Posted on 04/25/2008 5:55:05 PM PDT by Kaslin
Food: Today's headlines are filled with Americans expressing their fears of food shortages and frustration with spiraling grocery prices. As part of the solution, it's time to give genetically modified crops a try.
Four years earlier, when southern Africa was tormented by famine, the U.S. offered 540,000 tons of genetically modified grain.
Though the World Health Organization estimated that nearly 14 million Africans, including 2.3 million children under 5, were at risk of starvation, leaders in the region rejected the food.
One, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, called it "poison."
Had Mwanawasa been listening to environmentalists from rich nations too much? Progress-phobic activists have campaigned hard against genetically modified, or biotech, crops. They call them "frankenfood" and fret about their risks and "unnatural" character.
Destruction of property — from hazmat-suit-wearing Greenpeace mobs trampling a field of genetically engineered plants in Britain during the 1990s, to radicals destroying crops more recently at a California research center — is just another part of the crusade.
There's no evidence that biotech foods, which are some of the most thoroughly tested products in history, are harmful.
Humans have been safely altering their food sources for 10,000 years, cross-breeding livestock and agriculture. Genetically modified crops are part of this advance. Yet opposition remains, fueled by ignorance and hysteria.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
“In the fall of 2006, Friends of the Earth publicly asked governments in the hungry African countries of Ghana and Sierra Leone to recall American food aid that contained genetically modified rice.”
On the one hand, it is easy to be an environmentalist, when others must go hungry for your cause.
On the other hand, I remember reading that the issue was that it is normally made impossible for genetically modified crops to yield viable seed.
Translation: Biotech crops have the potential to yield yearly income to Biotech stockholders, since farmers MUST buy seed yearly.
If the yield increase is enough to pay the extra to the Biotech company with yield to spare, it would be worth it. If that's NOT true, nobody would buy the stuff in the first place. The laws of economics still work, even for biotech.
We should learn to eat coal and drink oil.
There’s plenty of both that aren’t allowed any other use so at least we won’t go hungry or thirsty-we will die,of course,but that’s the point isn’t it?
Earth sans man,the liberal environmentalist wet dream.
Why do farmers in the U.S. buy seed yearly if they could save some of the seed and replant it?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
There are people who are not only against GM food, they will not even accept water boiled in the microwave. I think they believe the microwaves destroy all life force in the food or water. There is no reasoning with them, either.
I have heard from a couple farmers that the seeds from the crop is slightly inferior to the originally planted seeds. When replanted their seeds are slightly more inferior. I do not know if that is actually true. I am trying an experiment with beans to see if it is true. I will know in a few years.
I can cite the following examples:
1) China--the famine was caused by the civil war, the invasion of China by the Japanese, and the highly-misguided Great Leap Forward.
2) India--much of the famine-like conditions are caused by the unfortunate caste system.
3) Africa--most of the famines were caused by civil wars and deliberate government policy to drive out "prosperous" farmers.
4) Soviet Union--who can forget the infamous collectivization of farms in the Ukraine from 1928 to 1933 that in the end may have killed 14 million Ukrainians?
5) Europe--they almost had a major famine just after World War II but the Marshall Plan helped Europe revive its own agricultural output.
You can’t do that if the modified seed is deliberately sabotaged to prevent this.
True. The fear might be then that the originals would get lost, or killed off by the modified stuff.
Lost? Maybe. Killed off? I’m not a geneticist.
I don’t get what you’re saying. Isn’t that what’s done anyway?
You are perhaps thinking of a “terminator” gene that prevents seed from reproducing. Monsanto produced seed with such a gene but never used it. The anti GM crowd said GM seed would ‘escape’ to the wild and contaminate the gene pool. Then they turned around and said seed producers were making seed that ripped off the poor because it didn’t save well for a new crop.
No sabotage, rather seed companies gave farmers high quality seed that would germinate dependably year after year.
There is no conspiracy to sabotage anything.
If you’re talking about hybrids they tend to lose most of their vigor in a few generations if they reproduce at all. New seed each year overcomes that problem.
That could be what they were talking about. I don’t know. I have seen farms in my travels that were specific to raising seeds for replanting. It also could be slick marketing. I don’t know enough to know the basics of this. Only what I heard, thus the bean experiment.
I’ll have a double portion of quadro-triticale please....hold the tribbles.
Thank you. Explanations/Updates like that are why I come here.
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