Christ! On the very same day I post about studies that confirmed that GM crops actually give less yield than conventional crops, I find this freaking article all prominent on Drudge. Drudge headline: "Food Crisis Weakens Opposition to Biotech Crops"
From the article
"Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing new pressures on governments, food companies and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops.
In the United States, wheat growers and marketers, once hesitant about adopting biotechnology because they feared losing export sales, are now warming to it as a way to bolster supplies. Genetically modified crops contain genes from other organisms to make the plants resistance to insects, herbicides or disease. Opponents continue to worry that such crops have not been studied enough and that they might pose risks to health and the environment.
"I think it's pretty clear that price and supply concerns have people thinking a little bit differently today," said Steve Mercer, a spokesman for U.S. Wheat Associates, a federally supported cooperative that promotes American wheat abroad.
The pressure to re-evaluate biotech comes as prices of some staples like rice and wheat have doubled in the last few months, provoking violent protests in several countries including Cameroon, Egypt, Haiti and Thailand. Factors behind the price spikes include the diversion of crops to make biofuel, rising energy prices, growing prosperity in India and China, and droughts in some regions — including Australia, a major grain producer." LINK
Showing posts with label genetically modified. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genetically modified. Show all posts
GM crops actually less productive!!! Lying lying bastards!
"Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.
The study – carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt – has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields." LINK
The study – carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt – has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields." LINK
GM crops cause legal tangle- can cause organic farms to lose certification if cross pollinated.
"Like many organic farmers, one of Jeff Fiorovich's biggest fears is that the apples, pumpkins and other crops he grows in Watsonville one day might be contaminated by genetically engineered varieties from a neighboring farm.
If that happens, "you can't be certified as organic," he said. "It destroys your business."
But if Fiorovich's Crystal Bay Farm was contaminated by wind, birds or people accidentally spreading the altered seeds or pollen, his ability to learn the source and seek legal damages would be severely limited.
City, county and state authorities in California typically are not told the specific locations of genetically manipulated plants.
Only the U.S. Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service gathers such data, and it usually does not share it with state officials because farmers say that would compromise their confidential business information." LINK
If that happens, "you can't be certified as organic," he said. "It destroys your business."
But if Fiorovich's Crystal Bay Farm was contaminated by wind, birds or people accidentally spreading the altered seeds or pollen, his ability to learn the source and seek legal damages would be severely limited.
City, county and state authorities in California typically are not told the specific locations of genetically manipulated plants.
Only the U.S. Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service gathers such data, and it usually does not share it with state officials because farmers say that would compromise their confidential business information." LINK
Something good
"Judge Stops Sale of Monsanto’s Genetically Engineered Alfalfa"
"A federal judge revoked the government’s approval of Monsanto’s genetically engineered alfalfa yesterday, ordering a halt to seed sales and banning any planting of the crop after March 30. "
LINK
"A federal judge revoked the government’s approval of Monsanto’s genetically engineered alfalfa yesterday, ordering a halt to seed sales and banning any planting of the crop after March 30. "
LINK
Open access farming? What?
Some days I read something that makes me want to howl until the skies fall and shatter.
In this short but dizzying editorial about a subcomittee at Davos adressing African food insecurity, the writer says that Hugh Grant ( the CEO of Monsanto, the super extra evil agricultural company, not the floppy haired charming film star) agreed with the rest of the panel that there were huge issues with ensuring African food security.
I guess I'm making myself sound stupid- I did know that it's illegal to save seeds, I did know that the big agro companies will go after you if you do- I just hoped that they weren't going after desperate and starving peoples for trying to grow food. But after watching big pharma try to charge those same people for retroviral drugs to combat HIV, Hugh Grant must have felt inspired.
And some days, I wish I believed in hell.
In this short but dizzying editorial about a subcomittee at Davos adressing African food insecurity, the writer says that Hugh Grant ( the CEO of Monsanto, the super extra evil agricultural company, not the floppy haired charming film star) agreed with the rest of the panel that there were huge issues with ensuring African food security.
Great Scott. Not to sound totally naive here, but when did agricultural patents become so pervasive that people are looking for business models to get around them? Shouldn't food production be, well, always open source? At the farm where I worked, some plants would come with labels warning that propagation was illegal, but these were decorative (and I must say flimsy seeming plants- that Little Wonder campanula died almost immediately every time we had it in) and of course I know about Monsanto's steady war against farmers(including their plan to patent pigs), but I had assumed, apparently naively, that a. Monsanto wouldn't go after the starving- talk about blood from stones, and that b. there were still unpatented crop seeds out there so that food production would not be an illegal act."Yes, he said, new crops could help Africa - but only if the world finds a way to get the technology to a continent that cannot pay for it. He pointed to the model of the pharmaceutical industry, which restricted the distribution of HIV retroviral drugs and limited research into malaria, both essential to Africa's needs, on profit grounds.
