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Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops
- TillE 10y agoThat's remarkable. Tons more pesticides and herbicides for no actual improvement in crop yields. Annoyingly, the NYT article focuses repeatedly on bullshit "health" controversies, ignoring the actual reasons that GMOs are largely banned in the EU - namely, their environmental risks. It's extremely strange how virtually nobody on any side of the debate in America or in the media seems to be aware of this.
- serg_chernata 10y agoCan you please elaborate what those are?
- akamaka 10y agoEmergence of herbicide-resistant weeds due to increased spraying of herbicide on GMO crops is one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Effects_of_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Effects_of_use
- dogma1138 10y agoHerbicide-resistant weeds are not unique or new (natural selection is not dependant on GMO's ;)), there is now ones that are also resistant to Glyphosate/Roundup...
- akamaka 10y agoYou're just being pedantic. Technically speaking, antibiotic-resistant bacteria have always existed to.
- Oletros 10y agoSecond time you call another poster pedantic, the funny thing is that both times you were wrong. Resistance has nothing to do with GMO
- akamaka 10y agoResistant weeds are spreading due to massively increased usage of glyphosate, which is due to its use with GMO crops.
- dogma1138 10y agoGlyphosate resistant GMO crops were developed in the mid 90's and early 2000's, Roundup was on the market in the 70's.... Resistance to pesticide and herbicide has been always developing, the fact that we have weeds that are resistant to Glyphosate doesn't have anything to do with GMO's, Glyphosate would still be used.
- akamaka 10y agoGylphosate usage has enormously increased in connection with GMO crops, and with that its side effect on the environment.
- dogma1138 10y agoGlyphosate usage has also increased in normal crops since seed treating technology was introduced which enables seeds to sprout in soil treated with herbicide regardless of GMOs (this actually predates GMOs by about 2 decades). The use of Glyphosate has been steadily increasing even before the introduction of EPSPS crops.
- undersuit 10y agoYou used to do spot sprayings with glyphosate... because it would kill any plant. Now that we have Glyphosate resistant GMO crops we just spray the entire field. Normal conditions in nature don't favor a heavily glyphosate resistant plant, multiple sprays of glyphosate in a season does.
- dogma1138 10y agoThere is no wide ban of GMO's in the EU there is an authorization process (which isn't technically unique for GMO's any type of new crop or livestock has to be approved) and most of them do get authorised, only a few GMO products those which were engineered to produce biotoxins that can act as pesticide are actually banned. http://ec.europa.eu/food/dyna/gm_register/index_en.cfm http://ec.europa.eu/food/dyna/gm_register/index_en.cfm And before you go and post the 19 countries that "opted out", this doesn't mean it's actually banned. For example Germany has "GMO Free Zones" but they are still plenty of farmers growing GMO's. http://www.gmo-free-regions.org/gmo-free-regions/germany.html http://www.gmo-free-regions.org/gmo-free-regions/germany.htm... This isn't a process that would take a year or even two, it is likely to take decades and in all honesty it's more likely to be reversed than expanded. And more importantly since the GMO ban is effectively a ban only on cultivation this is more of a step to protect and subsidise the farmers in the EU rather than an ecological or public health related policy. As long as the US, China and AfriChina (read about it) produces GMO crops and exports them it wouldn't matter.
- akamaka 10y agoYou're just being pedantic. He said "largely banned", which is more or less accurate. Germany is generally moving in the direction of further restricting GMOs: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-grain-germany-gmo-idUSKCN0QT1ID20150824 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-grain-germany-gmo-idUSKCN0...
- hammock 10y agoEnvironmental risk of GMOs is not limited to biotoxins. I imagine parent commenter was mostly referring to the impact of Roundup, a synthetic pesticide used in GMO crops.
- Oletros 10y agoRoundup, an herbicide, not a pesticidew, has been used way before GMO existed. And, in fact, it is way more secure than the herbicides it substituted
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- GunboatDiplomat 10y agoWell they haven't been focusing on yield, really. They've been doing things like making the crops resistant to glyphosate to make weed control easier, or incorporating Bt to decrease the need for insecticide. Nothing specifically targeting yield increases, to my knowledge.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- atomical 10y agoThe article says that their research found "genetic modification in the United States and Canada has not accelerated increases in crop yields." Yields have been on an upward trend for 50+ years.
- faitswulff 10y agoBut is it due to genetic modifications?
