMO have bad impacts not on health but in biodiversity - not only GMO but also modern "intensive" agriculture".
The gain behind GMO are hugely overstated, we actually produce enough food for everybody, but there is too much waste and some people just eat more than they should. The best quality that GMO have for the agro industry is that they permit pattern and monopole like situations. It's about profit, not human well being or research. You simply do not know what you are talking about. The only reason we can have a sustainable population of nearly 8+ billion is because of GMO. It's like people are completely ignorant of Norman Borlaug. This has nothing to do with the science of GMO's, it's your primitive ideology which drives your viewpoints. Technology bad - Nature good. Then there is the latent disdain for any private proprietorship (the bigger the more hate, regardless of any facts surrounding the firms...GE and other Fascist companies just as terrible as say...Amazon). None of which has anything at all to do with science of GMO's. I mean, if you want to starve a few billion people then getting rid of GMO would be one way to do it.
Norman Borlaug, now I understand. I was blind.
Who's this guy ?
It's a fact that : there is a huge problem of distribution that explain hunger for a big part
A new report out of the USDA says that Americans throw away 133 billion pounds of food every year, or 31 percent of the total amount of available food. That’s over 4,200 pounds of food a second.
At the same time, the biotech industry says that we need genetically engineered crops to feed the world.
Need?
They must have not seen the most recent report out of the USDA that says that in the United States, 31 percent—or 133 billion pounds—of the 430 billion pounds of the available food supply at the retail and consumer levels went uneaten.
That is enough to almost feed the population of Texas.[...]
Americans throw away 133 billion pounds of food every year, or 31 percent of the total amount of available food. That’s over 4,200 pounds of food a second.
http://blogs.prevention.com/inspired-bites/2014/03/02/usda-food-waste-report-busts-gmo-myth/
And GMO productivity is overstated :
Indeed there has been a growing commentariat chorus over recent years that the technology is essential if the world is to be fed. And, at first sight, this seems to make eminent sense. As the world’s population heads towards 9 billion and the amount of available cropland shrinks as cities spread and soil is eroded away, yields clearly have to be increased. And what better way could there be of doing so than to use a technology capable of altering the genetic structure of a plant to make it produce more?
And yet, the world’s biggest ever agricultural study – the work of 400 scientists and 60 governments, headed by Dr Bob Watson, now Chief Scientist at Department of the Environment, Food and Agriculture – concluded that GM was not the simple answer to poverty. In truth, it could even do more harm than good.
For a start there is the inconvenient truth that it is far from clear that genetic modification does increase yields. The biotech industry cites evidence to support its insistence that it does, but other studies actually show a decrease. One, at the University of Nebraska, for example, revealed that five different GM soyas produced an average of 6.7 per cent less than their closest unmodified relatives, and ten per cent less than the most productive conventional soyas available at the time.[...]
