The Cellar  

Go Back   The Cellar > Main > Politics

Politics Where we learn not to think less of others who don't share our views

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 03-02-2005, 01:31 PM   #1
Troubleshooter
The urban Jane Goodall
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Florida
Posts: 3,012
The damn hippies are at it again...

http://www.reason.com/rb/rb030205.shtml

Attack of the Killer Crops?
Activists still trying to scare poor farmers with bad science
Ronald Bailey


Activists are again trying to frighten poor people in developing countries by claiming the U.S. is poisoning them with genetically modified food. Never mind that 280 million Americans have been eating biotech-enhanced crops for nearly a decade with zero evidence that it has caused anyone so much as a sniffle or a bellyache.

Friends of the Earth tested samples of corn and soybean distributed both commercially and as aid to several Central American countries, to see if they contained genetically modified varieties. They really needn't have bothered, since it's public knowledge that 85 percent of U.S. soybean acreage and 45 percent of its corn are sown in biotech crop varieties that are resistant to pests and herbicides. What would be surprising is if they found no genetically enhanced corn or soybeans in food shipments from the States. The activists merely went through the motions of testing the crops to place a scientific façade on their latest biotech scare.

...snip...

The world's poor farmers recognize this, even if the anti-biotech activists who claim to speak for them don't. Thousands of poor Indian farmers nearly rioted in 2002 when the Indian government, spurred on by activists, was poised to destroy the genetically modified pest-resistant cotton they had planted. Faced with this farmer revolt, the Indian government backed down. The subsequent crops of biotech cotton performed spectacularly, boosting yields as much as 80 percent, reducing pesticide use by 70 percent and increasing farmers' cotton-related income fivefold.
__________________
I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law. - Aristotle
Troubleshooter is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-02-2005, 01:43 PM   #2
jaguar
whig
 
Join Date: Apr 2001
Posts: 5,075
ah reason, that bastion of unbiased discussion. There are a number of issues with GE crops. Particularly for 3rd world farmers one of the most serious is that it makes them entirely beholden to corporations like Monsanto, seed cannot be saved, they become entirely dependant. As for the no side effects....there's been some interesting cases over time, modifications of production of growth hormone in fish caused massive deformities and behaviour changes, modified yeast for alcohol production suddenly started producing toxins. Most of the techniques used in GE are, compared to the complexity of the systems they are modifying, rudimentary and companies like Monsanto have proven themselves to be distinctly caviller about environmental safety. Good things can and may comes out of GE but there are very notable dangers, pretending there are no downsides or risks is no better.
__________________
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
- Twain
jaguar is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-02-2005, 02:02 PM   #3
Troubleshooter
The urban Jane Goodall
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Florida
Posts: 3,012
Oh I know. It's just that it's so much fun to pick on the hippies.

Until more GE crops get out there for testing, as well as so other companies can study (or reverse engineer) them it's going to be hard to have concrete, legitimate study.
__________________
I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law. - Aristotle
Troubleshooter is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-02-2005, 02:05 PM   #4
jaguar
whig
 
Join Date: Apr 2001
Posts: 5,075
well I didn't expect any better from the beloved Reason either, I'm with you that far. It's easy enough to have a study, there's plenty around, most risks are species dependant, some might not be noticeable for a long time, time will tell.
__________________
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
- Twain
jaguar is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-02-2005, 02:46 PM   #5
BigV
Goon Squad Leader
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Seattle
Posts: 27,063
Hippie rebuttal

Hey TS:

Have you noticed trends like this? I went into a Best Buy this holiday season and I saw a nice little inkjet printer for less than $10!! Wow, I thought. That's a twentieth of what I would/could have paid a year or so earlier for comparable technology. Neato!

As I checked out a little more, I learned that the ink refills were more than $40 and would last for only a couple of reams of paper. So owning one of these beasts meant that my upfront costs were spectacularly low, but the ongoing care and feeding costs were much higher. (I guess I should have bought 20 of the printers and scavenged the ink cartridges...another story) The manufacturers were protecting their investment.

How about this: the new Napster compares $10,000 to have a new ipod full of songs to $15 for a flash mp3 gadget with the same quantity of music. How can they do it? Well, it turns out you only rent the music, and the $15 is an ongoing monthly subscription fee. You're not buying the music, just paying to listen to it, certainly a different spin on the conventional thoughts about portable music.

These are just two examples where a company takes an idea for a product or service and ac-sen-chu-ates the positive and eliminates (rather, hides in plain sight) the negative. You want color print? Buy me. You want to roll with the Rolling Stones? Buy me. In both cases the real cost comes later. Yah, I know, caveat emptor. Fine, point taken. But these are well established business models, for things that are clearly discretionary. But things like soybeans and cotton do not fall into such categories.

When a company makes the investment, major investment, in a product technology like GM crops, it has a corporate imperative to seek a return on that investment. When that imperative is obscured and ingnored by the glare and blare of the front-end benefit, (70% increase in crop yields, 20,000 songs for $15, etc) I see a conflict coming, this kind of conflict. And this and this and this.

