Hey curious what others think, I'm a big believer in sustainable & permaculture based agriculture but also have heard of some instances where its helped, idk maybe that's monsanto propaganda I turn to you chacha to educate me.
"Golden Rice is a covert attempt to win wider approval for genetically modified food and will not solve problems of malnutrition. Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) – like other problems on malnutrition and hunger – is not caused by the lack of Vitamin A in food, but by people's inability to achieve a balanced diet." https://www.grain.org/article/entries/5177-golden-rice-is-unnecessary-and-dangerous
"Rainbow papaya (Carica papaya L.) is a genetically engineered (GE) cultivar with resistance to papaya ringspot virus (PRSV). This cultivar currently accounts for about 70% of Hawaii's papaya acreage. ... No differences were observed between GE and non-GE papaya for 36 nutrients at any of the tested fruit ripeness stages."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0889157510002693#:~:text=Rainbow%20papaya%20(Carica%20papaya%20L,70%25%20of%20Hawaii's%20papaya%20acreage.&text=No%20differences%20were%20observed%20between,the%20tested%20fruit%20ripeness%20stages.
Biotech dude here:
It's a case-by-case thing. Literally, at least in my country, before approving the use of a new GMO it must be go through a very long and specific set of studies, some are approved, and some are rejected. And most of them never even try to go through the examination process because all those studies are really expensive, so if you have a transgenic creation that makes a small improvement "it's not worth it", which could be shitty.
Anyways, GMO's can be "good" in a lot of instances. They could be good in a lot more instances, BUT first the whole agricultural production system should be changed. "No ethical consumption under capitalism", etc. For example: the glyphosate-resistance transgene "caused" the overuse of glyphosate and its consequences.
It's a INMENSE array of VERY powerful tools, but the problem is how you use them.
I dislike how much local leftists groups are de-facto opposed to them, but I get them, considering they aren't experts and just oppose what fucking Monsanto and agro-oligarchs want, which is a pretty good rule of thumb.
ag engineer here, greetings comrades. I am thankful for your good takes. decommodify agriculture immediately
I was squeamish about bacterial transgenics until I realized that it's not fundamentally so different from what viruses are doing to us all the time, and have been for eons.
I can't remember what percentage of our DNA is viral in origin, but it's a shockingly large one.
Transgenic microorganisms CANNOT be liberated to open air. They are used in contained facilities that should be able to be bleach-nuked if something goes wrong. Yet, spreads happen.
Any approved transgenic organism must be able to be eradicated and should have a limited spread of their genes, which is possible in plants in some cases, but for example, in Mexico where corn was "developed" there are wild species that could be contaminated with transgenes. That's why transgenic maize is not allowed there
Though we may end up having a lot of adaptive utility for GMOs, if we rely on just them to save agriculture and feed humanity, we're not going to make it.
Socialist/post-capitalist countries can have monocultures too- in fact, they have always been envisioned as such. I think modern agriculture is a good example of a problem that goes deeper than capitalism, although getting rid of capitalism is the single greatest step to fixing it.
laws being applied to genomes is bad
US intellectual property laws, at least regarding biotech, are fucking insane
I'm not strictly opposed to this take, but I always point out to people that moving away from monoculture means no more mechanization, which means dramatically increased labor requirements, which in the US means vast exploitation. farm labor is a terrible job. obviously we should fight for farm labor workers and protections, but I'm not convinced farm labor can ever be a good job on a large scale
This is a really good point to make and one I rarely see voiced. Harvesting by hand is tough work, even the ones that are "easier" because its, say, fruit tree harvesting vs the back breaking labor of asparagus harvesting. Sure the fruit starts off above your waist but you still have to carry it in wearable bags back to the bins to be dumped. Even monocultural ag can have huge labor requirements. Hop fields are all identical female plants, but unless you want to scorch the earth that grows your hops with pesticides you have to pay people to manually pull the weeds from the hop fields. Hop fields are all trestled, along with a lot of fruit trees these days. Nothing goes into those fields that can't fit under the wires. Unless the machines are small enough, and certainly for the interim period until we could feasibly implement robot agriculture, it will be humans going in to do that kind of (for lack of a better term) 'clinical' work.
I think there's a lot of unexplored possibility for making farm labor less damaging and exploitative; and I think that a lot more of that side of agriculture would be getting explored in smaller non-mechanized situations that could also help reduce "out of sight out of mind" parts of our food chain.
I have worked as a farm laborer in the US and I'd do it again with the right management.
Right, the influence of agracorp on u.s domestic policy is so wide ranging, from devastating rural communities to pushing the processed foods from those monocrops onto inner cities
GMOs are tools - so yes they are good imo. Many GMOs are good.
Tools can be used (particularly by Capital) for evil. Many GMOs are evil.