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100073481/do-we-need-gm-to-feed-the-world-its-not-as-simple-as-it-seems/
Sure
On October 22 2014 07:13 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2014 06:27 WhiteDog wrote:On October 22 2014 06:20 oneofthem wrote:On October 22 2014 05:53 WhiteDog wrote:On October 22 2014 05:51 oneofthem wrote:
probably because the gm strains are superior. i'm not sure what kind of public research you are referring to. Saw a documentary on the subject but don't remember the name. It's not the superior, the problem is the diversity. GM crop are not diverse, they're unique and builded for a specific environment (in fact, GM crop that are different from the norm are usually mutated crop who produce nothing, and thus are to be eradicated by farmer before they reproduce themselves). If the environment change or if a new disease arrive and touch the crop, it's not a field that is touched but the entire production of a country / region, hence the reason why researcher are seeking for traditionnal crop, because not only they are resistant to a specific climate, they are also diverse, not technically engineered to resist a specific disease / climate. Traditionnal crop, while natural, are also engineered by generations of farmers : they are only inferior in productivity. Again I'm all for a "yeah science" and shit, but things are really way more complicated. that's not a problem unique to GM tho, but the aforementioned monoculture. traditional crops are mixed strains, yes, but the GM crop that was wiped out was not really designed for survival. however, your highlighted portion of my post was talking about hte potential to engineer environment tolerant strains. I completly agree, and I've said it in my first post, that's not something specific to GMO, altho GMO are also touched by this critic. But you purposely put aside the main problem with GMO : it gives a monopolistic position to GMO firms, with completly dependant farmers, with rather weak advantage compared to "natural" agriculture. That is their main advantage : it's not engineered to free us from hunger and give food to the happy world, it's nothing but a capitalistic endeavour. There's plenty of research going on fields that have no lucrative short term possibilities, I don't see why GMO should be more protected than any of those research. In the end it all comes down to big firms' profit, and nothing to do with agriculture, "war against hunger" or facing climate change. Addressing motive is irrelevant (well...in this case). In fact, this is actually one argument in favor of markets, but I digress. The fact that one person will use profit as a motive doesn't mean that the action taken doesn't address those issues you brought up (addressing hunger, agriculture, etc.). What does the motive actually matter from a moralistic standard anyways? The only thing that matters are the outcomes. The fact is that GMO's did alleviate hunger and starvation and allowed the human population to balloon to over 8 billion. Now, you can be a primitivist and argue that, that is a bad thing, but you can't argue that it didn't address hunger and starvation whether or not the motive was for money. If money can motivate people to do good things why is this a bad thing? It is one of the best arguments for markets imho (it also addresses things like racism, sexism, etc. as well).
Don't give me adam smith please.
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On October 22 2014 07:15 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2014 07:04 Wegandi wrote:On October 22 2014 03:33 WhiteDog wrote:
I personally consider that protecting nature should be one of our top priority in this day and age, and GMO have bad impacts not on health but in biodiversity - not only GMO but also modern "intensive" agriculture".
The gain behind GMO are hugely overstated, we actually produce enough food for everybody, but there is too much waste and some people just eat more than they should. The best quality that GMO have for the agro industry is that they permit pattern and monopole like situations. It's about profit, not human well being or research. You simply do not know what you are talking about. The only reason we can have a sustainable population of nearly 8+ billion is because of GMO. It's like people are completely ignorant of Norman Borlaug. This has nothing to do with the science of GMO's, it's your primitive ideology which drives your viewpoints. Technology bad - Nature good. Then there is the latent disdain for any private proprietorship (the bigger the more hate, regardless of any facts surrounding the firms...GE and other Fascist companies just as terrible as say...Amazon). None of which has anything at all to do with science of GMO's. I mean, if you want to starve a few billion people then getting rid of GMO would be one way to do it. Norman Borlaug, now I understand. I was blind. Who's this guy ? It's a fact that : there is a huge problem of distribution that explain hunger for a big part Show nested quote +A new report out of the USDA says that Americans throw away 133 billion pounds of food every year, or 31 percent of the total amount of available food. That’s over 4,200 pounds of food a second.
At the same time, the biotech industry says that we need genetically engineered crops to feed the world.
Need?
They must have not seen the most recent report out of the USDA that says that in the United States, 31 percent—or 133 billion pounds—of the 430 billion pounds of the available food supply at the retail and consumer levels went uneaten.
That is enough to almost feed the population of Texas.[...]
Americans throw away 133 billion pounds of food every year, or 31 percent of the total amount of available food. That’s over 4,200 pounds of food a second. http://blogs.prevention.com/inspired-bites/2014/03/02/usda-food-waste-report-busts-gmo-myth/And GMO productivity is overstated : Show nested quote +Indeed there has been a growing commentariat chorus over recent years that the technology is essential if the world is to be fed. And, at first sight, this seems to make eminent sense. As the world’s population heads towards 9 billion and the amount of available cropland shrinks as cities spread and soil is eroded away, yields clearly have to be increased. And what better way could there be of doing so than to use a technology capable of altering the genetic structure of a plant to make it produce more?
