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Post by diane on Mar 20, 2017 23:16:34 GMT -5
From the newsletter of a South African garden club to which I belong:
We are very privileged to have Prof Jennifer Thomson coming to give us a talk entitled: Genetically Modified Crops: An African Perspective
Genetically modified (GM) crops can undoubtedly help to feed Africans. The adoption of insect resistant and herbicide tolerant maize by both small-holder and commercial farmers in South Africa has increased both productivity and income. In Burkina Faso and Sudan, planting of insect resistant cotton is steadily increasing as farmers see their profits rising, helping them to feed their families. Other crops undergoing field trials in a number of African countries include drought tolerant maize, insect resistant cowpea, virus resistant cassava and bacterial wilt resistant bananas.
Unfortunately anti-GM crop sentiment in Europe and elsewhere is sending negative messages to African politicians who are reluctant to approve sorely needed improved crops that their well-fed compatriots to the North are rejecting primarily for trade reasons. It will be a sad indictment on our society if non-scientific reasons prevent Africans access to GM crops.
Prof Thomson has been spearheading this vital programme, and supervising the research entailed, thus giving us this rare opportunity to hear from the expert.
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Post by steev on Mar 21, 2017 0:31:22 GMT -5
Yes; we must support the efforts of multi-national GM seed producers to spread their chem-fert/pesticide/herbicide-dependent products world-wide, so they can dominate agriculture (and have a strangle-hold on local politics?).
One wonders whether these African politicians have heard any reports of the wonders of GM crops in India (like from Vandanna Shiva: subsistence farmers losing their land due to inability to pay the unanticipated costs when the promised profits don't materialize).
One wants to be wary of "scientific" reports from the multi-national corporations' "hired guns", who, like the whores they are, will fuck you for the money they're paid, regardless of any health consequences that you may incur.
Having worked for Big Chem, I neither use nor trust their products. It's been made clear to me that I'm not a "person", just a "resource" to be mined until unprofitable, then discarded.
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Post by MikeH on Mar 21, 2017 4:23:19 GMT -5
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 21, 2017 4:47:54 GMT -5
I would even love under those conditions to be able to buy a kit that would allow me to tinker with glow in the dark plants and such in my garage or to gene edit my own desired strains of various plants! Here you go! www.glowingplant.com/makerwww.glowingplant.com/ |
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 21, 2017 4:56:33 GMT -5
I like to evaluate GM crops on a case by case basis. That is hard though when both strong advocates and strong dis-advocates treat all GM crops the same. IE they are all bad or all fantastic.
In the case of the ones mentioned above Mainly BT transgenic modiified crops and glyphosate resistant i am against them for many reasons, including the effect they have on the microbial life, the effect they have on beneficial insects and the birds that feed on them, the effect they have on encouraging glyphosate resistant weeds, the effect on the farmers to plant giant monocultures (like canola) which then turn into weeds themselves, the effect on farmers in India to commit suicide, the effect on increasing greed and decreasing care for the environment, the effect on lobbying the government to become increasingly anti-moral and to pass laws that are not in the best interest of the planet or the majority of the people, corrupt business practices, the encouragement of the "patent" system which is now nearly obsolete or should be obsolete, and the patenting of common life and genes which were not invented but merely discovered, etc.
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Post by steev on Mar 21, 2017 5:46:35 GMT -5
Right on! As we said in the 60's! There is so much corporate bullshit being produced, when they have no interest, whatsoever, beyond their quarterly bottom line, that we cannot accept their self-serving line of crap. The fantasy that global agricultural interests give a husky fuck about people is laughable. They want to sell their patented seed, fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides world-wide; if you have a problem with their control, they want the power to cut you off.
Big Ag uber alles! Get the fuck out of the way of the wave of the future, you landrace/small gardeners!
I'm afraid this whole situation pisses me right off.
To return to the notion that these GM crops may be good for Africa: I would re-visit the experiences of India; promised gains are not always the same as actual gains, even when short-term gains look rosy.
I won't even go into the complications of converting a barter economy to a cash economy (which is necessary for the patented-seed, fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide system to work, in many of the places where it is touted as the cure).
