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Data says GMO corn increases crop yields and provides health benefits
- ZeroGravitas 9y agoIs there a FSF equivalent for GMO? Like code, I'm sure there's potential benefits to GMO. Like code, I'm sure that letting opaque corporations monopolise production with their patented technology will lead to lots of bad behaviour that's anti-consumer and potentially catastrophic.
- a_bonobo 9y agoPatents for plants expire relatively fast, then the problem is to keep up seed production - code can be copied forever, seeds have to be 'made'. Costly especially if your plants' yield depends on hybrid vigor, which is lost in subsequent generations, in that case you have to recross the two parental lines to make more seeds. Having said that, there is the Open Source Seed Initiative: https://osseeds.org/ https://osseeds.org/ (you still have to buy the seeds since there is a cost associated with production and shipping) There are also special licenses for some GM plants, for example, if you're a seed company from a poor country you can get the license for golden rice (extra Vitamin A) for free, not the seeds themselves, you have to make those.
- thefounder 9y ago>> if you're a seed company from a poor country you can get the license for golden rice (extra Vitamin A) for free, not the seeds themselves, you have to make those. How convenient....what about not paying any license at all regardless of the "golden" seeds you produce?
- yorwba 9y agoPresumably the idea is to have seed companies who can afford the license pay for the R & D cost so that it can be subsidized for poorer countries.
- thefounder 9y agoI see it more like enslaving poorer countries to always pay licenses(as much as they can). These poor countries will always be at the mercy of some corporations. I don't see how they could ever develop their own seeds if the licensors increase the license price. See the "pharma bro" case (Martin Shkreli). I bet the U.S. gov wouldn't be that upset if the customers were from a shwhole country.
- yorwba 9y agoHow do free licenses enslave poor countries to always pay licenses?
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago"the first hit is always free" Who decides when they need to start paying and what thought process do they apply to that decision? Profit maximisation probably involves putting alternatives out of business first. Similar to how Microsoft and Adobe we're okay with piracy in developing nations on the basis it would kill competition and they'd get paid later.
- manicdee 9y agoAre the free licences perpetual or time limited? Is Darth Vader going to alter the deal further?
- jacquesm 9y agoNo, the idea is to expand the rent-seeking on copyrights and patents to staple foods.
- yorwba 9y agoAFAIK, Golden Rice is a spin-off from university research and not owned by the big agriculture companies, so I think you are wrong in at least this instance. It's really no different from Qt being available both under the GPL and a less restrictive commercial license. Sure, gene patents and proprietary software are both manifest evil, but not everyone working within the existing framework is acting maliciously.
- AHatLikeThat 9y agoYou still have to buy the seeds; however, once you do they belong to you to plant, create your own stockpile, share with others, crossbreed or use selective methods to create a better strain for your specific environment/needs... The threat of GMO is not in direct health effects, it's in corporate control of the food chain.
- daveFNbuck 9y agoIsn't that threat independent of how the seeds are developed? Corporations have controlled the food chain in the US for a lot longer than GM techniques have been around.
- TallGuyShort 9y agoThere's a lot more centralization of ownership in farming than there used to be - and the way in which you obtain your seed is one of the biggest examples of that.
- daveFNbuck 9y agoWhat does that have to do with GM? Doesn't this business model for seeds predate GM crops?
- TallGuyShort 9y agoNo the business model is very different now in some key ways. First, I'm not aware of any seed manufacturers having any motivation or ability to prevent the genetics in your seed from spreading before. They didn't license what you could and couldn't do with descendants of your crop. They were suppliers of materials (seeds), not licensors of the genetic code they contain. It's quite analagous to buying and owning a BSD CD with freedom to do what you want with minor conditions vs buying a license to possess a music CD and listen to the music under certain conditions. Second, the higher barrier to entry and how recently GM became a factor (and how significant the advantages are, especially the short-term ones) has essentially allowed a monopoly to form, and there's even less competition than there used to be.
- makomk 9y agoUnfortunately, the usefulness of both herbicide-tolerant and insect-resistant GMO crops also expires relatively fast as weeds and insects develop resistance.
