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Throughout most of human history, most populations have faced famine at least one year out of ten, more often in marginal areas (the Israelites planned for one
by Turing_Machine 7y ago
Throughout most of human history, most populations have faced famine at least one year out of ten, more often in marginal areas (the Israelites planned for one year out of seven, according to the Bible). Sorry, that is not "working quite well" by any reasonable definition.
You really should look into the massive increases in agricultural productivity over the course of the 20th Century before making blanket statements of this nature.
- majewsky 7y agoMost of that is due to industrial-level selective breeding though. (The first commercial GMO was only released in 1994.) So GP's point still stands.
- dragonwriter 7y agoModern “Industrial level selective breeding” (which frequently uses a variety of mutagens to maximize the frequency and magnitude of genetic changes to select from) is distinguished from transgenics as a method of inducing genetic change largely by the fact that it's a lot less controlled as to what is going on beyond the targeted trait. It's kind of odd to scaremonger about organisms whose DNA is a result of transgenic modification but to be okay about those whose DNA is a result of modern industrial selective breeding.
- ASalazarMX 7y ago> You really should look into the massive increases in agricultural productivity over the course of the 20th Century before making blanket statements of this nature. Way to conflate advances in machinery, irrigation, botany, herbicides and fertilizers in the last century with selective breeding. Take those out and we would have famines now too.