And yet, the world’s biggest ever agricultural study – the work of 400 scientists and 60 governments, headed by Dr Bob Watson, now Chief Scientist at Department of the Environment, Food and Agriculture – concluded that GM was not the simple answer to poverty. In truth, it could even do more harm than good.
For a start there is the inconvenient truth that it is far from clear that genetic modification does increase yields. The biotech industry cites evidence to support its insistence that it does, but other studies actually show a decrease. One, at the University of Nebraska, for example, revealed that five different GM soyas produced an average of 6.7 per cent less than their closest unmodified relatives, and ten per cent less than the most productive conventional soyas available at the time.[...] http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100073481/do-we-need-gm-to-feed-the-world-its-not-as-simple-as-it-seems/Sure Show nested quote +On October 22 2014 07:13 Wegandi wrote:On October 22 2014 06:27 WhiteDog wrote:On October 22 2014 06:20 oneofthem wrote:On October 22 2014 05:53 WhiteDog wrote:On October 22 2014 05:51 oneofthem wrote:
probably because the gm strains are superior. i'm not sure what kind of public research you are referring to. Saw a documentary on the subject but don't remember the name. It's not the superior, the problem is the diversity. GM crop are not diverse, they're unique and builded for a specific environment (in fact, GM crop that are different from the norm are usually mutated crop who produce nothing, and thus are to be eradicated by farmer before they reproduce themselves). If the environment change or if a new disease arrive and touch the crop, it's not a field that is touched but the entire production of a country / region, hence the reason why researcher are seeking for traditionnal crop, because not only they are resistant to a specific climate, they are also diverse, not technically engineered to resist a specific disease / climate. Traditionnal crop, while natural, are also engineered by generations of farmers : they are only inferior in productivity. Again I'm all for a "yeah science" and shit, but things are really way more complicated. that's not a problem unique to GM tho, but the aforementioned monoculture. traditional crops are mixed strains, yes, but the GM crop that was wiped out was not really designed for survival. however, your highlighted portion of my post was talking about hte potential to engineer environment tolerant strains. I completly agree, and I've said it in my first post, that's not something specific to GMO, altho GMO are also touched by this critic. But you purposely put aside the main problem with GMO : it gives a monopolistic position to GMO firms, with completly dependant farmers, with rather weak advantage compared to "natural" agriculture. That is their main advantage : it's not engineered to free us from hunger and give food to the happy world, it's nothing but a capitalistic endeavour. There's plenty of research going on fields that have no lucrative short term possibilities, I don't see why GMO should be more protected than any of those research. In the end it all comes down to big firms' profit, and nothing to do with agriculture, "war against hunger" or facing climate change. Addressing motive is irrelevant (well...in this case). In fact, this is actually one argument in favor of markets, but I digress. The fact that one person will use profit as a motive doesn't mean that the action taken doesn't address those issues you brought up (addressing hunger, agriculture, etc.). What does the motive actually matter from a moralistic standard anyways? The only thing that matters are the outcomes. The fact is that GMO's did alleviate hunger and starvation and allowed the human population to balloon to over 8 billion. Now, you can be a primitivist and argue that, that is a bad thing, but you can't argue that it didn't address hunger and starvation whether or not the motive was for money. If money can motivate people to do good things why is this a bad thing? It is one of the best arguments for markets imho (it also addresses things like racism, sexism, etc. as well). Don't give me adam smith please.
Hey, there's not point for me to go on. You clearly cited one study, with its gift to erase the results of the last 60 years. How stupid of me!
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
oh boy, let's spot the shoddy journalism.