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Post by blueadzuki on Mar 21, 2017 5:58:14 GMT -5
I'm always of two minds about GM. I know there are a lot of problems and unknowns that can make the idea a little contentious, but to me an outright "No GM EVER" idea not only probably is setting us up for some sort of disaster (I don't believe the idea that nature has a solution for every problem (at least, not any longer)*; sooner or later something is going to come up for most of our crops where GM tinkering is going to be NECESSARY if we want to still have it around) it sort of smacks of anti-science an anti progress the old "some things man was not meant to know" idea (which sooner or later turns into the kind of rabid anti-intellectualism that winds up in another Dark Age where the concept becomes "man is not meant to know ANYTHING, he is just supposed to have blind faith).
And it is all well and good to say GM crops are not worth the risk, but when it actually IS a matter of survival, things get a little different. Saying "no" in that case is sort of like the people who refuse to send aid when there is a famine or a disease outbreak because "that's just the way nature thins out the population, we have no right to get in the way.) And saying those kind of things when we are comparatively nice and comfortable is a little arrogant (I suppose it actually makes the whole first world lifestyle sin even greater, not only is it environmentally unsustainable, it creates envy in the populations of more impoverished regions to do whatever is necessary to achieve the same. And even if we DID simplify to a more modest lifestyle, the fact that we could sustain it with greater ease than it might be in a place where conditions are harsher would still leave the problem (I suppose the only real answer would be to consciously place ourselves in a state of permanent artificial want to balance everything at the lowest common denominator i.e. make so EVERYONE is always on the brink of starvation and total collapse under plague, no matter HOW abundant resources actually are. Self imposed artificial famines.)
*Though I suppose you COULD argue that nature does have a solution to every problem, it's just that the commonest solution is "go extinct".
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Post by steev on Mar 21, 2017 6:48:30 GMT -5
Not an unreasonable freak-out, but a freak-out nonetheless, IMHO.
My quibble (to minimize it) is with the whole package of the industrial GM/chemical system, which I believe saddles small farmers with a system of debt they are often incapable of sustaining.
I don't think I'm against GM so much as I'm against it being pushed (let's make a buck ASAP!) on people who don't perhaps see the potential down-side of the debt they've entered into. Fine; let them become urban poor, after they lose their land.
I'm not saying that I'm against this; the rise of the British Empire was fueled by the availability of dispossessed peasants, after all, but I just wonder whether we've not advanced beyond 18th/19th century sensibilities.
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Post by billw on Mar 21, 2017 13:43:22 GMT -5
I have to admit that I don't know much about farming in Africa, but is the reason why they cannot produce enough food really because their crops don't yield well enough?
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Post by blueadzuki on Mar 21, 2017 15:02:21 GMT -5
Well, it's sort of relative. A lot of Africa has a really tough climate. Besides have a huge desert over quite a lot of the top of it, the savanna takes up quite a lot more, and the savanna is pretty dry too for most of the year. I know a lot of people have this vision of Africa being a land of dense jungles, but the bits that are cloud and rain-forest are actually a pretty small part of the overall geography, and mostly crowded, in the middle and near the central coast. Most of the rest is HEAVILY dependent on the annual rains to keep things going, and, thanks to either climate change or natural cycles, those haven't been all that regular recently.
It probably doesn't help much that a lot of the key crops of Africa are fairly recent replacement ones, often selected for being more nutrient dense or easier to grow (when conditions are good). Maize and Asian rice (on the coast) nutritionally sort of beat out sorghum, millet and the native African rice. Peanuts have a lot more food energy per unit than the bambarra or hausa groundnuts (which are more like cowpeas in terms of calorie content). Common beans are about the same nutrition level as lablab beans, but take a lot less effort to make safe for eating (since you usually don't need to leach them of toxins). But all the substitutions come with hidden prices, a lot of these crops are designed for areas with more rainfall, longer wet periods or less pest issues than what Africa has. So Africa is kind of stuck; they can't get the yield out of their crops they need to keep their population fed without artificial help, but going back to the old ones full force would probably not give enough net calories to feed everyone either.
