7 ms·

In retrospect, safe doesn't equal healthy, and the damage is usually recognized decades after. I don't think people know coke was unhealthy in the first day. GM

by roylez 8y ago

In retrospect, safe doesn't equal healthy, and the damage is usually recognized decades after. I don't think people know coke was unhealthy in the first day. GMO food is still very important though, considering globally we may have a food crisis. However, until that happens, nah, thank you.

giggles_giggles 8y ago
One big reason we haven't had a global food crisis is because of GMO food. Norman Borlaug's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug#Expansion_to_South_Asia:_the_Green_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug#Expansion_to_So...) work in particular comes to mind as being almost single-handedly responsible for staving off massive famines. Part of that work involved selective breeding to produce a strain of wheat that would produce more output in the same acreage.
- KingMob 8y ago
  That seems unlikely, given that we waste ~40% of all food produced (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_waste#Global_extent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_waste#Global_extent). I think distribution is a bigger issue than production methods. And that discounts any Black Swans lying in wait from transgenic organisms; we may still yet have a disaster, since GMOs don't yet have same track record as pre-industrial agriculture. OTOH, industrial agriculture has been pretty awful, so maybe GMOs are a step up from THAT...
  - ben509 8y ago
    > given that we waste ~40% of all food produced That's a non-sequitur, and you're adding the loss stats in with waste. > And that discounts any Black Swans lying in wait from transgenic organisms; we may still yet have a disaster... Once it's a black swan, it's already discounted, the term itself means the thing is unlikely. I think the subject deserves more study, but we have people dying of hunger right now, and that's plainly more compelling than "something really bad might happen, we have no idea what, why or how likely it is."
    - extrapickles 8y ago
      Exactly. Possibly getting cancer when you are 70-80 would be a minor price to pay to not be guaranteed to starve to death when you are 5. This is especially true if they only need a few years of GMOs to break bad cycles with conventional agriculture (such as eating next years seeds because they have no food now).
      - KingMob 8y ago
        A black swan would be less on the scale of "higher long-term risk of cancer", and more like "unintended side effect wiped out pollinators and now the local agriculture is imperiled".
    - abalone 8y ago
      That is not "plainly more compelling." There is no undo button for GMOs -- once they are out in the wild there's no eradicating them. For well over half a century we have understood that most famines are a result of entitlement failures, not lack of food availability.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_famines#Failure_of_exchange_entitlements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_famines#Failure_of...
    - KingMob 8y ago
      I think you should read Taleb's followup Antifragile sometime. The point is not that black swans are unlikely, but that they are catastrophic, and we can't even quantify how unlikely they are, so we have to find ways to prepare for them without basing it on probability estimates. That "something really bad" might be localized ecological collapse, which I find pretty compelling, too.
  - afarrell 8y ago
    > given that we waste ~40% of all food produced If you can come up with a technology or logistical process to make a significant change to that without causing famine, you've got a company with billions in revenue.
    - mikekchar 8y ago
      While I understand your logic, I don't think you can make this claim universally. Our food distribution systems are set up to be efficient, but they are also set up to be beneficial for a very small number of players. For example there are very few distributors for grain: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-big-five-companies-that-control-the-worlds-grain-trade-8462266.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-big-five... The systems we have in place are meant to protect that near monopoly as much as they are to distribute food. On top of that, countries give loans to poor countries in exchange for 2 promises: 1) that they use the money to buy grain from the country lending the money 2) they don't grow grain themselves. In that way, we actively undermine world agriculture. If your massive improvement disrupts these players, I think you're going to be in for a very rough time of it. Things like GMO further solidify the near monopolies, by restricting where you can buy seed, etc. This is one of the reasons you see a big political push for them.
      - afarrell 8y ago
