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Correction, we need good soil husbandry. Super saturating soil with herbicide will only help western farmers, as its expensive, So is buying GMOs, as they tend

Correction, we need good soil husbandry. Super saturating soil with herbicide will only help western farmers, as its expensive, So is buying GMOs, as they tend to be mules (that is they do not breed effectively and the farmer needs to buy more seed every year) the people that really need this are the third world, and they need cheap practical husbandry skill (rotation, water management, sympathetic planting, soil improvment)

glenra 13y ago
> GMOs, as they tend to be mules (that is they do not breed effectively and the farmer needs to buy more seed every year) There's a couple of myths in there. The issue of having to buy new seed every year isn't a GMO or not-GMO thing, it's about hybridization. Hybrid corn has been around since 1926. Farmers plant hybrid seeds to improve their productivity - to get crops that grow better. The seeds are a cross between specific parent strains designed to grow especially well given the local conditions. The resulting crops aren't "mules" - you could just use their seeds to plant the next generation if you wanted to - but if you did so you would lose all the benefit of hybrid vigor. It'd be a dumb thing to do. (If you want to re-use seed, buy normal seed, not a custom hybrid.) Farmers choose to buy hybrid seeds - GMO or not - because doing so is on-net cheaper than using regular seeds when one includes the value of the resulting improved productivity - in the case of corn, you get ~30% more corn per acre from hybrids. http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/corn-info3.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/corn-info3.htm As for where the myth came from, it's true that some people have talked about possibly using GMO technology to prevent accidental seed reuse - there have even been patents issued related to that idea. But as far as I know the tech didn't work well and the idea has never resulted in any actual commercial product - there is nobody who is today buying and planting seeds that have been deliberately designed not to allow re-seeding. It was just a scare story that made the rounds for a while.

glenra 13y ago

> GMOs, as they tend to be mules (that is they do not breed effectively and the farmer needs to buy more seed every year) There's a couple of myths in there. The issue of having to buy new seed every year isn't a GMO or not-GMO thing, it's about hybridization. Hybrid corn has been around since 1926. Farmers plant hybrid seeds to improve their productivity - to get crops that grow better. The seeds are a cross between specific parent strains designed to grow especially well given the local conditions. The resulting crops aren't "mules" - you could just use their seeds to plant the next generation if you wanted to - but if you did so you would lose all the benefit of hybrid vigor. It'd be a dumb thing to do. (If you want to re-use seed, buy normal seed, not a custom hybrid.) Farmers choose to buy hybrid seeds - GMO or not - because doing so is on-net cheaper than using regular seeds when one includes the value of the resulting improved productivity - in the case of corn, you get ~30% more corn per acre from hybrids. http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/corn-info3.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/corn-info3.htm As for where the myth came from, it's true that some people have talked about possibly using GMO technology to prevent accidental seed reuse - there have even been patents issued related to that idea. But as far as I know the tech didn't work well and the idea has never resulted in any actual commercial product - there is nobody who is today buying and planting seeds that have been deliberately designed not to allow re-seeding. It was just a scare story that made the rounds for a while.