I tried not to compare this to a drug dealer and have conceded to my baser instincts. "Hey man, first taste is free!" Just today I saw an ad for "Bad Credit Refinancing of Second Mortgages--4 offers in 60 seconds". What about America's long term (no end in sight) petro-chemical dependency issues? Don't get me started on Global Warming... This whole behavior of low cost, low pain right now -- high cost, high pain later is pervasive and NOT in our long term best interest.

I do not want to curse our future generations with the prospect of being enslaved to the corporations that could/should/would withhold their daily bread. That is Not Right.

Don't misunderstand me, I am no luddite (although I have on sunny summer days been inexplicably unable to find batteries for the kid's GameBoy or the PS/2's power adapter...) There are real, tangible, desirable benefits to most technological advances. Unsurprisingly, that's why they call it Progress. But to march onward without consideration of what lies ahead is not progress, it's just mileage. To discard inconvenient data, to ignore context and disregard consequences while pressing the technical accelerator to the marketing metal is like riding along with Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman. You might not crash and burn right away, you will need clean drawers right away, but you've got to stop and let someone who can see take over the driver's seat if you want to get safely to your destination.


__________________
Be Just and Fear Not.

Last edited by BigV; 03-02-2005 at 02:57 PM. Reason: messed up title
BigV is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-02-2005, 07:47 PM   #6
Schrodinger's Cat
Macavity
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: A Black Box
Posts: 157
Well - in the face of that -

I was merely going to add the comment that GE crops often result in monoculture. Instead of growing several different strains of rice, for example, the third world farmer grows only one - the latest and greatest GE species. That's nice until a pathogen outsmarts the scientists (yes, viruses are smarter than scientists as anyone who has the flu can attest).

If a disease sweeps through an agricultural crop where farmers are growing different strains, some varieties will prove more resistant than others and the entire food supply will not end up being wiped out. However, if you are growing only one variety of a grain and your neighbors are only growing that variety and, in fact, your entire country is growing that one same variety, you are pratically begging to become the center of attention for the next famine relief effort.
__________________
Macavity, Macavity, there's no on like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity. - T.S. Eliot, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Schrodinger's Cat is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-04-2005, 09:50 AM   #7
russotto
Professor
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,788
Monocultures aren't caused by or restricted to GE. Neither is non-viable seed. Modern hybrids produced the old-fashioned way result in the same issues.

Not that Monsanto (or whoever owns the GE crop division now) isn't a bastion of corporate evil. They ARE the people who bought a Supreme Court decision which says that if some of their pollen gets on your crop and results in fertile offspring, you're violating their patent.
russotto is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-04-2005, 08:48 PM   #8
xoxoxoBruce
The future is unwritten
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 71,105
The only hope for the third world is to develop pancake trees so the natives can pick fresh pancakes and tap syrup from the trunk.
__________________
The descent of man ~ Nixon, Friedman, Reagan, Trump.
xoxoxoBruce is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-04-2005, 09:17 PM   #9
Undertoad
Radical Centrist
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Cottage of Prussia
Posts: 31,423
Monsanto are also responsible for a version of Roundup that they spray on little Colombian children and make them sick.
Undertoad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-04-2005, 09:17 PM   #10
Radar
Constitutional Scholar
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Ocala, FL
Posts: 4,006
It's utterly laughable that this group of people has a problem with such a logical, fact-filled, intelligent, thoughtful, and unbiased magazine like Reason.
__________________
"I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."
- George Carlin
Radar is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-04-2005, 10:52 PM   #11
tw
Read? I only know how to write.
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Posts: 11,933
When do we get GM marijuana? One that DEA paraquat cannot harm.
tw is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-05-2005, 01:11 AM   #12
xoxoxoBruce
The future is unwritten
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 71,105
Quote:
Originally Posted by Radar
It's utterly laughable that this group of people has a problem with such a logical, fact-filled, intelligent, thoughtful, and unbiased magazine like Reason.
Who you talkin' to, hot dog vender.
__________________
The descent of man ~ Nixon, Friedman, Reagan, Trump.
xoxoxoBruce is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-05-2005, 01:16 AM   #13
xoxoxoBruce
The future is unwritten
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 71,105
Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertoad
Monsanto are also responsible for a version of Roundup that they spray on little Colombian children and make them sick.
And ford is responsible for the truck that ran over my Aunt's cat.
__________________
The descent of man ~ Nixon, Friedman, Reagan, Trump.
xoxoxoBruce is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-05-2005, 09:26 AM   #14
richlevy
King Of Wishful Thinking
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Philadelphia Suburbs
Posts: 6,669
Quote:
Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce
And ford is responsible for the truck that ran over my Aunt's cat.
No, that was me.
Attached Images
 
__________________
Exercise your rights and remember your obligations - VOTE!
I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting. -- Barack Hussein Obama
richlevy is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-05-2005, 11:28 AM   #15
wolf
lobber of scimitars
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Phila Burbs
Posts: 20,774
I think that needs to be added to the growing smiley collection ...
__________________
wolf eht htiw og

"Conspiracies are the norm, not the exception." --G. Edward Griffin The Creature from Jekyll Island

High Priestess of the Church of the Whale Penis
wolf is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 09:28 AM.


Powered by: vBulletin Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.