        Hmmm... I'd be interested to know more about this. Its going to be fairly hard to fight this I suppose. The US does have a powerful military interest* to be doing this, but I've not read about them actually doing so. * To understand why, watch the movie Grave of the Fireflies. Or watch Indy Neidel on youtube talk about the "turnip winter"
- pajaroide 8y ago
  Selective breeding isn't genetic engineering though. GMO is used when genes from a species are inserted into another, not for strains that are produced through artificial selection of organisms with desirable traits.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Selective breeding isn't genetic engineering though. Yes, selective breeding is far less controlled and predictable as to unintended changes; people think of it as safer because of the way it used to be done which operates over longer time scales, which, aside from not actually providing any kind of safety, neglects the fact that modern methods allow selective breeding to operate over much shorter time scales.
    - modbait 8y ago
      Selective breeding performed slowly over longer time scales did at least give the breeders time to notice some kinds of severe problems. If you're breeding wheat and accidentally introduce a toxic mutation, you might notice the resulting pile of dead horses. There won't be a warning like this in every case, but it's not right to say that there's zero benefit to going slow. That said, I don't really have an opinion on GMOs. I'm fine with you partaking first, though. :-)
    - oxryly1 8y ago
      Selective breeding doesn't create fundamentally new organisms like transgenic GMOs, however -- organisms for which there is no method to predict their interactions with our one and only environment (Earth, if that wasn't clear :p).
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > Selective breeding doesn't create fundamentally new organisms like transgenic GMOs, Yes, selective breeding (both artificial and natural selection) create fundamentally new organisms.
      - nradov 8y ago
legulere 8y ago
GMO is largely about implanting resistance against herbicides such as glyphosate or genes for the production of pesticides like the BT-gene. Both are there to support pesticide heavy monocultures of which we are seeing the negative effects unfolding. Most of the food is still farmed by poor small scale farmers, which are often more efficient than large-scale farmers.
- Entalpi 8y ago
  Bacteria modfied to produce human insulin is technically an GMO. It has also saved a lot of lives.
  - legulere 8y ago
    You're right. I should have specified that I meant genetically modified crops specifically
- 8077628 8y ago
  >GMO is largely about implanting resistance against herbicides such as glyphosate or genes for the production of pesticides like the BT-gene. Both are there to support pesticide heavy monocultures of which we are seeing the negative effects unfolding. Except the BT gene is exactly the opposite of a pesticide-heavy monoculture. The point is to make spraying unnecessary. Do you usually just invert the reality of things that clash with your preferred narrative? >Most of the food is still farmed by poor small scale farmers, which are often more efficient than large-scale farmers. Curious about this claim, I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_productivity#Sources_of_agricultural_productivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_productivity#Sour...: Some sources of agricultural productivity are: -Mechanization -High yield varieties, which were the basis of the Green revolution -Fertilizers: Primary plant nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium[5][6] and secondary nutrients such as sulfur, zinc, copper, manganese, calcium, magnesium and molybdenum on deficient soil -Education in management and entrepreneurial techniques to decrease fixed and variable costs and optimise manpower -Liming of acid soils to raise pH and to provide calcium and magnesium -Irrigation -Herbicides -Genetic engineering -Pesticides -Increased plant density -Animal feed made more digestible by processing -Keeping animals indoors in cold weather I don't think any of these correlate with smaller farm size. Do you have any sources?
icelancer 8y ago
>> However, until that happens, nah, thank you. A very first-world thing to be able to say when rejecting GMOs and other things that can improve crop yields for the less fortunate citizens of the world.
- oxryly1 8y ago
  Doesn't mean it's wrong. Prohibition of transgenic GMOs may be necessary to prevent widespread harm. http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf
  - icelancer 8y ago
    I am very familiar with Taleb's ranting work on this subject and don't find it at all convincing.
  - Fins 8y ago
    Interesting that none of the signatories appear to be experts in, you know, biology or any relevant field.
camelot3000 8y ago
A mouse born and raised in a maze will think that is the whole world - until it's taken out of the maze. Everyone in this thread could do with a lesson in permaculture -- the food crisis is manufactured.