- adriand 10y agoDid you read the article? The measurement is against places that do not use GMOs. Nowhere does it say there has been no absolute increase in yields. > An analysis by The Times using United Nations data showed that the United States and Canada have gained no discernible advantage in yields — food per acre — when measured against Western Europe, a region with comparably modernized agricultural producers like France and Germany.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Laforet 10y agoThis is true if not somewhat misleading. Most commercial GMO crops do not target yield but lessens the amount of effort required to maintain production. Similar yields are readily achievable by throwing manpower and tons of agrochemicals at it, however that is effectively a loss of productivity and just as bad for the environment. Ultimately one can only fit so many plants of maize on a single acre. What is yet to come are GM crops that actually prove the efficiency of photosynthesis and carbon fixing by directly engineering cellular biochemistry, making them closer to the food factory mankind has been working towards for thousands of years.
- uuilly 10y agoYou're spot on. You could use human labor to control weeds very effectively. It would just be extremely expensive.
- evan_ 10y agoYou could never hope to use human labor to control pests, though- and certainly not blight.
- gwern 10y agoThe Academy report they link does consider the economics, and while the evidence is not super high quality, on net it does seem like the GMOs generally improve the economic situation: https://agbiotech.ces.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/NAS-Genetically-Engineered-Crops-Full-Report.pdf https://agbiotech.ces.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/NA... OP doesn't consider this anywhere that I can see.
- shoyer 10y agoCriticism that GMOs have "not accelerated increases in crop yields" misses the point. If you pick weeds by hand, even organic farming can have great yields! Are GMOs making food cheaper to produce? The answer is almost certainly yes -- otherwise farmers wouldn't be buying the more expensive GMO seeds, which now dominate the market for many crops. Also, there are some crops (e.g., the Hawaiian papaya) that wouldn't even be viable today without GMOs. Disclaimer: I used to work for a company that was acquired by Monsanto.
- analog31 10y agoLiving in central Wisconsin, one runs into a few farmers. I've heard the opinion on more than one occasion, that roundup ready corn & beans eliminate having to control weeds by plowing them under, thus reducing cost, fuel use, and soil runoff.
- dbcurtis 10y agoWinner, winner, chicken dinner. With the current cost of fuel, and the razor thin margins, minimizing trips over the field is the #1 way stay profitable.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoWould electric tractors and combines change the equation substantially?
- analog31 10y agoI'm not sure, because it's hard to guess whether the cost advantage of electric cars is due to efficiency or subsidy. By the same process, one could ask why they don't just run their tractors off of ethanol produced from their crops. But regardless of the energy source, an extra one or two passes across the fields is going to be an added cost.
- protomyth 10y ago
- spikels 10y agoI'm not sure we should get our science from the UN. It's a political institution. Take with a grain of salt. I'm sure the relative yields of GMO vs non-GMO crops is a well studied topic. What's the consensus? Or is it simply too political to even do objective research in this area. Not a good situation.
- kristopolous 10y agoSo how would you test this? Have two fields with different crops? Wind and insects lead to contamination. ...so two greenhouses. There are many ways to deal with things like soil enrichment, what's considered a pest and what's considered a weed. Some think that a consortium of specific "pests" and "weeds" if managed "properly" are net beneficial for instance. There's different ways to water crops, rotate them, and the levels of biodiversity for a given acre over some time. There's climate differences by location and year, multigenerational effects not only on the plant but the soil, the insects... How do you measure yield? What if there's 10% more product but the labor intensive expensive harvesting season in 30% longer... What if the gmo crops come out a different size, or aesthetically different, or having different shelf life, or different characteristics with regard to bruising and shipment or a different ratio of edible to non edible parts... What if there's the same average but a different variance? Now let's presume you have all of that and one multibillion dollar company claims their patented seeds are better through a very expensive trial run. Who funds the confirmations or the counter studies? What money is backing the non proprietary strains? What about climatological and ecological externalities? Perhaps there's a carbon sequestration difference or toxicity not in an insect that come in contact but with the creatures that eat those insects... If the fundamental claim is "this is better and is how we should feed billions of people; deploy this single strain globally at a massive scale..." Maybe it's OK.
