Once again the European and American governments are squaring up for a trade fight. This time it is over the Europeans blocking of GM food products. Bush wants to use these to fight poverty in Africa, but the Africans aren’t so keen either. Bush says “Our partners in Europe have blocked all new bio-crops because of unfounded, unscientific fear.”
He’s partly right. It is an unscientific fear, but that’s because no longitudinal studies have been done; and those studies that have been done were run by the manufacturers of the products. For sure all the biotechnology firms - American, European and others - stand to gain the most from these products, their governments likewise.
On the matter of research, there is consensus by academics on both sides that more needs to be done. The British government is currently running a three pronged open study involving government, academia and the public. That seems prudent while there are so many unanswered questions remaining.
Soddom, it’s a good thing that you began this thread by acknowledging the lack of good research on this issue. Arguments on this topic tend to be emotive without reference to real facts. This applies both to those that are for and against. For the record I am opposed to GM food and I’ll set out a few of my arguments.
Many people express concerns that GM foods could be harmful to human health. Any harmful short term effects could be easily discovered and the products withdrawn from sale. Of more concern is potential long term effects on human health that would not begin to show up for at least ten years. By the time these become apparent it will be too late to withdraw the products. This is a good argument for adopting the precautionary principle with regard to GM foods.
While the possible effects of GM foods on human health are still unknown and debatable it is undoubtable that GMOs will have massive ecological impacts. These impacts will be difficult to predict, but in most cases will be irreversible. Some examples of possible problems are crops that are genetically engineered to be resistant to herbicides. The genes for resistance then cross to weed species and you have super weeds (and a bigger weed problem for farmers than before you introduced the GM crop that was meant to solve the weed problem!!!). GM crops or animals that escape in to the wild and out compete their wild cousins and reshape entire ecosystems (the same thing could occur by interbreeding between wild and GM species). Remember, once the genie is out of the bottle you can’t put it back in.
Another big problem is that once GMOs are released choice is often eliminated. You can’t stop pollen from drifting across the fence to a neighbour who is trying to grow GM free crops. Hence, farmers may find it impossible to produce GM free crops even though they want to and the entire harvest becomes contaminated, eliminating choices for consumers.
It is also important to ask the question why do we need GM foods. I believe the real reason driving the quest for GM foods is agribusiness companies seeking new markets and higher profits. Most consumers are wary of GM foods, so the reason is definitely not consumer demand.
There is no data to show that Monsanto’s Round Up Ready Soy Beans has improved yields over conventional soy beans. This is evidence that Monsanto has introduced Round Up Ready seeds in the market simply to increase sales of Round Up (glyphosate, a common herbicide) rather than to boost farmer’s yields.
There has been a trend throughout the world over the past decades for there to be less farmers and for those farmers to get less money for their produce. The main reason for this is that control of commodity markets has fallen into the hands of a few large corporations. This oligopoly has squeezed farmer’s margins in order to enhance their own profits.
Finally, remember that about 50 years ago a wonderful new product came onto the market called DDT. It was meant to be the solution to many problems, but in fact it was actually the cause of many problems. Some years down the track a woman by the name Rachel Carson wrote a book exposing these problems called Silent Spring. That book was credited with giving rise to the modern environmental movement. We shouldn’t wait to see if Silent Spring II needs to be written about GMOs. Indeed there is a woman from India that I greatly admire called Vandana Shiva and she has written many books dealing with GMOs and problems with the Green Revolution. I recommend her books Biopiracy and Stolen Harvest as good starting points.
I believe the future of farming does not lie in GMOs or an agribusiness model. It should be based on small farmers growing food using organic methods for local markets.
Although I have no particular knowledge in this area and I do accept the potential for unpredictable consequences as you suggest with DDT, I think you missed out a pro-GM point (or at least skipped over it by just offering a negative example of soya) - that crop yields could potentially be boosted significantly (by creating disease-resistant strains, higher-yielding strains, or strains that require less water/fertiliser, etc.)