And yet, the world’s biggest ever agricultural study – the work of 400 scientists and 60 governments, headed by Dr Bob Watson, now Chief Scientist at Department of the Environment, Food and Agriculture – concluded that GM was not the simple answer to poverty. In truth, it could even do more harm than good. who said the bolded part? answer: not dr.bob
And second, the fact that GM plants did worse than their nearest unmodified relatives suggests that the very process of modification lessens productivity. high kek
different strains have different yields, should be obvious. GE is not a single entity. yield of potatoes is already insanely high and near to max due to the physically packed space in which potatoes grow, but other crops may experience yield increase.
as i've stated before, the advantage of gm crop is not solely the yield, but the low amount of variance on yield, due to better resistance against climate volatility or insects and diseases (e.g. http://www.news.wisc.edu/21505 ) . food security is most at risk in areas with climate volatility and you can't get crop to those areas populated by subsistence farmers without the technology. this is the mechanism by which people mean for feeding the world.
also food waste is not going to be an exclusionary alternative to GM. most famines happen due to administrative reasons but the source cause is basically the subsistence farmers getting fucked by natural droughts or infestations. some people also have no means of moving out of whatever shitty land or mountain they were born in. i see great value in GE technology in solving these issues at low cost, wtihout even touching the very hard political problems. don't you?
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The next issue/state rights after marijuana:
The latest Reason-Rupe poll finds 70 percent of Americans favor legalizing over-the-counter birth control pills and patches without a doctor’s prescription, 26 percent oppose such a proposal, and 4 percent don’t know enough to say. There has been a slight uptick in support for OTC birth control, rising from 66 percent in May of 2013. Moreover, Reason-Rupe finds that women across income groups highly support legalizing OTC birth control at about the same rates.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have announced their support for such a proposal arguing it could improve contraceptive access and use and decrease unintended pregnancy rates. Republicans too have been pushing for this reform, with Democrats surprisingly reluctant.
Source
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If they make it over the counter then doesn't insurance not cover it? I've read that's the fear and why republicans want to do it.
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From that source:
Planned Parenthood recently released an ad in North Carolina warning: “Just when insurance is finally covering the cost of prescription birth control, Thom Tillis [the Republican] says no—women should pay the $600 dollars a year…he’s turning the pill into yet another bill.” To be clear, Democrats are not necessarily opposed to legalizing OTC birth control, but rather they want to ensure women don’t have to pay for it.
Would it be possible to do both?
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On October 22 2014 08:57 DoubleReed wrote:From that source: Show nested quote +Planned Parenthood recently released an ad in North Carolina warning: “Just when insurance is finally covering the cost of prescription birth control, Thom Tillis [the Republican] says no—women should pay the $600 dollars a year…he’s turning the pill into yet another bill.” To be clear, Democrats are not necessarily opposed to legalizing OTC birth control, but rather they want to ensure women don’t have to pay for it. Would it be possible to do both?
Not without another round of people like Rush calling women who use birth control (while unaware of/ignoring the multiple other medical purposes) and want it to be covered as "sluts" and "whores".
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On October 22 2014 09:25 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2014 08:57 DoubleReed wrote:From that source: Planned Parenthood recently released an ad in North Carolina warning: “Just when insurance is finally covering the cost of prescription birth control, Thom Tillis [the Republican] says no—women should pay the $600 dollars a year…he’s turning the pill into yet another bill.” To be clear, Democrats are not necessarily opposed to legalizing OTC birth control, but rather they want to ensure women don’t have to pay for it. Would it be possible to do both? Not without another round of people like Rush calling women who use birth control (while unaware of/ignoring the multiple other medical purposes) and want it to be covered as "sluts" and "whores".
Sounds like a good deal for the Democrats.
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It doesn't seem unreasonable that people should pay something for it.
Condoms etc cost money to buy, too. The pill is a convenient alternative, but it's also more costly to manufacture than rubbers. It's not absurd for some of that cost to be passed on if it's being used purely for contraception.
