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I'm paying close attention to the direction that (my native) India takes w.r.t. GM food crops, which have so far been illegal. Background: India went from colo

I'm paying close attention to the direction that (my native) India takes w.r.t. GM food crops, which have so far been illegal. Background: India went from colonialism-induced massive serial famines to self-sufficiency and then some, while entirely eschewing GM foods. (NB: this doesn't mean there is no malnutrition in India, where inequalities are rife, but it means that the country as a whole is able to produce more than needed. The causes of hunger are non-intuitive; for e.g. the dumping of cheap foods is more likely to cause hunger than solve it, as hunger stems from poverty which stems from economic disablement - which is caused by dumping cheap foods.) Now, the Green Revolution did result in a loss of biodiversity (among other problems) but without creating the kind of monocultures you see in the US. For example, there are still numerous varieties of rice in India, especially locally variated. Despite this, the Indian government has been increasingly warming over recent years to introducing GM foods (which is largely a solution in search of a problem, in the Indian context). The threat from GM foods is almost always misunderstood. It is not about the individual health effects of eating GM foods; it is about the largescale replacement of a system where farmers own their biodiverse seed, with a top down monocultural approach that essentially makes farmers franchisees of a massive corporate behemoth and eliminates biodiversity, putting all eggs in one basket.

ch4s3 5y ago
> it is about the largescale replacement of a system where farmers own their biodiverse seed with a top down monocultural approach that essentially makes farmers franchisees of a massive corporate behemoth and eliminates biodiversity, putting all eggs in one basket. No one is out there forcing people to switch to GM crops when those seeds become available. Now the business model of large agriculture in the US isn't necessarily the one you would want to import, but GM crops could happily coexist in a country's agricultural mix along side traditional crops. You could probably even tweak some of your traditional seeds domestically to be more pest/drought resistant, give those seeds out, and call it a win. It could be a really useful tech if people deployed it responsibly.
- Retric 5y ago
  Market forces heavily push GM crops when you let them enter the market without labeling laws.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Market forces in this instance meaning cheaper food for people, just so we're clear.
    - AdamN 5y ago
      Yes. That is why in the US people are so malnourished - eating the cheapest possible food day in day out. That price also does not include externalities (eg. the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico caused by Iowa fertilizer runoff is not accounted for in the price of the food produced).
    - panta 5y ago
      I wonder if a lock-in phenomenon could take place at some point in the future, where non-GM varieties become a no-go and the GM ones get very expensive?
      - fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
        GM crops can produce more yield in worse conditions. As the climate changes, humanity will become increasingly dependent on these crops for survival. And yes, at that point we will be locked in, in the same way we are locked into many other technological advances that make our lives possible. However I don’t expect that will ever make the GM crops more expensive than non-GM, since the land that is capable of growing non-GM will only become more of a rare luxury.
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      cheaper food, with the long tail risk that a single crop vulnerability to a new disease destroys all of it without warning
mistrial9 5y ago
LOL - Bayer-Monsanto looking at you!
asdff 5y ago
Countries that eschew genetic modification of foodstocks will see famine in the next century. Traditional breeding techniques to introduce favorable traits simply do not work fast enough to keep up with changing ecological conditions in a changing climate. It's often too costly to waste acreage screening for favorable phenotypes after making a cross between two species in effort to couple favorable phenotypes from both (this is the traditional method to develop new cultivars, most of what we plant today are hybrids). Genetic modification is a shortcut that ultimately saves the farmer time, money, water, and land to achieve the same end result of an elite cultivar. What happens after with licensing and other legal issues is a fault of policymakers rather than any fault of this inherent lifesaving technology.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  On paper, you are absolutely right. But we don't live in theoretical world, rather in one where corporations like Monsanto will use any technology available to extract as much profit from everybody as possible. Even if it means doing highly amoral stuff and tightly coupling crops enhanced for mass, immunity to pests and diseases with things like inability to breed, so farmers have to keep buying their seeds. Its not hard to see why everybody has issues with this - not many want to be slaves with the very thing that our lives depend on to company thats extremely greedy from the start. GMs without those traits, having just weaknesses adressed might be much better sell for poor countries. Rich countries like Europe will react when its time to react, no need to freak out now when as you describe serious issues will be present in next century. Crops can be changed pretty fast if there is strong enough motivation and one has enough cash.
  - goatlover 5y ago
    Can't the Indian government promote it's own agricultural companies and ban Monsanto products? That would allow Indian GM crops without worrying about some other country's corporation making Indian farmers dependent. Prohibiting GM foods sounds like handicapping countries if the concern is merely becoming dependent on other countries.
    - 5y ago
fredgrott 5y ago
a question, could the nation of Indian start their onw GM food and make the IP of them free to everyone as an free-access solution for farmers?
gremloni 5y ago
The only thing wrong with GM food is the propriety nonsense around it.