But what other model is there? The new idea to emerge from the meeting was that the agro-industrial complex needs to let go, not put all its faith and future profits into patents but share skills. The model might be the open-source software industry, which has its big players but does not restrict access or development.
Could Linux be a model for farming? Monsanto might find the transition hard to make. But a world in which all food is produced from seeds owned by a handful of big companies is not one that would be good for Africans, or for anyone else." LINK
I guess I'm making myself sound stupid- I did know that it's illegal to save seeds, I did know that the big agro companies will go after you if you do- I just hoped that they weren't going after desperate and starving peoples for trying to grow food. But after watching big pharma try to charge those same people for retroviral drugs to combat HIV, Hugh Grant must have felt inspired.
And some days, I wish I believed in hell.
Make hay while the sun shines- because the bees need you to. And we need bees!
"Changing farming practices have played a major role in the decline of the bumble bee, according to new research. The big drop in haymaking and the rise of silage is driving out the bees, whose numbers have declined by 60 per cent since 1970." LINK
This is scary too- apparently, bees don't like GM crops: "Wild Bees Reject Genetically Engineered Crop--Potential Major Impact on Pollination" LINK
Without bees, we don't eat.
"Bees, via pollination, are responsible for 15 to 30 percent of the food U.S. consumers eat. But in the last 50 years the domesticated honeybee population—which most farmers depend on for pollination—has declined by about 50 percent, scientists say. " LINK
This is scary too- apparently, bees don't like GM crops: "Wild Bees Reject Genetically Engineered Crop--Potential Major Impact on Pollination" LINK
Without bees, we don't eat.
"Bees, via pollination, are responsible for 15 to 30 percent of the food U.S. consumers eat. But in the last 50 years the domesticated honeybee population—which most farmers depend on for pollination—has declined by about 50 percent, scientists say. " LINK
Switchgrass study- ethanol at $1 per gallon? Go URI!
Well, I might be biased (in the interest of full disclosure, someone I call kin is involved in this project) but this is an exciting development.
"“Switchgrass is a native plant of the tall grass prairies. It grows 12 feet tall in one season and produces 10 tons of plant material an acre, more biomass per year than most other plants,” said Albert Kausch, a University of Rhode Island plant geneticist on the cutting edge of switchgrass research. “I’m confident my lab can make it produce 20 tons an acre using the tools and personnel we have right now.” And because switchgrass is a perennial plant, it doesn’t require replanting year after year."
LINK
"“Switchgrass is a native plant of the tall grass prairies. It grows 12 feet tall in one season and produces 10 tons of plant material an acre, more biomass per year than most other plants,” said Albert Kausch, a University of Rhode Island plant geneticist on the cutting edge of switchgrass research. “I’m confident my lab can make it produce 20 tons an acre using the tools and personnel we have right now.” And because switchgrass is a perennial plant, it doesn’t require replanting year after year."
LINK
Cloning, Biodiversity, and why we should be paying attention.
The FDA has, as all alert readers of the Guide to the Doom should know, announced that there is "no public health risk from eating cloned foods." However, the beautiful and brilliant Kristin forwarded an excellent article that took the issue a little further. Cloned animals are very expensive- about $20,000 per cow, as opposed to (Ok, brief tangent here- it is very hard to find livestock prices online) between $675 and $1500 for a non-cloned heifer. Why are farmers willing to pay so much more for a cloned animal? "Cloned animals are derived from the healthiest animals in the herd and therefore are more disease-resistant and offer leaner meat than conventionally produced animals, Dr. Sundlof said."
However, not everyone agrees with this sunny statement. "That assertion is disputed by the Consumers Union, a nonprofit consumer-safety organization that says the cloning process produces a sick animal that often dies soon after being reproduced. Furthermore, the organization contends that cloning weakens animals' disease resistance because the cloned animals need more antibiotics to survive. "
This is especially interesting in light of the arguments against genetically modified (GM) crops. These battles, sometimes actually physical, have taken place mostly in the UK and within the EU, with activists, scientists, politicians, big businesses and farmers in serious disagreement about what to do about GM crops. It's a hell of a messy issue, but here are the two main points.