Add in a lot of traditionally "pastoral" or nomadic societies (like the Masai and the Bushmen) beginning to settle down in villages, either voluntarily to take on a more modern lifestyle, or forced to by governments who want to have some idea of where everyone is and find their cultures nomadic-ism a challenge with regards to property distribution.
There probably ARE ways to up the productivity without resorting to GM crops, but a lot of those are even LESS feasible, like irrigating the Sahara (the undersoil of the Sahara is some of the richest in the world, but keeping it wet would make the irrigation problems of California look like a walk in the rain.
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Post by toad on Mar 22, 2017 15:21:41 GMT -5
You can do traditional plantbreeding without GM, but you can't do GM without traitional plantbreeding.
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Post by MikeH on Mar 22, 2017 19:04:13 GMT -5
the encouragement of the "patent" system which is now nearly obsolete or should be obsolete, and the patenting of common life and genes which were not invented but merely discovered, etc. Hmmmmm. If Telsing finds that perennial kale that is hardy to -frozen private parts Celsius and it takes her 25 years as well as dollars, that she should not be able to be compensated via the patent/trademark mechanism? What about Paul Friday and his 52 years of breeding? What about the University of Minnesota's Honeycrisp apple? Sure it's a land grant university but breeding an apple that will satisfy the requirements of the current food production and distribution systems takes money over an extended period of time. Dedication and passion may not be enough - anybody got a bushel of any of Tim Peter's perennial grains? Anybody got even a cup? So I don't have a problem with patent/trademark protection in general. But I have a massive problem with the consequences that occur where they are part of a process of concentration and consolidation such as have been going on since the 1990s in agribusiness. When fewer and fewer players control more and more of the properties in Monopoly, there are winners and losers. When it comes to food, water, and any of the core aspects of life as we currently know it, patents/trademarks consequences result in winners and losers. For the losers, the consequence can be fatal - Indian farmer suicides. |
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Post by steev on Mar 22, 2017 20:18:08 GMT -5
For the winners, the consequence can be fatal- French Revolution.
Where did I leave that tumbrel?
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Mar 22, 2017 20:25:11 GMT -5
Hmmmmm. If Telsing finds that perennial kale that is hardy to -frozen private parts Celsius and it takes her 25 years as well as dollars, that she should not be able to be compensated via the patent/trademark mechanism? What about Paul Friday and his 52 years of breeding? What about the University of Minnesota's Honeycrisp apple? Sure it's a land grant university but breeding an apple that will satisfy the requirements of the current food production and distribution systems takes money over an extended period of time. Dedication and passion may not be enough - anybody got a bushel of any of Tim Peter's perennial grains? Anybody got even a cup? So I don't have a problem with patent/trademark protection in general. But I have a massive problem with the consequences that occur where they are part of a process of concentration and consolidation such as have been going on since the 1990s in agribusiness. When fewer and fewer players control more and more of the properties in Monopoly, there are winners and losers. When it comes to food, water, and any of the core aspects of life as we currently know it, patents/trademarks consequences result in winners and losers. For the losers, the consequence can be fatal - Indian farmer suicides. I'm not saying that i wouldn't be like everyone else and abuse the patent system if given the chance. But to answer your original question, no. From a business perspective sometimes patents are good. Good or bad we also are now somewhat transitioning into an extended era of open source. The consequences of this new market dynamic means that patents are old news. For some companies, being closed source and proprietary means that they wont have an edge and will actually go out of business or have trouble competing, and for others despite being open source and some peoples fears of them being ripped off and copied they will still do extremely well despite it. |
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Post by blueadzuki on Mar 22, 2017 22:54:08 GMT -5
I suppose this is another of those inevitable problems humanity is going to have to deal with as long as we have a system where personal survival and advancement is considered the fundamental goal in any endeavor i.e. as long as humans are humans. (without that, you could argue that those who put their effort into breeding should want no more recompense than the fact they created something that might be of use to the world; or even that those who have the talents for such have an obligation to pursue such efforts no matter the cost to themselves (the whole "burn yourself alive on the altar of the common good" argument.)
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