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People tell me "GMO food is perfectly safe" and they do not seem to understand that in practice they genetically modify the food so they can dump glyphosate on

People tell me "GMO food is perfectly safe" and they do not seem to understand that in practice they genetically modify the food so they can dump glyphosate on it and that's what I want to avoid eating!

bluGill 3y ago
What makes you think non GMO is any safer? GMO seeds are studied to confirm safety, everything else is not studied at all. Random mutations happen all the time in non GMO food, but nobody checks if it is safe. Thus your worse case for GMO is no different than any other food '
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jjoonathan 3y ago
How does glyphosate compare to the usual alternatives?
- bluGill 3y ago
  Well the main alternative was cultivation, that is dragging a steal hoe threw the ground. This releases a lot of co2, both from burning fuel and faster decomposition of organic matter and so is a factor in global warming. That hoe also destoryes the soil and leads to topsoil loss. Glyphosate allows modern farm to leave the soil alone and that builds more top soil.
  - monodeldiablo 3y ago
    No-till organic farms exist.
- dathinab 3y ago
  Depending on who you ask there is no usual alternative which is in any way competitive and isn't so similar to phosphorylate that any harmfulness of glyphosate like applies to it, too. Through other people will tell you this is propaganda bs. I'm not in a position to make any proper judgement there, but it seems that not using glyphosate _or similar_ requires major changes to the approach of farming used.
- SequoiaHope 3y ago
  I develop new technology for regenerative organic farming. I would say the question is not about how GMOs and glyphosate compare to the usual alternatives, but how they compare to the possibilities. Heavy reliance on glyphosate has notable environmental consequences, but it is so cheap and convenient that its use is widespread. To be honest since I am focused on regenerative organic, I can't speak much to what conventional farming methods were like before the use of GMO'd glyphosate resistant crops as I have not studied them, but they would have been more labor intensive. So these GMO crops did make farming cheaper in some ways (tho now farmers pay huge fees to Bayer née Monsanto), but it is important to ask what the trade offs are for this. Long term, my hope is that small scale farming robot swarms can manage crops the way a more traditional regenerative organic farmer would tend to their crops. In those systems there is more attention paid to each plant, and little to no artificial inputs. This is excellent for the soil and the local environment, as well as the people who live and work at or near the farms. But then, I am the project lead and maintainer on a solar powered open source farming robot[1], so not only have I drank the Kool-Aid but I'm the one mixing it up to share. [1] https://community.twistedfields.com/t/join-the-solar-farming-revolution-support-acorn-and-empower-farmers-worldwide/370 https://community.twistedfields.com/t/join-the-solar-farming...
oooyay 3y ago
According to the FDA they genetically modify plants to dump less pesticides on them and to be cheaper: https://www.fda.gov/food/agricultural-biotechnology/why-do-farmers-us-grow-gmo-crops https://www.fda.gov/food/agricultural-biotechnology/why-do-f...
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  All that says is "Farmers can use less spray pesticides when they plant GMO crops. From a paper: "On whether RR soybean systems reduce pesticide use and increase grower profits, our analysis shows that – • RR soybean systems are largely dependent on herbicides and hence are not likely to reduce herbicide use or reliance. Claims otherwise are based on incomplete information or analytically flawed comparisons that do not tell the whole story. • Farmers growing RR soybeans used 2 to 5 times more herbicide measured in pounds applied per acre, compared to the other popular weed management systems used on most soybean fields not planted to RR varieties in 1998. RR herbicide use exceeds the level on many farms using multitactic Integrated Weed Management systems by a factor of 10 or more." https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.41.823&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.41...
  - oooyay 3y ago
    There's meta analysis that shows on average the statement is true: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4218791/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4218791/ even in general
cypress66 3y ago
Glyphosate is more of a problem for people that live and work near it. The food on the shelves contains trace amounts of it (parts per billion).

bluGill 3y ago

What makes you think non GMO is any safer? GMO seeds are studied to confirm safety, everything else is not studied at all. Random mutations happen all the time in non GMO food, but nobody checks if it is safe. Thus your worse case for GMO is no different than any other food '

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jjoonathan 3y ago

How does glyphosate compare to the usual alternatives?

bluGill 3y ago
Well the main alternative was cultivation, that is dragging a steal hoe threw the ground. This releases a lot of co2, both from burning fuel and faster decomposition of organic matter and so is a factor in global warming. That hoe also destoryes the soil and leads to topsoil loss. Glyphosate allows modern farm to leave the soil alone and that builds more top soil.
- monodeldiablo 3y ago
  No-till organic farms exist.
dathinab 3y ago
Depending on who you ask there is no usual alternative which is in any way competitive and isn't so similar to phosphorylate that any harmfulness of glyphosate like applies to it, too. Through other people will tell you this is propaganda bs. I'm not in a position to make any proper judgement there, but it seems that not using glyphosate _or similar_ requires major changes to the approach of farming used.
SequoiaHope 3y ago
I develop new technology for regenerative organic farming. I would say the question is not about how GMOs and glyphosate compare to the usual alternatives, but how they compare to the possibilities. Heavy reliance on glyphosate has notable environmental consequences, but it is so cheap and convenient that its use is widespread. To be honest since I am focused on regenerative organic, I can't speak much to what conventional farming methods were like before the use of GMO'd glyphosate resistant crops as I have not studied them, but they would have been more labor intensive. So these GMO crops did make farming cheaper in some ways (tho now farmers pay huge fees to Bayer née Monsanto), but it is important to ask what the trade offs are for this. Long term, my hope is that small scale farming robot swarms can manage crops the way a more traditional regenerative organic farmer would tend to their crops. In those systems there is more attention paid to each plant, and little to no artificial inputs. This is excellent for the soil and the local environment, as well as the people who live and work at or near the farms. But then, I am the project lead and maintainer on a solar powered open source farming robot[1], so not only have I drank the Kool-Aid but I'm the one mixing it up to share. [1] https://community.twistedfields.com/t/join-the-solar-farming-revolution-support-acorn-and-empower-farmers-worldwide/370 https://community.twistedfields.com/t/join-the-solar-farming...

oooyay 3y ago

According to the FDA they genetically modify plants to dump less pesticides on them and to be cheaper: https://www.fda.gov/food/agricultural-biotechnology/why-do-farmers-us-grow-gmo-crops https://www.fda.gov/food/agricultural-biotechnology/why-do-f...

reducesuffering 3y ago
All that says is "Farmers can use less spray pesticides when they plant GMO crops. From a paper: "On whether RR soybean systems reduce pesticide use and increase grower profits, our analysis shows that – • RR soybean systems are largely dependent on herbicides and hence are not likely to reduce herbicide use or reliance. Claims otherwise are based on incomplete information or analytically flawed comparisons that do not tell the whole story. • Farmers growing RR soybeans used 2 to 5 times more herbicide measured in pounds applied per acre, compared to the other popular weed management systems used on most soybean fields not planted to RR varieties in 1998. RR herbicide use exceeds the level on many farms using multitactic Integrated Weed Management systems by a factor of 10 or more." https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.41.823&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.41...
- oooyay 3y ago
  There's meta analysis that shows on average the statement is true: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4218791/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4218791/ even in general

cypress66 3y ago

Glyphosate is more of a problem for people that live and work near it. The food on the shelves contains trace amounts of it (parts per billion).