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On October 22 2014 09:25 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2014 08:57 DoubleReed wrote:From that source: Planned Parenthood recently released an ad in North Carolina warning: “Just when insurance is finally covering the cost of prescription birth control, Thom Tillis [the Republican] says no—women should pay the $600 dollars a year…he’s turning the pill into yet another bill.” To be clear, Democrats are not necessarily opposed to legalizing OTC birth control, but rather they want to ensure women don’t have to pay for it. Would it be possible to do both? Not without another round of people like Rush calling women who use birth control (while unaware of/ignoring the multiple other medical purposes) and want it to be covered as "sluts" and "whores".
Or I could just be reading this wrong. I'll give the benefit of the doubt.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
He didn't call her a prostitute for using it, but for lobbying to congress that the taxpayer should cover it well you've managed to wring even less sense from it. great
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Even if OTC birth control existed, I'm not sure there would be a terribly large market for it. The cost gap is simply enormous, especially with the work the ACA put into encouraging wellness visits which should result in anyone who really wants it getting it.
You also have the problem of packaging it appropriately such that people do not confuse it for emergency contraception, especially people with limited health literacy and English knowledge AND making sure that people take it correctly with regards to placebo periods and the like, putting aside the thromboembolic risks and other information that is difficult to easily convey.
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On October 22 2014 09:54 oneofthem wrote:Show nested quote +He didn't call her a prostitute for using it, but for lobbying to congress that the taxpayer should cover it well you've managed to wring even less sense from it. great
Doesn't matter if you agree with it. You have to know what someone says before you go to attack it.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
well now that i look at greenhorizon's post that's pretty much what rush said.
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On October 22 2014 07:25 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2014 07:15 WhiteDog wrote:On October 22 2014 07:04 Wegandi wrote:On October 22 2014 03:33 WhiteDog wrote:
I personally consider that protecting nature should be one of our top priority in this day and age, and GMO have bad impacts not on health but in biodiversity - not only GMO but also modern "intensive" agriculture".
The gain behind GMO are hugely overstated, we actually produce enough food for everybody, but there is too much waste and some people just eat more than they should. The best quality that GMO have for the agro industry is that they permit pattern and monopole like situations. It's about profit, not human well being or research. You simply do not know what you are talking about. The only reason we can have a sustainable population of nearly 8+ billion is because of GMO. It's like people are completely ignorant of Norman Borlaug. This has nothing to do with the science of GMO's, it's your primitive ideology which drives your viewpoints. Technology bad - Nature good. Then there is the latent disdain for any private proprietorship (the bigger the more hate, regardless of any facts surrounding the firms...GE and other Fascist companies just as terrible as say...Amazon). None of which has anything at all to do with science of GMO's. I mean, if you want to starve a few billion people then getting rid of GMO would be one way to do it. Norman Borlaug, now I understand. I was blind. Who's this guy ? It's a fact that : there is a huge problem of distribution that explain hunger for a big part A new report out of the USDA says that Americans throw away 133 billion pounds of food every year, or 31 percent of the total amount of available food. That’s over 4,200 pounds of food a second.
At the same time, the biotech industry says that we need genetically engineered crops to feed the world.
Need?
They must have not seen the most recent report out of the USDA that says that in the United States, 31 percent—or 133 billion pounds—of the 430 billion pounds of the available food supply at the retail and consumer levels went uneaten.
That is enough to almost feed the population of Texas.[...]
Americans throw away 133 billion pounds of food every year, or 31 percent of the total amount of available food. That’s over 4,200 pounds of food a second. http://blogs.prevention.com/inspired-bites/2014/03/02/usda-food-waste-report-busts-gmo-myth/And GMO productivity is overstated : Indeed there has been a growing commentariat chorus over recent years that the technology is essential if the world is to be fed. And, at first sight, this seems to make eminent sense. As the world’s population heads towards 9 billion and the amount of available cropland shrinks as cities spread and soil is eroded away, yields clearly have to be increased. And what better way could there be of doing so than to use a technology capable of altering the genetic structure of a plant to make it produce more?
