GE/GMO Industry: Corporate Hijacking of Food and Agriculture

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(Link to article: www.globalresearch.ca/genetic-engineeri ... re/5317339 )

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Last edited by Beauty_pact on 31 Dec 2012, 3:13 am, edited 2 times in total.

Solution: Grow your own veggies.

ruveyn

Monsantooooo

Best Regards,

Jake

Link in response to that nonsense reply: www.ourfutureplanet.org/newsletters/res ... ation%20(3).pdf (that link is of course broken, due to the errors of this forum... copy and paste it, instead)

Our options are thus:

1) Use Genetic Engineering and other modern intensive farming methods to raise food yields to feed a hungry population.
2) Reduce the current population by about 90%.

I am of the opinion that most of the Genetically Engineered foods are safe, because the proteins they produce have been eaten for millenia. We need to be careful if we code for new proteins. The weight of scientific evidence is that there is no health crisis as a result of GMOs being eaten. Even the notoriously-picky ESFA endorses most applications made: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/faqs/faqgmo.htm

The ethics of companies like Monsanto is a whole other issue. They definitely have some scummy practices. However, so do a lot of clothes manufactures, and the world's leading soft drink company is also highly unethical. Does that mean that clothes or soft drinks are unethical? Of course not!

There are some seed companies that carry non-GMO seeds,Baker Creek,Southern Exposure,and Seed Savers.Baker Creek has good info on GMO's,big corporate seed companies are trying to get farmers in poor countries to use their seeds and forget about the heritage crops they have always grown.The seeds cannot be saved thus forcing poor farmers to buy expensive seeds every year.
I had friends that de-tasseled corn in GMO fields and they said there were bio-hazard signs.The pollen has insecticide in it which is toxic to both bad bugs and the good.
They don't call them Frankenfoods for nothing.
The GMO pollen drifts and contaminates non-GMO corn crops,ruining crops that now cannot be certified as organic.It is getting harder to find corn seed that is GMO free.

Organic crops are much, much worse than GM crops. The reason being that organic crops have far lower yields, so they cause starvation, or else require much more space, which damages the natural environment.

I have no interest in supporting the fake "Organic" food industry, either - the onus is upon them to prove that their products are both (1) superior to traditionally-grown and GMO products, and (2) that GMO products are dangerous, and they have failed to do so.

The "Organic" label is nothing more than a ploy by food growers and producers to inspire unfounded belief in the alleged superiority of their products, so that those same growers and producers can charge twice as much for what amounts to the same products raised by traditional methods.

Now it seems that the "Organic" growers and producers feel threatened by the competition that GMO products represent - they seem to know that GMO products are superior in quality to their own products, and can be produced on land and in climates that are normally inhospitable to agriculture - so they seem to be retaliating against this perceived threat to their livelihoods in much the same way that union workers retaliate against superior products from non-union producers: they spread lies and stir up fear against their competition so as to ensure that their products will be preferred by a gullible and ignorant consumer public, in spite of the unnecessarily inflated prices of their so-called "Organic" products.

^^^^^If they cause starvation than that solves the population problem.
I grow organically and my turnip greens don't take up anymore space than a modified crop.
There are organic methods of pest control that are safe,lures with phrenemones that trap insects,row covers,and deterrents.
With chemical fertilizer salts build up in the soil after years and make it infertile.Not using cover crops causes dust bowls when the soil blows away.Cover crops such as clover,vetch,winter wheat and rye add bulk and nitrogen to the soil when tilled under.
Sure there are crop failures but that can happen with GMO's also,drought kills everything.They have yet to come up with a waterless plant.

These are two key areas where GMOs are superior to both "Organic" and traditional foods. They can be engineered to taste bad to insect pests (and still taste good to humans and be good for them, too), and to not need as much or any artificial fertilizer. They can even be engineered to be more tolerant to "salty" growing conditions, and produce food crops where none have been produced for years (if ever).

While it is true that drought will kill off all crops regardless of their origins, this is also another area where "Organic" foods are not superior to GMOs.