Such an effect would alleviate a great deal of poverty.
Then, we had you analysis of why farmers are so poor:
Surely, falling numbers of farmers and falling product prices would suggest at rising yields and rising productivity? So, farmers are out of jobs because (for example) it takes one farmer and a combine harvester to harvest a field that it used to take 100 men to do.
Falling product prices is indicative of rising yields. think about it - the world’s population keeps growing. The demand for food is increasing. yet, cultivatable land area is not increasing. In fact, less and less suitable land is being used (because you use the best land first) and that means more fertisliser, etc.
I think, therefore, that the main reasons behind falling product prices are increased productivity of farms and higher-yielding crops (machinery/fertiliser).
Thus - to move back to a situation where you have more small farmers using no large machinery (small farms remember) or less fertiliser will indeed increase the number of farmers and raise the price of their product but will only succeed in so doing by reducing productivity and creating scarcity*.
I doubt that is a satisfactory solution in a world that cannot yet feed everyone adequately.
Hey, listen, this is not to denegrate your concerns over GM food - just to point out that I don’t think the organic solution is a credible solution for all farming. organic produce is catching on as a fashion only in those countries that can already feed themselves and can afford to sacrifice yield for quality. I admit I used to shop in an organic grocers back home because the produce, though expensive, tasted better. but that is a choice that many people are not in a position to make.
*The assumption here is that large farms using modern equipment and fertilisers are on average more productive than small farms using organic methods. I will be the first to admit that I am no expert in farming, but I note the price premium of organic over non-organic produce, and that is circumstantial evidence, at least. (Also, its common sense - people wouldn’t buy capital goods like machinery or buy fertiliser if it didn’t raise yields.)
[quote=“tigerman”]Serious question from one admittedly ignorant re the thread topic:
Haven’t we been genetically modifying food since Gregor Mendel?[/quote]
There is a big difference between selecting genes that naturally exist within a species and artificially introducing genes into an organism including genes from a totally different species.
imyourbiggestfan, these are the main arguments used by the pro-GMO lobby. As I noted in my previous post Roundup Ready Soy Beans have not been shown to produce yields any higher than conventional soy beans. Even if they did have a higher yield this would not necessarily be sustainable as Roundup resistant weeds would quickly emerge if Roundup was used repeatedly. Once the Roundup resistant weeds started competing with the crops then yields would most likely fall.
Vandana Shiva’s critique of the Green Revolution includes the point that measures of yield are often misleading. In particular because they generally only measure the yield of grain from a single crop. It ignores the fact that traditional farming systems grow several crops and also use the by-products of crops in a useful way such as straw for feeding animals. According to Vandana Shiva the total yield of useful products from small scale traditional farms is far greater than the Green Revolution large scale monoculture. She also points out that traditional farms are far more efficient when efficiency is measured in terms of units of output per unit of input. The Green Revolution model relies on a large amount of inputs (esp. in the form of fuel and artificial fertilisers) to achieve its yields.
Regarding the argument that “that crop yields could potentially be boosted significantly (by creating disease-resistant strains, higher-yielding strains, or strains that require less water/fertiliser, etc.)” This ignores the tremendous biodiversity that already exists. There are tens of thousands of varieties of rice and many of them possess the properties that were mentioned. Unfortunately much of this biodiversity is being lost. The reason for this is some of the agribusiness companies have ownership rights to what they call “high yielding varieties” of seeds and encourage farmers to switch to these from rather than the traditional varieties that they breed and grow themselves. Again it comes back to agribusiness corporations having an oligopoly and continually seeking to expand their markets.
The term “high yielding variety” is also misleading. These seeds are not in and of themselves high yielding. The high yields are entirely dependent on high inputs of fertiliser, water, and chemicals (again read Vandana Shiva for more on this).