- a_bonobo 9y agoBut you can slow down that process by crop rotation, for example in canola there are many known resistance genes for blackleg (fungus) infections. Farmers are in many places advised to rotate their canolas to different resistance genes so the fungus cannot build up resistance so quickly See for example https://grdc.com.au/resources-and-publications/groundcover/ground-cover-supplements/ground-cover-issue-116-foliar-fungal-diseases-of-pulses-and-oilseeds/rotate-resistant-varieties-to-outflank-blackleg https://grdc.com.au/resources-and-publications/groundcover/g... I cannot find any data where that particular fungus has gained and then subsequently lost its resistance to a plant resistance gene, but it wouldn't be impossible as long as the particular plant variety is not sown
- jxub 9y agoAlso, as the known GMO opponent Nassim Taleb points out, it's better to avoid unknown downsides completely that happen while chasing small gains from an unproven technology. GMO has a big downside with a small upside to it.
- cholantesh 9y agoKnown GMO opponent with no formal training in biology or agricultural science and a long history of lobbing ad homs at his opponents instead of having open discussions with them.
- dvh 9y agoThe problem is every time a bee fly on or off your field you are committing copyright infringement.
- NoGravitas 9y agoOr in the case of maize, whenever the wind blows.
- nottorp 9y agoOr the wind carries seeds from the adjacent field... or... or... Looks simply too risky for me. Health reasons aside, you're becoming dependent on the GMO producer.
- planteen 9y agoCitation needed. This is listed as a myth in a NPR article about GMOs: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/to...
- yorwba 9y agoThat article says that Monsanto hasn't sued when only trace amounts of patented genes are found, not that growing plants with the patented gene (due to pollination or otherwise) without permission doesn't constitute patent infringement.
- 33W 9y agoThat was a good read, I had heard previously about the Canadian farmer who was sued for having the roundup-ready gene is his canola. Taking a look at the court record, it shows that it was a bit more intentional: https://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/decisions/en/item/38991/index.do https://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/decisions/en/item/38991... [39] In an attempt to determine why the plants had survived the herbicide spraying, Mr. Schmeiser conducted a test in field 2. Using his sprayer, he sprayed, with Roundup herbicide, a section of that field in a strip along the road. He made two passes with his sprayer set to spray 40 feet, the first weaving between and around the power poles, and the second beyond but adjacent to the first pass in the field, and parallel to the power poles. This was said by him to be some three to four acres in all, or "a good three acres". After some days, approximately 60% of the plants earlier sprayed had persisted and continued to grow. Mr. Schmeiser testified that these plants grew in clumps which were thickest near the road and began to thin as one moved farther into the field. [40] Despite this result Mr. Schmeiser continued to work field 2, and, at harvest, Carlysle Moritz, on instruction from Mr. Schmeiser, swathed and combined field 2. He included swaths from the surviving canola seed along the roadside in the first load of seed in the combine which he emptied into an old Ford truck located in the field. That truck was covered with a tarp and later it was towed to one of Mr. Schmeiser's outbuildings at Bruno. In the spring of 1998 the seed from the old Ford truck was taken by Mr. Schmeiser in another truck to the Humboldt Flour Mill ("HFM") for treatment. After that, Mr. Schmeiser's testimony is that the treated seed was mixed with some bin-run seed and fertilizer and then used for planting his 1998 canola crop.
- jacquesm 9y agoThis is probably good for some balance: https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-tyrone-hayes-jon-entine/ https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-...
- bmaupin 9y agoThis too (John Entine is the executive director for the GLP): https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/jon-entine-the-chemical-industrys-master-messenger/ https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/jon-entine-the-chemical-indu...
- jacquesm 9y agoWhat is interesting is that they're not even trying to hide their involvement anymore. At some point in time these companies must have realized that it doesn't even matter whether or not their involvement is made public or not because the only thing that matters is the volume at which they are blaring out their messages. Also interesting is the frequency witch which this site gets posted on HN.
- cholantesh 9y agoYeah, except no one bats an eye when anti-GMO editorials get linked, or when said editorials quote legal firms involved in class actions against the GM giants. Or when anti-GMO lobbying groups are cited for 'balance' as in the previous comment.