I see this conflict in much the same way as the recent elections: The Republicans (the "Organics") are so mired in their narrowly-defined and self-serving mindset that they have lost touch with the aggregate voter (the "Consumer"), while the Democrats (the "GMOs") are willing to accept new ideas and implement them for the benefit of everyone. The Republicans spread lies about birth certificates and voter fraud, while the Democrats simply stuck to the truth. This is why the Republicans lost the presidential election.

This is also why the "Organic" producers will lose this issue, as well.

From Southern Exposure's catalog;
"the U.S. corn blight epidemic of 1970 and the Irish Potato famine of the mid-1840's were examples of the dangers of lack of genetic diversity.In 1970,nearly 80% of the U.S.corn crop was planted in hybrids containing a genetic trait that made the crop vulnerable to blight.Our country came close to losing an entire hybrid corn crop,but all the open pollinated varieties resisted the blight."
" Hybrids may have an advantage in terms of yield and uniformity,but these may only be an advantage to commercial farmers.Many hybrids have been bred primarily for shipping quality-often at the expense of flavor.
Hybrids are often bred for the low-stress conditions,high-fertilizer levels,and intensive cultivation of modern commercial agriculture.Open-pollinated vegetables,on the other hand are the true survivors.They often perform better under adverse conditions,like drought and heat stress.Hybrids may better tolerate the absence of trace minerals-which can mean a less nutritious food product with lower trace mineral content."

I grow most of my own food,I dare you to taste a tomato that I grew compared to a hard,tasteless store tomato that barely passes for food.I have tried some hybrids ,but this year during extreme drought the tomatoes that yielded were Principe Borghese,a heirloom from Sicily and Matt's Wild Cherry,a collected wild variety from Mexico.The same with my heirloom okra and open pollinated peppers and field peas.I've grown so much patty-pan squash that I picked it in five gallon buckets,it is a pre-Columbian heirloom.
These old heirlooms have survived because they produced before modern agriculture,no chemical sprays,fertilizer,bad weather,they handled it all.And the TASTE!! !!Compare a commercial green bean crop,it's made to come off all at once for ease of harvest.But they have no flavor.My pole beans,a native American variety, yield all summer and have the best flavor!!
I have hands on experience and I can tell you for a fact that hybrids are not always a better yielder.And I have no desire to plant anything that has pollen so toxic that it kills butterflies.
Or something that has genes from a salmon spliced into it.Yuk.
But I do think many organic foods are over priced,poor people should be able to buy good,healthy food.

Do we have a corn shortage now? And why not?

ruveyn

^^^^^^I think we do,drought related.And a lot of our corn one goes to ethanol production.Of course I could use moonshine with rising gas prices it may be cheaper.

If there is a corn shortage it is not because of genetic modification of corn.

I think it is silly to use edible corn as a chemical feed stock for petroleum substitutes. There are algae and various inedible weeds which can be converted to either alcohol or hydrocarbon fuels. The use of corn as a means to produce ethanol is a stealth farm subsidy. It is also diverting the use of land away from supporting human lives. There are hungry people that need to be fed and taking their food and making a burnable hydrocarbon out of it, is a sin against Man and God.

ruveyn

I agree,but people just will not get rid of those big gas sucking SUVs,sure if you have a pile of kids(but that's bad in itself) there is no reason for them.People will drive to a store that is in walking distance to buy ONE thing.
The largest town near me,pop.12,000 has a nice public transportation system that no one uses.I see the Radio Flyer looking thing all over town with no passengers.I'd ride it if I lived in town,but then,I'm a tightwad.
SwitchGrass is suppose to be a great source of bio-fuel,it grows like crazy on my land,extreme drought,cold,nothing phases it.It grows completely on it's own.

I hope the first line is a joke. If not, "starvation" and "population problem" are essentially the same thing.
You presumably grow in a very small space. If you were growing in a whole field, your crops could grow bigger if you used chemical fertilisers, for example. To reach the same mass of turnip from organic farming, you'd need to plant more plants in a bigger field.
One of the main hopes for genetically engineered crops is that they will be able to add nodules for nitrogen-fixing bacteria to non-legumes.
Drought resistance can be engineered for. There are plants that survive droughts, they are called xerophytes and include cacti. We can take genes from these plants (obviously some adaptations are better for food crops than others) and use them to create drought-resistant crops.