- Pica_soO 10y agoThe problem is with the ease of use. If you can apply roundup all-around the season, you do so. And if you do, some undesirable plants will survive, hidden out of sight. These will adapt and thus, genetically modified crops "breed" multi-pesticide resistant weeds. In the traditional approach to farming this did happen only seldom, because the times when pesticides were applied, are severely limited. And if resistant weeds where encountered, a change of the grown culture and apply of broad-band pesticides could eliminate them. TL,DR; Genetically Modified Crops grow resistant weeds that drastically reduce the harvest.
- Retric 10y agoPesticide resistance is much harder to develop and spread than Antibiotic resistance. Vastly smaller populations and much longer reproduction means plants adapt/evolve much less quickly. Further, lack of horizontal gene transfer means each species needs to evolve resistance independently.
- Pica_soO 10y agoYes and yes. But you have a Million dices, being rolled every year, and some of those dices are loaded with sloppy applied, diluted, pesticides. And once the Weed is in existence, it can rely on transfer by car, truck and train. The problem is not the GMO are not financial viable (they are, as long as there are no resistant weeds), the problem in my point of view are not health risks (though some of the in abundance used pesticides are on the carcinogenic watch list here in the EU)- the problem is the same with developing antibiotics. You do, and everyone and his dog uses it for minor injuries, resulting in a fast resistance. Meaning, this whole genetically engineering is a constant uphill game against statistics.
- hamandcheese 10y agoIs there actually any evidence that indicates this? In theory it sounds like it could happen, but I'd also expect the time scales to be proportionately... macro, compared to what's happening with resistant bacteria right now.
- USANEEDSHELP 10y agoThe whole purpose of modifying crops, plants and animals is to ensure that the company has a patent, ownership, unlimited rights to sell and charge whatever price they desire. They want to replace all types of natural (non modified) products with genetically modified versions.
- droithomme 10y agoShun the unbeliever. Shun him.
- twinkletwinkle 10y agoI'm not going to comment for or against GMOs or whatever. But can we all take a minute to appreciate the staggering stupidity of the CEO of Monsanto saying: "Every farmer is a smart businessperson, and a farmer is not going to pay for a technology if they don’t think it provides a major benefit" This is a) obviously more marketing than anything, pandering to his customers b) Demonstrably false. It's simply untrue that every farmer is a smart businessperson. c) Besides the point. What the farmers "think" is not the same as what's real.
- Laforet 10y agoBack when GMO soy was banned in Brazil, farmers simply banded together and paid smugglers to bring seeds from neighboring Argentina. If the benefits were not so immediate I doubt they'd bother to break the law.
- cfmcdonald 10y agoRight now there are people going to lots of trouble to smuggle rhino horns for use as an aphrodisiac. If the benefits were not so immediate I doubt they'd bother to break the law.
- Oletros 10y agoA wrong analogy is still a wrong analogy.
- uuilly 10y agoGMO + broadcast applied herbicides is a long term loser. For years cotton growers in the South Eastern US applied Round Up from planes. The chemical would dissipate on its way down and apply half doses to weeds. Some of these weeds could metabolize the Round Up while others would die. But the next year all that was left were the weeds that had some resistance. They bred w/ e/o and on it went. The annual selective pressure has created some pretty impressive weeds, most notably Palmer Amaranth. Growers I've talked to say, "Round up just pisses it off." It can grow over an inch a day, it has over a million seeds in its bud and once it has grown past 4 inches, no selective chemical can kill it. You can kill 98% of it one year and its population will be bigger the next year. Once you get an Amaranth population, you more or less can't get rid of it. It's a one way ratchet. As such, Palmer Amaranth is spreading. The Dicamba story is quite interesting. Monsanto is selling Dicamba resistant seeds even though the chemical is not approved for use on those crops. As Dicamba is approved for other uses, growers can buy the Dicamba ready seeds and illegally apply it. Dicamba is finicky. In many weather conditions it volatilizes and drifts to a neighboring farm. If the neighbor doesn't have Dicamba ready seeds, he could lose his crop and have very little legal recourse. Today two growers got in a dispute about Dicamba drift and one shot and killed the other. The drift problem is forcing growers that don't use Dicamba to buy Dicamba resistant seeds as a defense mechanism. It's pretty nuts. I feel like the herbicide resistant weed problem is like a "Global Warming that nobody knows about." More interesting is the fact that it takes decades to produce a gene / chemical pairing and get it approved for use. The weeds evolve faster than the GMO / chemical companies' ability to deliver new products. The startup I work for, Blue River Technology, is going after this problem. We make machines that detect the crop, detect the weeds and apply non-selective chemicals to just the weeds. Because we target selectively we can use non-systemic, contact herbicides will kill