Regarding the price difference between organic and conventionally grown foods, part of it is supply and demand. Only a small percentage of food is organic yet there is strong consumer demand. Another is that there are subsidies built in to the production of conventional food that do not benefit organic producers. e.g. farmers commonly receive rebates on diesel fuel while organic producers often require large inputs of labour rather than fuel and machinery and in the First World at least labour costs are very high. Also farmers who use pesticides and artificial fertilisers don’t have to pay for the effects these chemicals have on the environment (e.g. contamination of water, loss of biodiversity). Wereas organic farming which is more environmentally benign does not cause this kind of environmental damage.
“A number of human studies cite evidence that immunosuppression also occurs in individuals exposed to environmental agents. In the late 1970s, a group of dairy farmers living in a small town in Michigan who were affected by Hodgkin’s disease were also found to have been exposed to polybrominated biphenyls. Children exposed to industrial chemical-contaminated drinking water in the 1980s were reported to have a higher incidence of leukemia and recurrent infections, and their family members had increased levels of T-cells, antibodies directed against self antigens, and repeated rashes. Taiwanese individuals who ingested rice oil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dibenzofurans exhibited increased sinopulmonary infections and altered T-cell functions. Other researchers have reported incidence of “toxic oil syndrome,” an immunosuppressive disease that appears to also involve autoimmunity, in Spanish residents who consumed rapeseed oil containing imidazolidethion. Evidence also shows that exposure to ultraviolet radiation and ozone suppresses immune responses in humans.”
That’s a valid worry. On that account, staying clear of a lot of Chinese medicine is advisable as well. What they do is that they concentrate plant extracts a few fousand times - including the chemicals in them. And then we eat that as medicine???
There are more cases of liver cancer in taiwan than in all of western europe. Apart from Hepatitis, this may be an important part of the explanation.
No study will hold any validity so long as a trade war is brewing. These kinds of problems solve themselves, all it takes is time. There will either be a bunch of three headed children born in Kansas or nothing at all. Give it a few years. Perhaps that is why Jr. wants to start feeding it to the desperate in Africa, they can’t sue him.
[quote]While the possible effects of GM foods on human health are still unknown and debatable it is undoubtable that GMOs will have massive ecological impacts. These impacts will be difficult to predict, but in most cases will be irreversible. Some examples of possible problems are crops that are genetically engineered to be resistant to herbicides. The genes for resistance then cross to weed species and you have super weeds (and a bigger weed problem for farmers than before you introduced the GM crop that was meant to solve the weed problem!!!). GM crops or animals that escape in to the wild and out compete their wild cousins and reshape entire ecosystems (the same thing could occur by interbreeding between wild and GM species). Remember, once the genie is out of the bottle you can’t put it back in.
Another big problem is that once GMOs are released choice is often eliminated. You can’t stop pollen from drifting across the fence to a neighbour who is trying to grow GM free crops. Hence, farmers may find it impossible to produce GM free crops even though they want to and the entire harvest becomes contaminated, eliminating choices for consumers.
[/quote]
Spot on.
There’s also the economic effects of patenting new GM foods so that poor farmers can’t compete.
The “frankenfood” activists are targeting even “golden rice”, a GM rice that had genes added to produce Vitamin A. The anti-GM activists would rather see children going blind from malnutrition than allow them to eat this stuff.
Yes, genetically modified mountain lions are a big problem in California. And those spider-silk-producing goats – my God, what would the consequences be if they got out into the wild? They could hide in trees. I’m sure they must be too small for the average two-year-old to spot, or for the average farmer to contain behind a fence.
MaPoDoFu, if you did a little bit of research you would find that the reasons for Vitamin A blindness in children on the sub-continent has nothing to do with the lack of availability of a GM Vitamin A fortified variety of rice.
Vitamin A blindness is a direct result of Green Revolution policies which encourage farmers to use herbicides on their crops. Traditionally farmers have harvested green vegetables that grow in association with rice as food and a major source of vitamin A. However, when farmers begin adopting Green Revolution agricultural practices what was food suddenly becomes a weed. The use of herbicides means that the green vegetables that were once an important source of food and nutrition disappear.
If you doubt me read the quote below. There is also a link to the full article.