- dna_polymerase 9y agoRegarding GMO and health benefits it may be interesting for others to read about Golden Rice [0]. Especially interesting is this line: "In June 2016, 107 Nobel laureates signed a letter urging Greenpeace and its supporters to abandon their campaign against GMOs, and against Golden Rice in particular." Greenpeace has much publicity and their uneducated views are sadly picked up by media without further investigation. As the post linked here shows, GMOs are not the evil thing people usually connect it with, and people developing them don't seem to want to kill/poison/whatever the world. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice
- ebbv 9y agoThis is like saying “100 years of data confirms coal provides lots of power cheaply!” Yeah, we know. That was never the issue and it’s a red herring from the real issues. For GMOs there’s multiple issues with the licensing programs and how it affects farmers. But more importantly to me is the potential side effects in terms of these new strains going wild or interbreeding or being a monoculture that is potentially extremely succeptible to future problems and in the long run makes our food supply weaker instead of stronger. (See banana fungus problems, which is not due to GMO but due to the banana supply being a monoculture.) Also saying broadly “GMOs are safe to eat!” seems as naive to me as broadly saying “GMOs are not safe to eat.” It totally depends on what is being modified and how.
- kickout 9y agoAlthough i disagree with your undertone (GMOs are unsafe), i think you bring up valid points--Wide range in what is being modified, and how, makes all the difference in the world
- Klathmon 9y agoSee I didn't get that from their comment (that GMOs are unsafe), I understood it as the user is worried about unknown unknowns with it. Even the best things in life have downsides, and GMOs are no exception. I think there is a literal solution to world hunger here, but it needs to be done carefully and with a lot of oversight. The last thing I want is DRM in my potatoes...
- kickout 9y agoCorrect. At the scale of the world and feeding it, there will be drawbacks to whatever solutions. I agree there needs to be oversight and proper regulations. But GMOs, to me, unfairly suffer compared to every other technology. Nobody was calling for bans on cell phones in the early 2000s because they might cause brain cancer (and are an environmental disaster). Silicon valley type tech seems to get the benefit of the doubt, while agriculture innovation is still fighting perception with already accepted truths (GMOs are safe)
- phkahler 9y agoIt really irritates me when "GMO" is categorically touted as beneficial or harmful. Each modification has to be evaluated individually, there is no blanket assessment for GMO in general.
- jacquesm 9y agoThis is a Syngenta/Monsanto sponsored website, it would be very surprising if they had anything critical to say about GMO.
- CreRecombinase 9y agoDo you have a source for that?
- jacquesm 9y agoAlready linked elsewhere in the thread: https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-tyrone-hayes-jon-entine/ https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-... Domain Name: GENETICLITERACYPROJECT.ORG Registry Registrant ID: C100814327-LROR Registrant Name: Jon Entine Registrant Organization: ESG MediaMetrics Registrant Street: 6255 So. Clippinger Dr. Note that both sides of the GMO debate are playing tricks and that it is usually good to research the source a bit before becoming an unwitting footsoldier in either army.
- throwawaymanbot 9y agoI googled it for you... http://www.truthwiki.org/genetic-literacy-project/ http://www.truthwiki.org/genetic-literacy-project/ https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-tyrone-hayes-jon-entine/ https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-...
- kickout 9y agoIts a joint website amongst all the multinational players in the GMO space (Bayer, Dupont, Syngenta, Monsanto, BASF, etc.). It may look like a biased source, its not too bad. Most of the opinions/articles are backed by peer reviewed research. I think the purpose of the site it to put faces/ human touch on people that work directly with this stuff. Not some faceless corporation
- kickout 9y agoJust for the non-GMO/non-multinational crowd out there... there exists many corn/soy varieties which do not have transgenes in them and have reasonable yield performance... And yet, the market shrugs. These GMOs are providing value and the ones currently deregulated may been proven safe for humans (by a long shot in my opinion). The environmental claims are more complex, but farmers were spraying nasty, nasty stuff 50+ years ago. That does not scale well
- forgingahead 9y agoWhat is the claim here? That yields increase? Ok, sure. That it reduces specific contaminants? Maybe. That it provides health BENEFITS? Definitely not. That it is SAFE in the long run? Definitely not.