Pro-GM crops: The "Green Revolution" is the parent of the current GM debate, and many NGOs point to early successes such as the "pro-vitamin A enriched Golden rice which has the potential to prevent much childhood death from infectious disease, and insect protected Bt rice which can reduce exposure of farmers to synthetic insecticides." "Many proponents of current genetic engineering techniques believe it will lower pesticide usage and has brought higher yields and profitability to many farmers, including those in developing nations ".
Anti-GM crops: The argument here is that the use of GM crops threatens biodiversity. Not only is relying only one main variety of plant for food known to be dangerous should that food become diseased, as in the Irish potato famine, but the ecological impact of GM crops is largely unknown. "Genes will inevitably escape from genetically modified crops, contaminating organic farms, creating superweeds, and driving wild plants to extinction, an official EU study concludes. "Several preliminary laboratory based studies suggest an adverse impact on biodiversity. Monarch butterfly larvae fed only on leaves covered in pollen from Bt corn grew more slowly and suffered higher death rates. Similar results were reported for pink bollworm fed on cotton producing the Bt toxin. Aphids fed on GM potatoes producing a different toxin were also reported to have a harmful effect on ladybirds feeding on the aphids."
The issue is also clouded by politics ( an actual headline- "America's masterplan is to force GM food on the world") and by worldwide growing distrust of the few super-corporations who control the bulk of the world's wealth, such as Monsanto, the best known biotech company.
The question I have, I guess, is given that it is known that "monoculture can lead to large scale crop failure as this single genetic variant or cultivar becomes susceptible to a disease", will a monoculture of cloned livestock lead to similar vulnerabilities?
However, not everyone agrees with this sunny statement. "That assertion is disputed by the Consumers Union, a nonprofit consumer-safety organization that says the cloning process produces a sick animal that often dies soon after being reproduced. Furthermore, the organization contends that cloning weakens animals' disease resistance because the cloned animals need more antibiotics to survive. "
This is especially interesting in light of the arguments against genetically modified (GM) crops. These battles, sometimes actually physical, have taken place mostly in the UK and within the EU, with activists, scientists, politicians, big businesses and farmers in serious disagreement about what to do about GM crops. It's a hell of a messy issue, but here are the two main points.
Pro-GM crops: The "Green Revolution" is the parent of the current GM debate, and many NGOs point to early successes such as the "pro-vitamin A enriched Golden rice which has the potential to prevent much childhood death from infectious disease, and insect protected Bt rice which can reduce exposure of farmers to synthetic insecticides." "Many proponents of current genetic engineering techniques believe it will lower pesticide usage and has brought higher yields and profitability to many farmers, including those in developing nations ".
Anti-GM crops: The argument here is that the use of GM crops threatens biodiversity. Not only is relying only one main variety of plant for food known to be dangerous should that food become diseased, as in the Irish potato famine, but the ecological impact of GM crops is largely unknown. "Genes will inevitably escape from genetically modified crops, contaminating organic farms, creating superweeds, and driving wild plants to extinction, an official EU study concludes. "Several preliminary laboratory based studies suggest an adverse impact on biodiversity. Monarch butterfly larvae fed only on leaves covered in pollen from Bt corn grew more slowly and suffered higher death rates. Similar results were reported for pink bollworm fed on cotton producing the Bt toxin. Aphids fed on GM potatoes producing a different toxin were also reported to have a harmful effect on ladybirds feeding on the aphids."
The issue is also clouded by politics ( an actual headline- "America's masterplan is to force GM food on the world") and by worldwide growing distrust of the few super-corporations who control the bulk of the world's wealth, such as Monsanto, the best known biotech company.
The question I have, I guess, is given that it is known that "monoculture can lead to large scale crop failure as this single genetic variant or cultivar becomes susceptible to a disease", will a monoculture of cloned livestock lead to similar vulnerabilities?
Delicious! B-O-L-O-D-N-A!
Cloned meats, fantastic. That steak was extra-tender? Let's all have the same exact piece!
No, I really am at a total loss as to the ethical hows and howevers for cloned meats. Are we just killing the same, sweet, brown-eyed cow over and over? And did that tasty beast have especially bad karma?
I guess I'm holding out for lab-grown meat- cells on trays, never attached to anything called Bessie.
/and no, I'm not vegetarian. I'm a nasty carnivore, but I do feel guilty! Does that count for anything?
No, I really am at a total loss as to the ethical hows and howevers for cloned meats. Are we just killing the same, sweet, brown-eyed cow over and over? And did that tasty beast have especially bad karma?
I guess I'm holding out for lab-grown meat- cells on trays, never attached to anything called Bessie.
/and no, I'm not vegetarian. I'm a nasty carnivore, but I do feel guilty! Does that count for anything?
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