And yet, the world’s biggest ever agricultural study – the work of 400 scientists and 60 governments, headed by Dr Bob Watson, now Chief Scientist at Department of the Environment, Food and Agriculture – concluded that GM was not the simple answer to poverty. In truth, it could even do more harm than good.
For a start there is the inconvenient truth that it is far from clear that genetic modification does increase yields. The biotech industry cites evidence to support its insistence that it does, but other studies actually show a decrease. One, at the University of Nebraska, for example, revealed that five different GM soyas produced an average of 6.7 per cent less than their closest unmodified relatives, and ten per cent less than the most productive conventional soyas available at the time.[...] http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100073481/do-we-need-gm-to-feed-the-world-its-not-as-simple-as-it-seems/Sure On October 22 2014 07:13 Wegandi wrote:On October 22 2014 06:27 WhiteDog wrote:On October 22 2014 06:20 oneofthem wrote:On October 22 2014 05:53 WhiteDog wrote:On October 22 2014 05:51 oneofthem wrote:
probably because the gm strains are superior. i'm not sure what kind of public research you are referring to. Saw a documentary on the subject but don't remember the name. It's not the superior, the problem is the diversity. GM crop are not diverse, they're unique and builded for a specific environment (in fact, GM crop that are different from the norm are usually mutated crop who produce nothing, and thus are to be eradicated by farmer before they reproduce themselves). If the environment change or if a new disease arrive and touch the crop, it's not a field that is touched but the entire production of a country / region, hence the reason why researcher are seeking for traditionnal crop, because not only they are resistant to a specific climate, they are also diverse, not technically engineered to resist a specific disease / climate. Traditionnal crop, while natural, are also engineered by generations of farmers : they are only inferior in productivity. Again I'm all for a "yeah science" and shit, but things are really way more complicated. that's not a problem unique to GM tho, but the aforementioned monoculture. traditional crops are mixed strains, yes, but the GM crop that was wiped out was not really designed for survival. however, your highlighted portion of my post was talking about hte potential to engineer environment tolerant strains. I completly agree, and I've said it in my first post, that's not something specific to GMO, altho GMO are also touched by this critic. But you purposely put aside the main problem with GMO : it gives a monopolistic position to GMO firms, with completly dependant farmers, with rather weak advantage compared to "natural" agriculture. That is their main advantage : it's not engineered to free us from hunger and give food to the happy world, it's nothing but a capitalistic endeavour. There's plenty of research going on fields that have no lucrative short term possibilities, I don't see why GMO should be more protected than any of those research. In the end it all comes down to big firms' profit, and nothing to do with agriculture, "war against hunger" or facing climate change. Addressing motive is irrelevant (well...in this case). In fact, this is actually one argument in favor of markets, but I digress. The fact that one person will use profit as a motive doesn't mean that the action taken doesn't address those issues you brought up (addressing hunger, agriculture, etc.). What does the motive actually matter from a moralistic standard anyways? The only thing that matters are the outcomes. The fact is that GMO's did alleviate hunger and starvation and allowed the human population to balloon to over 8 billion. Now, you can be a primitivist and argue that, that is a bad thing, but you can't argue that it didn't address hunger and starvation whether or not the motive was for money. If money can motivate people to do good things why is this a bad thing? It is one of the best arguments for markets imho (it also addresses things like racism, sexism, etc. as well). Don't give me adam smith please. Hey, there's not point for me to go on. You clearly cited one study, with its gift to erase the results of the last 60 years. How stupid of me!
lol... Name dropping is okay, but citing two studies is not ? You're funny.
I just googled randomly two article to give you a simple fact : the idea that GMO are the only way to fed the earth is an overstatement. There are other solutions, and more than that even heavy GMO investment would not resolve the problem because a big part of this problem has nothing to do with production.
That the article that I posted are not great I concede but really I don't care. In the end GMO are not our "only solution", they also have problems in regards to biodiversity, and monoculture GMO crop might create some tail risks because of the lack of diversity in crop.