- oarfish 9y agoDo you have sources for your final statement?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kickout 9y agoUh, are we just making stuff up now? Most accepted scientific consensus is GMOs are safe...
- yorwba 9y agoIt all comes down to your standard for safety. Potatoes that produce significantly more alkaloids would be more resistant to pests, but might become too poisonous for humans to eat. I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't call those GMOs safe. But of course that can also happen with classic selective breeding, so GMOs are not automatically less safe. See e.g. this story about the Lenape potato: https://boingboing.net/2013/03/25/the-case-of-the-poison-potato.html https://boingboing.net/2013/03/25/the-case-of-the-poison-pot...
- dna_polymerase 9y agoYou don't have any source for your final claims. Here [0] is for you an open letter from 129 Nobel laureates in support of Precision Agriculture or how most people put it: GMOs. [0]: http://supportprecisionagriculture.org/nobel-laureate-gmo-letter_rjr.html http://supportprecisionagriculture.org/nobel-laureate-gmo-le...
- sampo 9y ago
- Asdfbla 9y agoMaybe linking to the study itself instead of a pro-GMO lobbying site or at least to some popular science news without an agenda would be the safer choice.
- wavefunction 9y agoI'm more concerned about the legal implications of GMO crops and the way it's played out with massive agriculture corporations vs farmers. I think there's also been a corresponding spike in human-consumed glyphospates that GMO proponents conveniently overlook. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2658306 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26583...
- traitormonkey 9y ago'geneticliteracy' arrogant cunts actually thing we are dumb - "You must be an illiterate! You don't agree and it can only be because you just don't understand the science!". Haha but fuck off.
- NoGravitas 9y agoSo, I started looking into this, just based on the very shady domain name of the place it was published. The [original Italian study][0] that the article is promoting is probably worth paying attention to. It was published in Scientific Reports, Nature's open-access mega-journal. Their peer review is generally considered solid, though they do also offer a fast-track for a fee. The Genetic Literacy Project, though, is a fully-industry-funded public relations mill, as discussed in [this Chicago Tribune article][1] In this thread, jacquesm provides a link to [a Mother Jones article about the industry connections of the sites' founder][2]. Another contributor to the site [had his emails with Monsanto execs FOIA'ed][3]. If we take HN seriously as a news site, it might have been more appropriate to link to the scientific paper than a PR site, especially given that the paper is not paywalled. [0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2 [1]: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-monsanto-0c06199a-692b-11e5-bdb6-6861f4521205-20151002-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-monsanto-0c061... [2]: https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-tyrone-hayes-jon-entine/ https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-... [3]: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2303691-kevin-folta-uoffloridadocs.html#document/p10/a237532 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2303691-kevin-folta-...
- woodruffw 9y agoFor an organization whose motto is "Science not ideology," they sure have a lot of ideological backers[1]: The Templeton Foundation has a record of supporting research on theistic evolution and conservative British politics.[2] The Searle Foundation is the largest funding source for the American Enterprise Institute.[3] The Center for Food Integrity is an industry group[4] that grew out of the Grow America Project, a lobbying vessel.[5] I am not categorically anti-GMO. But I doubt the intentions of this source. [1]: https://geneticliteracyproject.org/mission-financials-governorship/ https://geneticliteracyproject.org/mission-financials-govern... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation#Core_funding_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation#Core... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searle_Freedom_Trust#Grantees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searle_Freedom_Trust#Grantees [4]: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Center_for_Food_Integrity https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Center_for_Food_Integr... [5]: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Grow_America_Project https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Grow_America_Project
- hashkb 9y agoAgree. Whole Foods is going to have to publish this before anyone buys it.
- slededit 9y agoI can't quite put my finger on when - but sometime about 5 years ago we stopped arguing the merits and started allowing guilt by association as a valid argument.
- woodruffw 9y agoThere's no "guilt" here -- I'm just pointing out that accepting the premise (that organizations like these are funding and publishing honest research) will lead you to conclude what they want, not necessarily what our actual best science tells us. The ills propagated by companies like Monsanto and DuPont are well documented and, in light of them, it's perfectly reasonable to question the motives of their lobbying groups.