by roylez 8y ago

giggles_giggles 8y ago

One big reason we haven't had a global food crisis is because of GMO food. Norman Borlaug's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug#Expansion_to_South_Asia:_the_Green_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug#Expansion_to_So...) work in particular comes to mind as being almost single-handedly responsible for staving off massive famines. Part of that work involved selective breeding to produce a strain of wheat that would produce more output in the same acreage.

KingMob 8y ago
That seems unlikely, given that we waste ~40% of all food produced (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_waste#Global_extent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_waste#Global_extent). I think distribution is a bigger issue than production methods. And that discounts any Black Swans lying in wait from transgenic organisms; we may still yet have a disaster, since GMOs don't yet have same track record as pre-industrial agriculture. OTOH, industrial agriculture has been pretty awful, so maybe GMOs are a step up from THAT...
- ben509 8y ago
  > given that we waste ~40% of all food produced That's a non-sequitur, and you're adding the loss stats in with waste. > And that discounts any Black Swans lying in wait from transgenic organisms; we may still yet have a disaster... Once it's a black swan, it's already discounted, the term itself means the thing is unlikely. I think the subject deserves more study, but we have people dying of hunger right now, and that's plainly more compelling than "something really bad might happen, we have no idea what, why or how likely it is."
  - extrapickles 8y ago
    Exactly. Possibly getting cancer when you are 70-80 would be a minor price to pay to not be guaranteed to starve to death when you are 5. This is especially true if they only need a few years of GMOs to break bad cycles with conventional agriculture (such as eating next years seeds because they have no food now).
    - KingMob 8y ago
      A black swan would be less on the scale of "higher long-term risk of cancer", and more like "unintended side effect wiped out pollinators and now the local agriculture is imperiled".
  - abalone 8y ago
    That is not "plainly more compelling." There is no undo button for GMOs -- once they are out in the wild there's no eradicating them. For well over half a century we have understood that most famines are a result of entitlement failures, not lack of food availability.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_famines#Failure_of_exchange_entitlements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_famines#Failure_of...
  - KingMob 8y ago
    I think you should read Taleb's followup Antifragile sometime. The point is not that black swans are unlikely, but that they are catastrophic, and we can't even quantify how unlikely they are, so we have to find ways to prepare for them without basing it on probability estimates. That "something really bad" might be localized ecological collapse, which I find pretty compelling, too.
- afarrell 8y ago
  > given that we waste ~40% of all food produced If you can come up with a technology or logistical process to make a significant change to that without causing famine, you've got a company with billions in revenue.
  - mikekchar 8y ago
    While I understand your logic, I don't think you can make this claim universally. Our food distribution systems are set up to be efficient, but they are also set up to be beneficial for a very small number of players. For example there are very few distributors for grain: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-big-five-companies-that-control-the-worlds-grain-trade-8462266.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-big-five... The systems we have in place are meant to protect that near monopoly as much as they are to distribute food. On top of that, countries give loans to poor countries in exchange for 2 promises: 1) that they use the money to buy grain from the country lending the money 2) they don't grow grain themselves. In that way, we actively undermine world agriculture. If your massive improvement disrupts these players, I think you're going to be in for a very rough time of it. Things like GMO further solidify the near monopolies, by restricting where you can buy seed, etc. This is one of the reasons you see a big political push for them.
    - afarrell 8y ago
      Hmmm... I'd be interested to know more about this. Its going to be fairly hard to fight this I suppose. The US does have a powerful military interest* to be doing this, but I've not read about them actually doing so. * To understand why, watch the movie Grave of the Fireflies. Or watch Indy Neidel on youtube talk about the "turnip winter"
pajaroide 8y ago
Selective breeding isn't genetic engineering though. GMO is used when genes from a species are inserted into another, not for strains that are produced through artificial selection of organisms with desirable traits.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Selective breeding isn't genetic engineering though. Yes, selective breeding is far less controlled and predictable as to unintended changes; people think of it as safer because of the way it used to be done which operates over longer time scales, which, aside from not actually providing any kind of safety, neglects the fact that modern methods allow selective breeding to operate over much shorter time scales.
  - modbait 8y ago
    Selective breeding performed slowly over longer time scales did at least give the breeders time to notice some kinds of severe problems. If you're breeding wheat and accidentally introduce a toxic mutation, you might notice the resulting pile of dead horses. There won't be a warning like this in every case, but it's not right to say that there's zero benefit to going slow. That said, I don't really have an opinion on GMOs. I'm fine with you partaking first, though. :-)
  - oxryly1 8y ago
    Selective breeding doesn't create fundamentally new organisms like transgenic GMOs, however -- organisms for which there is no method to predict their interactions with our one and only environment (Earth, if that wasn't clear :p).
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Selective breeding doesn't create fundamentally new organisms like transgenic GMOs, Yes, selective breeding (both artificial and natural selection) create fundamentally new organisms.
    - nradov 8y ago

legulere 8y ago

GMO is largely about implanting resistance against herbicides such as glyphosate or genes for the production of pesticides like the BT-gene. Both are there to support pesticide heavy monocultures of which we are seeing the negative effects unfolding. Most of the food is still farmed by poor small scale farmers, which are often more efficient than large-scale farmers.

Entalpi 8y ago
Bacteria modfied to produce human insulin is technically an GMO. It has also saved a lot of lives.
- legulere 8y ago
  You're right. I should have specified that I meant genetically modified crops specifically
8077628 8y ago
>GMO is largely about implanting resistance against herbicides such as glyphosate or genes for the production of pesticides like the BT-gene. Both are there to support pesticide heavy monocultures of which we are seeing the negative effects unfolding. Except the BT gene is exactly the opposite of a pesticide-heavy monoculture. The point is to make spraying unnecessary. Do you usually just invert the reality of things that clash with your preferred narrative? >Most of the food is still farmed by poor small scale farmers, which are often more efficient than large-scale farmers. Curious about this claim, I found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_productivity#Sources_of_agricultural_productivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_productivity#Sour...: Some sources of agricultural productivity are: -Mechanization -High yield varieties, which were the basis of the Green revolution -Fertilizers: Primary plant nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium[5][6] and secondary nutrients such as sulfur, zinc, copper, manganese, calcium, magnesium and molybdenum on deficient soil -Education in management and entrepreneurial techniques to decrease fixed and variable costs and optimise manpower -Liming of acid soils to raise pH and to provide calcium and magnesium -Irrigation -Herbicides -Genetic engineering -Pesticides -Increased plant density -Animal feed made more digestible by processing -Keeping animals indoors in cold weather I don't think any of these correlate with smaller farm size. Do you have any sources?

icelancer 8y ago

>> However, until that happens, nah, thank you. A very first-world thing to be able to say when rejecting GMOs and other things that can improve crop yields for the less fortunate citizens of the world.

oxryly1 8y ago
Doesn't mean it's wrong. Prohibition of transgenic GMOs may be necessary to prevent widespread harm. http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf
- icelancer 8y ago
  I am very familiar with Taleb's ranting work on this subject and don't find it at all convincing.
- Fins 8y ago
  Interesting that none of the signatories appear to be experts in, you know, biology or any relevant field.

camelot3000 8y ago

A mouse born and raised in a maze will think that is the whole world - until it's taken out of the maze. Everyone in this thread could do with a lesson in permaculture -- the food crisis is manufactured.