[quote=“Vandana Shiva in The Ecologist”]Vitamin A rice is likely to fail in preventing blindness, since it will meet less than 1 per cent of the required daily intake. Ninety-nine per cent of Vitamin A will still have to be provided from alternatives which already exist, such as green leafy vegetables and fruits
MaPoDoFu, if you did a little bit of research you would find that the reasons for Vitamin A blindness in children on the sub-continent has nothing to do with the lack of availability of a GM Vitamin A fortified variety of rice.
Vitamin A blindness is a direct result of Green Revolution policies which encourage farmers to use herbicides on their crops. Traditionally farmers have harvested green vegetables that grow in association with rice as food and a major source of vitamin A. However, when farmers begin adopting Green Revolution agricultural practices what was food suddenly becomes a weed. The use of herbicides means that the green vegetables that were once an important source of food and nutrition disappear.[/quote]
Frankly, my dear Wix, I don’t give a civet cat’s haunch. The “green revolution” is more productive than stoop labor, and Africa is already starving. They need every bit of efficiency they can get.
(For all your nonsense about how much better the stoop-labor system is, you seem to have completely failed to notice that China imports staple crops from the U.S. – despite China’s vast agricultural stoop-labor force. In the past few years, they’ve finally started modernizing and improving their yields on a few test projects. Maybe some day they’ll be able to feed themselves.)
As I noted, you folks would rather see Africans starve than see them eat GM foods. Your rants simply prove the point.
[quote=“wix”][quote=“MaPoDoFu”]
Yes, genetically modified mountain lions are a big problem in California. And those spider-silk-producing goats – my God, what would the consequences be if they got out into the wild? They could hide in trees. I’m sure they must be too small for the average two-year-old to spot, or for the average farmer to contain behind a fence. [/quote]
OK, your ridiculous examples won’t come true, but will there be an increase in the number of Round Up resistant weeds? Almost certainly. I think the main thing to remember is the unpredictable nature of GMOs. We don’t fully understand how they will behave in the real world. Hence the need to adopt the precautionary principle.[/quote]
Exactly how will the weeds snarf the new genes to make themselves resistant? I am not aware of any weeds which cross-pollinate with corn or potatoes, much less spruce trees (which the anti-GM activists incinerated at UW-Seattle a couple of years ago, along with a few dozen other ecological projects that were being run by other scientists who had offices in the same building).
My main opposition to the anti-GM crowd is based on just that – that they are happy to torch labs, burn fields, and threaten scientists to block research on the subject. You luddites don’t want a debate or research, you simply want to impose your know-nothing agenda.
Is this talk about a “spider-silk-producing goat” in reference to this article by Mae Wan Ho? According to the article it is a fact that goats have had spider genes for producing silk inserted into them (although I am not worried about them hiding in the trees though ).
Quite frankly I find your reference to “stoop-labour” offensive. It implies that farmers doing manual labour is somehow backward and uncivilised. “Stoop labour” has been providing humans with food for most of the past ten thousand years and still provides most of the food in many parts of the world today. Farming is an essential profession (indeed there is nothing more essential than growing food). Farmers deserve respect and dignity for the work they do, it just makes no sense to denigrate them.
I definitely don’t want to see African people starving. I have already shown quite clearly that contrary to your belief I don’t want to see Indian children going blind from Vitamin A deficiency. If anything I wrote suggested that I wanted to see Africans starving please point it out to me. I never said anything of the sort.
I could paraphrase what you have written to write: The pro-GM crowd seems intent on undermining the livelihood of farmers around the world and are happy to force their products on farmers and consumers without adequate experimentation to determine any possible risk or harm.
You really haven’t written anything to seriously rebut what I said. You have merely dismissed me and others as “luddites” while offering no references or evidence to support your claims. Please stick to facts rather than making personal attacks. I am happy to continue the debate, but you need to put forward some real research or evidence rather than just proffer what seem to be uninformed opinions (which you so righteously accuse those opposed to GMOs of putting forward).