All in all, while GMO is a field that has future, it is not the be all and end all of future agriculture and there are few reasons for this market to be heavily observed. The discussion behind labelling, I don't really care, altho being against is stupid and technocratic, something that I abhorre : all empirical knowledge I have makes me believe technocratic decisions are always flawed.
By the way, being for more informations does not mean that you are pro market. The idea behind the efficiency of the market is that the price is an equilibrium that comes with the best allocation of ressources possible. I can be against that ridiculous idea, and still desire citizens to be informed.
On October 22 2014 07:26 oneofthem wrote:oh boy, let's spot the shoddy journalism. Show nested quote +And yet, the world’s biggest ever agricultural study – the work of 400 scientists and 60 governments, headed by Dr Bob Watson, now Chief Scientist at Department of the Environment, Food and Agriculture – concluded that GM was not the simple answer to poverty. In truth, it could even do more harm than good. who said the bolded part? answer: not dr.bob Show nested quote +And second, the fact that GM plants did worse than their nearest unmodified relatives suggests that the very process of modification lessens productivity. high kek different strains have different yields, should be obvious. GE is not a single entity. yield of potatoes is already insanely high and near to max due to the physically packed space in which potatoes grow, but other crops may experience yield increase. as i've stated before, the advantage of gm crop is not solely the yield, but the low amount of variance on yield, due to better resistance against climate volatility or insects and diseases (e.g. http://www.news.wisc.edu/21505 ) . food security is most at risk in areas with climate volatility and you can't get crop to those areas populated by subsistence farmers without the technology. this is the mechanism by which people mean for feeding the world. also food waste is not going to be an exclusionary alternative to GM. most famines happen due to administrative reasons but the source cause is basically the subsistence farmers getting fucked by natural droughts or infestations. some people also have no means of moving out of whatever shitty land or mountain they were born in. i see great value in GE technology in solving these issues at low cost, wtihout even touching the very hard political problems. don't you?
And if you look in a long enough period, there is no difference between yield and variance of yield so everybody is okay. In the end GMO are all about productivity.
That you see value is irrelevant, the fact remain many problems can and could be fixed by better administration.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
really now, you've solved risk in one fell swoop.
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On October 22 2014 10:31 oneofthem wrote:
really now, you've solved risk in one fell swoop.
Don't be bitter.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
not bitter at all, a bit exasperated at the response. really? if we look at the long run population average...is not an acceptable answer.
btw if you are comparing strains made to resist negative factors, then yes the yield will be similar. but this is like saying a bulletproof vest is pretty useless because it's not very pretty.
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On October 22 2014 10:35 oneofthem wrote:
not bitter at all, a bit exasperated at the response. really? if we look at the long run population average...is not an acceptable answer.
btw if you are comparing strains made to resist negative factors, then yes the yield will be similar. but this is like saying a bulletproof vest is pretty useless because it's not very pretty.
The acceptable answer is to defend the interest of private multinational... Sure.
And no you did not understand. If you compare a gm crop that has a moderate productivity, but high resistance to specific event, to another natural crop, in a long enough timeline, statistically the event will happen and thus you will be able to observe the impact of the resistance on the crop productivity, which is the reason why comparing in a long enough timeline negate your point : it is relevant, and no it's not a question of esthetic.
By the way a tail risk is a small risk, impossible to quantify statistically, that when it happen have great effect : that's what I was referring to. I'm not saying they bear great risks, but that the lack of diversity create a possibility of an event of great envergure that touch a big part of the production, something impossible in a diversified production.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
the acceptable answer has to take into account the clear interest in managing crop harvest variance? this is not rocket science. maybe farmers don't want to set aside two years worth of capital...?
genetic engineering is just a tool that's beginning to be developed. you see various other methods of messing with the dna in plants and animals, and they receive either no coverage or very disproportionate coverage. shows you the volatility of activist driven public opinion, but also realize the potential of the technology is just scratching the surface.
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EPT