resistant weeds no matter what. The grower saves on chemicals, put orders of magnitude less poison in the ground and gets better weed control. The problems w/ this article are numerous. The guy clearly spent more time looking at UN stats than he did walking the fields and talking w/ growers. Somehow he missed the rather obvious fact that GMO + roundup is more cost effective regardless of yield. Regardless, he brought up some interesting points and I'd rather be talking about it than not. -- Disclaimer -- The company I work for is partially funded by both Monsanto and Syngenta. Not that anything I said is defending the status quo :)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- slacka 10y ago> "Monsanto pitched them as a way to curb the use of its pesticides. “We’re certainly not encouraging farmers to use more chemicals,” a company executive told The LA Times in 1994..."Figures from the United States Department of Agriculture show herbicide use skyrocketing in soybeans, a leading G.M. crop, growing by two and a half times in the last two decades" As a child, I dreamed that I would grow up to a world where genetically modified organisms were the key to sustainable agriculture. We could have plants that eliminated the need for petroleum based fertilizers by enriching the soil like clover does and that are resistant to disease and insects. Instead we get Monsanto. Where they’ve turned large tracks of fertile land into a barren, sterile wasteland that can only grow their GMO crops. And lie to us about their GMO's reducing the use of chemicals. It's a shame Monsanto has abused the potential of GMO to boost profits by selling more chemicals instead of using it for good.
- witty_username 10y ago> Where they’ve turned large tracks of fertile land into a barren, sterile wasteland that can only grow their GMO crops. Source? > It's a shame Monsanto has abused the potential of GMO to boost profits by selling more chemicals instead of using it for good. Is it wrong to sell more chemicals?
- rmason 10y agoI remember a famous academic study in the nineties that questioned whether PC's really produced any appreciable return on investment. Course that would be so laughable today that no scientific journal would publish it. This article is similar in quality. Got to give it to the anti GMO folks they never give up, even after its clear that they've lost. I worked in agriculture for over twenty years as an agronomist. I wasn't in an ivory tower, I was on the ground walking farmers fields. My customers used less insecticides with the introduction of GMO seed. They used much safer herbicides. Farmers work in an extremely low margin business. They continued to buy GMO seed because it made them more money. Farmers are the original environmentalists and the use of GMO seed was cleaning their community. In America we spend around 11% of our income on food. In Europe it's more than double that number. In Europe a small but loud group of activists prevented the adoption of GMO seed. They destroyed research crops so that tests could never be completed on the efficacy of GMO seed. https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/06/11/bbc-panorama-program-blasting-anti-gmo-activists-for-ignoring-science-underscores-turning-point-on-gmo-reporting/ https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/06/11/bbc-panora... Europeans also convinced a starving Zambia to reject the generous US gift of life saving grain. Let people starve cause hypothetically something could be bad for them is the height of hypocrisy. http://www.economist.com/node/1337197 http://www.economist.com/node/1337197 If they [the environmentalists] lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for 60 years, they’d be crying out for fertilizers, herbicides, irrigation canals and tractors and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things. - Norman Borlaug, inventor of the green revolution and winner of the 1970 Nobel Peace prize
- Chathamization 10y ago> Europeans also convinced a starving Zambia to reject the generous US gift of life saving grain. Let people starve cause hypothetically something could be bad for them is the height of hypocrisy. Zambia wasn't starving; as far as I can tell there was a regional famine, while some areas were actually experiencing an above average output. According to government sources the main issue was getting aid to affected areas inside the country, not the inability of the government to procure food from other countries. I've tried to search for any evidence that anyone starved to death, but couldn't find any. It's telling that when searching for info about the Zambia famine, you mostly get articles talking about GMOs and can't find any (at least I couldn't) talking about anyone who starved. This is one of those topics where whenever it comes up you can usually expect a ton of disinformation thrown about from all sides.
- 7sigma 10y agoKevin folta breaks down the flaws in the article pretty well: "1. No genes for yield were ever installed. The current suite of biotech traits were not meant to improve yields, they were made to ensure yields. In other words, they help ag producers farm with lower costs, fewer insecticides, improved weed control and virus resistance in some cases. Same yield at lower cost = better for farmers." https://kfolta.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/rehashing-tired-argument.html?m=1 https://kfolta.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/rehashing-tired-argume...