Its a false analogy as her methods can only work on a tiny scale and would turn the whole nation into farmers! Who then would make our cars, PCs, and Naughty Nurse outfits…???
The fact of the matter is that large scale farms have advantages when it comes to the use of capital machinery. And yes, “agribusiness” does rely on fertiliser to raise yields (as the good doctor herself accepts.) She just claims it is unsustainable. Well, the US has managed to sustain such practises.
Indeed, under the US agribusiness model, the growth in productivity of the farm sector has been consistently high.
And of course it must be more productive - that’s why it is so attractive to all those greedy agribusinessness - they can produce more stuff with less inputs.
Its a false analogy as her methods can only work on a tiny scale and would turn the whole nation into farmers! Who then would make our cars, PCs, and Naughty Nurse outfits…???[/quote]
Indeed in India and many other countries the vast majority of the population are farmers!!! And unless you subscribe to the fallacy that the world’s resources are infinite then the whole world cannot have cars and PCs (but maybe Naughty Nurse outfits for everybody is a possibility ). The whole world simply cannot live the lifestyle of the average North American or Western European. This lifestyle is unsustainable. But I think the lifestyle of a small farmer is sustainable.
I have met the good doctor and I can assure you she is not a fruitcake. She has a Ph.D. in Physics and she has been studying agricultural related issues for the past 15 years. Dr. Wood in the article you linked to incorrectly refers to her as a “bio-feminist”. He should have written ecofeminist. I won’t try and rebut every point in the article, but most of the article seems to be based around the fact that Vandana Shiva cited Albert Howard somewhere and because Albert Howard was stupid Vandana Shiva is also stupid by mere association. While Dr Wood does raise the interesting point that crop ecology is better compared to grassland ecology than forest ecology, he demonstrates considerable ignorance about grassland ecology. He seems to think grasslands are analogous to monocultures, but this denies the complexity of these ecosystems. I don’t know much about African and Asian grasslands, but I do know something about Australian grasslands and they are not monocultures or monodominant.
The website you linked to of the Center for Global Food Issues does not give many details of who the institute is funded by, but the fact that it’s number one aim is to “promote free trade in agricultural products for both economic efficiency and environmental conservation” indicates that it has close ties with the agribusiness sector.
That said I am not afraid to admit that there is a lot of propaganda and misinformation from both sides of the debate and it doesn’t help matters one bit. This debate is as much about the two competing world views that will shape the future of the Earth in the 21st Century as it is about GM food. One world view has an unshakeable faith in the “free market” and believes that science and technology can solve all problems (while at the same time happily ignoring the problems that science and technology create). The other world view recognises the validity of systems of knowledge other than science, believes in small-scale, self -sufficiency and production for local markets, etc.
While the 20th Century was an ideological battle between Capitalism and Socialism the 21st Century will be a battle between the two world views I have just mentioned.
I should write a little of my personal experience so people can better understand the point of view I am coming from. I grew up on a sheep & cattle farm in the Western District of Victoria (Australia). My family farmed using conventional methods including large amounts of artificial fertilisers and various chemicals. I never really questioned this while I was young and thought there were no practical alternatives. It was not until the latter years of my university education that I began to look at alternatives in any seriousness. It was then that I began to see the problems in the industrial agriculture model. I also discovered the books by Vandana Shiva and found their analysis very interesting. I will admit there are still a lot of gaps in my knowledge and I still need to learn more about this issue.
[imyourbiggestfan, I couldn’t open the second page you linked to so I haven’t commented on it]
This is why they are poor. Comparative advantage suggests that farming should be done by those more productive at it (or at least those with the lowest productivity disadvantage) while others do different work. At the end of the day, we all trade our stuff to get what we want. The problem of poverty is not solved by us all trying to do everything for ourselves - the laws of economics do not stop at the borders of India.
I also think the claim that small farms are more efficient in terms of output over input is disingenuous. The comparison is this:
Small farm grows grain, feeds cow, cows shits on ground, grows more grain. Total output: some grain; total input zero (its a closed system). yield is some divided by zero, which is infinite.