ch4s3 5y ago

> it is about the largescale replacement of a system where farmers own their biodiverse seed with a top down monocultural approach that essentially makes farmers franchisees of a massive corporate behemoth and eliminates biodiversity, putting all eggs in one basket. No one is out there forcing people to switch to GM crops when those seeds become available. Now the business model of large agriculture in the US isn't necessarily the one you would want to import, but GM crops could happily coexist in a country's agricultural mix along side traditional crops. You could probably even tweak some of your traditional seeds domestically to be more pest/drought resistant, give those seeds out, and call it a win. It could be a really useful tech if people deployed it responsibly.

Retric 5y ago
Market forces heavily push GM crops when you let them enter the market without labeling laws.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Market forces in this instance meaning cheaper food for people, just so we're clear.
  - AdamN 5y ago
    Yes. That is why in the US people are so malnourished - eating the cheapest possible food day in day out. That price also does not include externalities (eg. the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico caused by Iowa fertilizer runoff is not accounted for in the price of the food produced).
  - panta 5y ago
    I wonder if a lock-in phenomenon could take place at some point in the future, where non-GM varieties become a no-go and the GM ones get very expensive?
    - fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
      GM crops can produce more yield in worse conditions. As the climate changes, humanity will become increasingly dependent on these crops for survival. And yes, at that point we will be locked in, in the same way we are locked into many other technological advances that make our lives possible. However I don’t expect that will ever make the GM crops more expensive than non-GM, since the land that is capable of growing non-GM will only become more of a rare luxury.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    cheaper food, with the long tail risk that a single crop vulnerability to a new disease destroys all of it without warning

mistrial9 5y ago

LOL - Bayer-Monsanto looking at you!

asdff 5y ago

Countries that eschew genetic modification of foodstocks will see famine in the next century. Traditional breeding techniques to introduce favorable traits simply do not work fast enough to keep up with changing ecological conditions in a changing climate. It's often too costly to waste acreage screening for favorable phenotypes after making a cross between two species in effort to couple favorable phenotypes from both (this is the traditional method to develop new cultivars, most of what we plant today are hybrids). Genetic modification is a shortcut that ultimately saves the farmer time, money, water, and land to achieve the same end result of an elite cultivar. What happens after with licensing and other legal issues is a fault of policymakers rather than any fault of this inherent lifesaving technology.

saiya-jin 5y ago
On paper, you are absolutely right. But we don't live in theoretical world, rather in one where corporations like Monsanto will use any technology available to extract as much profit from everybody as possible. Even if it means doing highly amoral stuff and tightly coupling crops enhanced for mass, immunity to pests and diseases with things like inability to breed, so farmers have to keep buying their seeds. Its not hard to see why everybody has issues with this - not many want to be slaves with the very thing that our lives depend on to company thats extremely greedy from the start. GMs without those traits, having just weaknesses adressed might be much better sell for poor countries. Rich countries like Europe will react when its time to react, no need to freak out now when as you describe serious issues will be present in next century. Crops can be changed pretty fast if there is strong enough motivation and one has enough cash.
- goatlover 5y ago
  Can't the Indian government promote it's own agricultural companies and ban Monsanto products? That would allow Indian GM crops without worrying about some other country's corporation making Indian farmers dependent. Prohibiting GM foods sounds like handicapping countries if the concern is merely becoming dependent on other countries.
  - 5y ago

fredgrott 5y ago

a question, could the nation of Indian start their onw GM food and make the IP of them free to everyone as an free-access solution for farmers?

gremloni 5y ago

The only thing wrong with GM food is the propriety nonsense around it.