Hey I'm an agricultural engineer who has worked with GMOs before and currently researches ag + climate stuff. GMOs are fine, they've done some good and might be able to do a lot more. The problem is though that GMO advocates tend to fall into techno-optimist cliches where they say CRISPR and advanced multi trait GMOS are going to save the world, when they very clearly arent. From a climate perspective, GMOs are next to useless due to the ~13 year development cycle they have, meaning they cannot act nearly fast enough to avert the coming crisis. GMOs and other technical solutions are often propped up by people who dont want to do any of the work that will actually be required to stave off climate change, like massivly overhauling the global economy and clamping down western consumption. They can be useful at some things and we shouldnt throw them aside, but its also not really worth spending a ton of time defending them, and the people who do are usually bad actors.
That potential is THEORETICAL. None of those GMOs exist or actually work in practice. They are part of a coordinated public relations campaign to gain acceptance for the real gmos that actually exsist, which are designed purely to sell more pesticides.
I mean yeah? The technology underpinning genetically modified crops has a tremendous potential to help feed humanity, in particular as we head into times of unprecedented global-scale food scarcity due to climate change. Deriding an entire technology because of the potential for abuse under capitalist systems is stupid as fuck
The technology doesnt work at doing the things you think it has the potential to do. It's pure fantasy copium. You might as well be talking about the potential to genetically engineer super humans. The reality is GMO is a shitty technology used by pesticide companies to sell more pesticide. That's it. It's a technofix designed to solve problems that wouldnt even exist in the first place if it werent for capitalism - like how to grow even more fucking monoculture.
High and Dry Why Genetic Engineering Is Not Solving Agriculture's Drought Problem in a Thirsty World
Deriding an entire technology because of the potential for abuse is stupid
You're acting like i'm stereotyping a minority or some shit lmfao. Technology is NOT neutral. You're just repeating a different version of the "guns dont kill people, people do" argument and it's stupid as fuck.
The technology doesnt work at doing the things you think it has the potential to do. It’s pure fantasy copium
Literally minored in genetics, pretty sure I have a better understanding of the technology underpinning it than you do. Especially when you say shit like "GMO is a shitty technology" when it's not a technology at all but a collection of techniques.
Introducing genetic resistance to viruses (as has been done with several species of squash) or other pests (done for many crops) helps yields, it doesn't inherently promote monoculture.
Using techniques like CRISPR to introduce favorable genes like those isn't inherently different than selecting the crops that did the best at the end of each season and planting those the next year, it's just more efficient and allows you to cross-select things.
Deriding GMOs as "a technofix designed to solve problems that shouldn't exist in the first place" is some serious ideological purity nonsense and is entirely unpragmatic. If someone rolled out some fantasy carbon capture technology to effectively mitigate the effects of climate change tomorrow would you similarly dismiss it as "a technofix designed to solve problems that shouldn't exist in the first place"? Rejecting solutions because the problems shouldn't exist is reckless and foolish.
lol a minor in genetics. Wow you read darwins finches and learned about mendels's peas. The genetics understander has arrived.
GMOs are more than plants. Many of the medicines you take are products of research in genetically modified animals.
Yeah! GMO insulin is a big one, virtually all insulin is produced by an E. coli strain genetically modified to produce exact-replica human insulin. Prior to that all insulin taken by diabetics came from slaughterhouse pigs or cows.
Imagine being opposed to that because pharma companies price-gouge insulin in the US or something like that lol
Nobody seems to have mentioned the health benefits/detriments of GMOs ITT. They are functionally, actually identical to normal foods in terms of health concerns. Literally no difference.
um does this mean the more expensive but gmo-free stuff in supermarkets aren't healthier for you?
goddamnit i've been overpaying for months. can you recommend any reading?
How would you be able to spray them with pesticides if they arent genetically engineered to tolerate the pesticide. fucking idiot.
Yes, but the way Monsanto uses them for the whole "intellectual property" thing is stupid
As others here have said, GMOs aren't inherently bad, it's how they are used. And since we live under capitalism, of course most GMOs are used simply to maximize profits. This means GMOs are used by and large to make crops that work with pesticides. And yes, pesticides are very bad for you. Fwiw I eat organic as much as possible for foods where it makes sense i.e. foods where pesticides are used. Something like avocados, it doesn't matter as much since pesticides aren't typically much of an issue with them.
I read and enjoyed The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Takes place in Thailand after society has mostly collapsed from climate change. One of the main characters is basically a corporate operative from the former USA who works on behalf of a conglomerate that specializes in genetic research/espionage in order to reap even more profit from a collapsing world. I recommend it if you like sci-fi at all.
Yeah that was a good book. Feel like our climate apocalypse future is going to have a lot of similarities, but with fewer of the cool technologies like the kinksprings.