Big farm buys chemical fertiliser and combine harvester for mucho spondooliks, produces huge mountains of grain. Total output: huge mountains of grain; total input: fertiliser and oily machine. (Not an infinite yield.)
But, see, its a bogus calculation!
Of course, but we live in hope. nevertheless, by increasing farming productivity, we will have more food and free up more labour to produce naughty nurse outfits. its basically what China did so successfully in its own farm reforms. rather than sexy uniforms, though, china decided to spend its freed-up resources in the manufacture of cars, refrigerators, semiconductors, better clothing, a leisure industry… and one of the greatest achievements in history in terms of alleviating the poverty of many millions of people.
They did have their own attempts at small-sclae farming, which failed. But china learned. how come the good doctor has not read up on this stuff?
Hooey.
If you are prepared to put up with a shorter life and higher rates of infant mortality of the third world…etc.
She seems to have all the right ingredients to make one.
I am agog. How could he have been so far off the mark? I am guessing that the “Eco” has nothing to do with economics…
You will (perhaps) not be surprised to learn that those countries with the highest import tariffs on agricultural goods (e.g., korea at an average of about 60%) also have the highest rates of fertiliser use. So, the Korean government supports its farmers by keeping out cheaper foods. This means that it has to supply more food itself. Which forces farmers to use land of increasingly poor quality, which means they need to use more fertiliser.
Thus, freer trade would allow korea to import cheaper food. it would cause inefficient, bad-quality-land and fertiliser intensive farming to be reduced, thus helping to protect the environment.
The reason Governments usually cite to protect their farmers is that they are worried about destroying a 'way-of-life" or other such bunkum. why should korean consumers and its environment suffer just for the sake of the farmers?
Anyone interested in protecting the environment by lowering fertiliser use should seriously look at how free trade can manage the trade-off between feeding the world’s poor and encouraging more efficinet use of fertiliser.
The good doctor seems to be motivated by political agendas not at all connnected to the problem of feeding the hungry. Ecofeminism? How the hell did the economy and agriculture become predominantly a feminist issue? (I can guess its linked to some farmers’ union type movement… and female labour in the fields…but this is just wild speculation on my part.)
As for the second link, well - don’t worry. It was just a report on the productivity trends in US farming and how (what you would call) the “agribusiness model” has led to an increase in productivity.
this is not to contradict any points that may have been made about GM foods, per se. Yet, I do think that VS PhD needs to be kept a long way away from farm policy.
imyourbiggestfan, I think our opinions represent the the two different world views that I noted in my previous post and there isn’t much middle ground that we could ever agree on.
I almost agree. I think that the question of farming and the environment requires that there is a trade off between feeding the hungry and protecting the environment. What you think of that trade off depends on your wealth. Richer countries can ‘afford’ to be more environmentally friendly, if you like.
On the other hand, the doctor takes up a far more dogmatic position. Protecting the environment is an absolute good.
I think this is highly dangerous.
I would not mind so much if she didn’t use spurious arguments to try and make her case. She should be a little more honest about the logical implications of her crusade. (Didn’t Ghandi flirt with the self-sufficiency nonesense,too - it seems a popular, if totally misconceived, starin of thought in India.)
So, there is indeed middle ground to be found between the need to feed and the desire to protect the environment.
But the doctor will NEVER find this middle ground. Because she isn’t even looking for it!!!
That is what, in my not-so-humble opinion makes her intellectually bankrupt.
Its a shame that you ould want to follow her down that path. But, hey, Weetabix, that’s your choice.
Often that affording simply means exporting environmental problems to the Third world.
I would say it’s a shame that you wish to follow a path that will lead to environmental destruction that will begin to impact more and more seriously on everyone’s quality of life in the coming decades.
But at least we can agree to disagree.
Maybe we should shift the debate back to the topic of GM food and leave the areas of agricultural policy and economics for another time.
).