- 9y ago
- skywhopper 9y agoI don't follow the GMO debate closely, so I can't really say anything interesting about the data presented here, but it's interesting to me that these sorts of articles never talk about the larger systemic risks which I personally find to be by far the more salient argument. Sure GMO products are probably safe to eat, and it's pretty obviously in farmers' immediate economic interest to use them. But what about the risks of agricultural monoculture? How diverse is the GMO and non-GMO corn that's grown around the world, and what are the trends in that diversity? What about trends in diversity of staple crops in general? How fast can the GMO industry react when a new blight or weed or bug comes along that's immune to the built-in resistance? Finally, this article is published on a site that's devoted to promoting GMO foods. So, take its claims with a grain of salt. They may be entirely right, but an advocacy site is not going to post an article that questions the premise of its very existence. So from the point of view of trying to learn about the subject, this is probably a really poor place to start.
- sampo 9y ago> But what about the risks of agricultural monoculture?But what about the risks of agricultural monoculture? Most of agriculture, GMO and non-GMO alike, is monoculture. It was monoculture long before GMOs were even invented.
- jbeales 9y agoThe TL;DR: There are 2 types of GMO corn: Insect Resistant and Glyphosate Resistant, (Glyphosate is a herbicide, so it can be sprayed on fields killing weeds but not resistant corn). Corn resistant to pests has less loss, therefore higher yield. Also, since there's less insect damage, there's less chance for rot, and therefore fewer mycotoxins, (mycotoxins = toxins that come from fungus). It also hasn't been sprayed with as many pesticides as a non-resistant variety would be, so there's less actual poison on the corn. Corn with no competition from weeds has higher yield, and glyphosate makes it really easy to kill everything else in the field. More corn = more food = better health. Let's pick this apart a bit! Ignoring the lobbyist domain, since the study also appears in Nature[1], there are some sneaky twists here: > GMO corn crops had lower percentages of mycotoxins (-28.8 percent), fumonisins (-30.6 percent) and thricotecens (−36.5 percent), all of which can lead to economic losses and harm human and animal health Fumonisins are a class of mycotoxins, so that 30.6% reduction is already included in the 28.8% reduction of mycotoxins. The word "Thricotecens" only appears in Google as part of this study, and isn't in my computer's dictionary. Is there a scientist that can explain what it is? Is it another sub-group of mycotoxins? Is it a good idea to be consuming corn that grew up with glyphosate[2] in the fields? It seems pretty poisonous, and I didn't see anything about balancing the benefits of more corn vs. less glyphosate. We can also talk about if having more corn in our diet is really a good idea if we want, (spoiler: generally no, especially if you live in North America). [1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2 [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate
- yorwba 9y agoThricotecens is probably a misspelling of Trichothecenes, which are mycotoxins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichothecene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichothecene
- jbeales 9y agoFrom the Wikipedia link: "Trichothecenes are a very large family of chemically related mycotoxins produced by various species of Fusarium, Myrothecium, Trichoderma, ..." Wikipedia says that Fumosins also come from Fusarium, so it looks like one particular group of mycotoxins is reduced. Granted, Fusarium is a problem in gardens all over, (Fusarium Wilt will kill almost any food plant), but still, if all we're doing is sort-of beating one particular plant ailment it might be worth a cost-benefit analysis, externalizing as little as possible.
- maxxxxx 9y agoYou just have to look at the domain name and you already know that this is backed by someone with a clear agenda and probably paid by lobbyists. I don't know why they all have to name their domains in the same style. Must be SEO I guess.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- super-serial 9y agoThe Union of Concerned Scientists says the exact opposite. One is funded by industry, the other from individual contributions. I know which one I think is right. https://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/failure-to-yield.html#.Wow_h71MGEc https://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food...
- baud147258 9y agoBeing funded by the public doesn't mean the studies won't be biased. Just as the study proposed might have been biased, since it's financed by GMO producers, your study could be biased because of an agenda of the members doing the study or pressure from the bigger funders or commercial interests. As an aside, it does not mean that the study you linked is wrong, I'm trying to say that everyone can be subject to bias.