What needs to be rectified is current law that allows Monsanto and similar companies to employ some of their tactics. Not GMO production. Look at what the problem is, and attack the problem, not a side issue. GMO is the side issue, the business practices, the patent law is the problem, the environmental law is the problem.
That's it. Even though I'm not a big government fan; some cases, the federal government must step in. Take away certain patent laws that protect independent research on crop production. Give us the due diligence to truly test the pros and cons of gmo and not allow companies like Monsanto to strike any negative findings because it violates their proprietary patents; yet allows any positive tests to go through. Also, what the fuck is the EPA thinking; allowing double application of a herbicide; when it is known to kill all living things in soil? Are they fucking stupid?
haha, I thought you were going to disagree with me, but I guess we are on the same page. I think you are spot on in this post. I usually hate repping you cause I don't like giving reps to Koreans, but in this case I'll make an exception.
Maybe there is one thing we can all agree on here. Seed patents and maknig it illegal to store seed for the next planting if you buy from Monsanto (et. al.) is a shitty idea.
Exactly. You allow this, eventually will own the rights for humanity to breed. We must have permission from Monsanto for having a child.
I'm guessing you meant to say "more fed", rather than "better fed". There is no way that, as a whole, we are better fed than previous generations. Diabetes and obesity are at all time highs, and are spreading to less industrialized countries. And this is due to the quality (or lack thereof) of food that's being ingested. I think it all boils down to corn subsidies - corn subsidies are costing our country billions of dollars, in order to keep prices down so food manufacturers can continue to feed us cheap junk food and turn record profits. I'd like to see us go in the opposite direction with farming subsidies - stop paying out to monoculture super farms that grow nutrient deficient "food" (you can't even eat the corn they grow!), and instead put all of that money into subsidizing localized organic farms. What this would achieve is: 1 - nutritious food at affordable prices 2 - increase the cost of foods that are causing harmful health effects, which would... 3 - increase the health of our population by reducing the amount of junk food we eat, which would... 4 - decrease the cost of health care Other effects would include: 1 - strengthening local economies by keeping food production/sales local 2 - reducing emissions caused by shipping food long distances 3 - creating localized, rather than centralized (or mechanized), jobs
we are basically on the same page, but a couple quick points. More fed versus better fed, I think this is a matter of perspective. When just being fed so much more, even if it does eventually result in diabetes or some other issue, also produces people with higher IQ, taller, stronger, faster..... So even though we might aim for even better nutrition along with readily available food, just simply having access to more sloppy joes is also better than have a restriction on intake. But yes, the food is not as nutritious as we would hope. But most of that lack of nutrition is not because it's GMO, it's because we choose to eat corn chips instead of corn. We could still get a very nutritious diet with only GMO food if we paid attention to eating low fat diet with lots of veggies. Also, #2 under other effects. I read, I just tried to google it and couldnt find it, but I remember reading an article about how this is actually not true. Because it takes a lot more emissions to grow and transport in smaller batches, that there is actually not an emissions reductions. It was actually calculated in the article I read, It was about a year or two old, I'll look a little more to try and find it but so far no luck.
Hmmm, I'd be interested. I'm doubtful, but interested. Given the fact that we're shipping foods not just within the country, but also from continent to continent and across vast oceans, I find it hard to believe that emissions wouldn't decrease. Especially as low-emission vehicle technology advances, localized transportation should be far less harmful than ocean liners and freight trains. I suppose I should clarify that my model for localized organic farming would be to have each major metropolis surrounded by a multitude of farms within 50 miles of the metropolis (or even within city limits). There's no reason we should grow all our potatoes in Idaho and ship them to Maine. Or that we should be getting our mid-winter strawberries from Venezuela.
In 1900, 90% or more of the US population were farmers. Today, ADM can pretty much feed the country by itself; that's one company. You might interpolate from 90% to near 0% to realize how efficient the big corporate farmers are. It also frees up our time to watch TV or post on message boards. Though a lot of food is local. Milk, for example, has a short shelf life, so it's better to produce it locally rather than have it partially expire on a railroad car or truck.
Thanks. Not a lot that I hadn't heard before, but good to hear it again. I think a major deficit with their article is that it's relying on the "economies of scale" and the higher yield that mega-farms produce over local farms. This is entirely true - Big Ag is concerned first and foremost with yield, and they do produce a MUCH higher yield than you'd ever get out of an organic farm. However, the article makes the argument that local/organic farming would have a detrimental carbon effect because it would need more acreage and fertilizers to replace, pound for pound, the yield currently produced by Big Ag. Sure - if you want to grow the same mass that's currently being grown, that's true. But, it's not necessary that we produce this food at the same rate it's currently being produced. We don't NEED 383 hundredweight of potatoes per acre - we're producing that so that we can get $2 large fries at McD's and $2 bags of potato chips. Likewise, we don't need to be growing the amount of corn that we're growing - it's not even usable as human food without major amounts of processing. Given that a large portion of our food is thrown out, yield is not an important metric in feeding the population. It's only important for profits. With regards to transportation the article said: Eh - another suspect argument. You can have population density AND local farming. You can have inner-city farming AND dense populations. It's not an either/or. Population density's biggest hurdle isn't farming, it's suburbanization. What was once farmland is now strip malls and McMansions. I'd like to see this land returned to the farmers and create an urbal/rural landscape that greatly minimizes suburban sprawl.
So another couple points that were not brought up here but were in the article I can't find, were employees per amount of food produced goes down significantly with big Ag, so part of the increase in emissions would be from transportation to and from work. Also, I guess a lot of smaller farms use tools which are much less efficient, a truck that hauls 1 ton at a time in from the fields vs a truck that hauls 10 tons in at a time. I think this is one of the areas, where if you looked into it closely, depending on the type of numbers you choose to say are important, you could argue for either side. The truth? That's something else all together. But, I think this is one of the less important arguments on the subject. There are so many other, less fuzzy, arguments to be made.
FYI guys, the amount of greenhouse gas from tilling the fields after harvest is pretty significant. Keep in mind what the farmers are doing is working organic matter back into the soil. The breakdown of organic matter creates CO2 emissions. So when big ag over produces 2/3 of their farms on wasted food; that landscape is wasted emissions.
