An anti-GMO luddite apologizes

This post is for you, "DNAprotection". All the rational people on RIU await a similar apology from you.


http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/lecture-to-oxford-farming-conference-3-january-2013/

http://reason.com/blog/2013/01/04/environmentalist-admits-he-peddled-anti

"Somewhat to the discomfort of his green comrades-in-arms, British activist Mark Lynas has been evolving in his views on various environmental issues lately. For example, Lynas now admits that he was wrong when declared that biotech crops posed significant risks to people and the natural world. In a speech delivered yesterday at the Oxford Farming Conference Lynas declared:

From Mark Lynas' lecture before the Oxfard Farming Conference:

"In a sense we’ve been here before. When Paul Ehrlich published the Population Bomb in 1968, he wrote: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” The advice was explicit – in basket-case countries like India, people might as well starve sooner rather than later, and therefore food aid to them should be eliminated to reduce population growth.

It was not pre-ordained that Ehrlich would be wrong. In fact, if everyone had heeded his advice hundreds of millions of people might well have died needlessly. But in the event, malnutrition was cut dramatically, and India became food self-sufficient, thanks to Norman Borlaug and his Green Revolution.
It is important to recall that Borlaug was equally as worried about population growth as Ehrlich. He just thought it was worth trying to do something about it. He was a pragmatist because he believed in doing what was possible, but he was also an idealist because he believed that people everywhere deserved to have enough to eat.

So what did Norman Borlaug do? He turned to science and technology. Humans are a tool-making species – from clothes to ploughs, technology is primarily what distinguishes us from other apes. And much of this work was focused on the genome of major domesticated crops – if wheat, for example, could be shorter and put more effort into seed-making rather than stalks, then yields would improve and grain loss due to lodging would be minimised.

Before Borlaug died in 2009 he spent many years campaigning against those who for political and ideological reasons oppose modern innovation in agriculture. To quote: “If the naysayers do manage to stop agricultural biotechnology, they might actually precipitate the famines and the crisis of global biodiversity they have been predicting for nearly 40 years.”

Why are so many nations banning GMO products? Serious question.

abandonconflict said:

Why are so many nations banning GMO products? Serious question.

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Because people are foolish and superstitious and easily led astray by emotional appeals from people like Mark Lynas. Serious answer.

Ad Verecundiam . Bandwagon. Ad Populum. Ad Baculum.

Thread fail! Zero star.

I disagree with patenting nature.

Traditionally, farmers in all nations saved their own seed from year to year. However since the early 1900s hybrid crops have been widely used in the developed world and seeds to grow these crops must be purchased each year from seed producers. [SUP][/SUP]The offspring of the hybrid corn, while still viable, lose the beneficial traits of the parents, resulting in the loss of hybrid vigor. In these cases, the use of hybrid plants has been the primary reason for growers not saving seed, not intellectual property issues. However, for non-hybrid biotech crops, such as transgenic soybeans, seed companies use intellectual property lawhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailment and tangible property common law, each expressed in contracts, to forbid farmers from saving seed.

Corporations say that they need product control in order to prevent seed piracy, to fulfill financial obligations to shareholders, and to invest in further GM development.

Detractors say that patent rights give corporations a dangerous amount of control over their product.[SUP][/SUP] Others claim that patenting seeds gives companies excessive power over something that is vital for everyone.

I would say that a good example for this debate is autoflowering seeds. I don't want to be stuck continually buying shitty seeds. You can't even clone autos. They are far less potent too. This would lead me to assume that such seed breeding for other crops are not designed for anything other than patentable traits and traits conducive toward controlling seed piracy while being easier to grow is a side effect.

desert dude said:

Because people are foolish and superstitious and easily led astray by emotional appeals from people like Mark Lynas. Serious answer.

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So national governments are passing laws because they follow demagogy...

Even with out the possibility of the crops themselves being dangerous, I have outlined in post #7 of this thread why it is a sound economic policy for these nations to ban those crops. In order to protect their farmers from multinational corporations that our country refuses to protect us from (hell--it seems the US wants Monsanto to control our farmers). The only purpose of the hybrids and modified crops is to keep farmers buying seeds every year.

desert dude said:

Because people are foolish and superstitious and easily led astray by emotional appeals from people like Mark Lynas. Serious answer.

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your disparity and double standards when it comes to acceptable scientific evidence is startling and would make any sane, rational person want to light their face on fire.

You cannot patent nature, only inventions. Don't you think Dole would have patented the banana and pineapple if they could have? cn

All this time I though OG Kush was a hybrid to increase stonage and taste. I was wrong. It was all about those pesky Dutch seed producers wanting to control farmer lives!

cannabineer said:

You cannot patent nature, only inventions. Don't you think Dole would have patented the banana and pineapple if they could have? cn

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You sure about that?

Canna Sylvan said:

All this time I though OG Kush was a hybrid to increase stonage and taste. I was wrong. It was all about those pesky Dutch seed producers wanting to control farmer lives!

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Is that an auto strain?

abandonconflict said:

Is that an auto strain?

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Ban Cannabis Sativa sub-species Rudaleris!

cannabineer said:

You cannot patent nature, only inventions. Don't you think Dole would have patented the banana and pineapple if they could have? cn

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Their working on it cn.
Its not about patenting a naturally existing DNA sequence etc like just any variety of banana, its about taking that existing map and then redesigning it in some way to be unique from all other naturally occurring varieties, what makes the sequencing patentable is the very fact that it could not necessarily happen in nature as it occurs in the patentable sequencing.
In other words "A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse.[SUP][1][/SUP] Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes.", but the resulting mule is still not yet patentable, where on the other hand:
Monsanto files patent for new invention: the pig

Greenpeace researcher uncovers chilling patent plans

On this page

• Help us stop patents on life

Feature story - August 2, 2005 It's official. Monsanto Corporation is out to own the world's food supply, the dangers of genetic engineering and reduced biodiversity notwithstanding, as they pig-headedly set about hog-tying farmers with their monopoly plans. We've discovered chilling new evidence of this in recent patents that seek to establish ownership rights over pigs and their offspring.


zoom
The Earth is flat, pigs were invented by Monsanto, and genetically modified organisms are safe. Right.


In the crop department, Monsanto is well on their way to dictating what consumers will eat, what farmers will grow, and how much Monsanto will get paid for seeds. In some cases those seeds are designed not to reproduce sowable offspring. In others, a flock of lawyers stand ready to swoop down on farmers who illegally, or even unknowingly, end up with Monsanto's private property growing in their fields.
Oneway or another, Monsanto wants to make sure no food is grown that they don't own -- and the record shows they don't care if it's safe for the environment or not. Monsanto has aggressively set out to bulldoze environmental concerns about its genetically engineered (GE) seeds at every regulatory level.
read more here:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/monsanto-pig-patent-111/

abandonconflict said:

I disagree with patenting nature.

Traditionally, farmers in all nations saved their own seed from year to year. However since the early 1900s hybrid crops have been widely used in the developed world and seeds to grow these crops must be purchased each year from seed producers. The offspring of the hybrid corn, while still viable, lose the beneficial traits of the parents, resulting in the loss of hybrid vigor. In these cases, the use of hybrid plants has been the primary reason for growers not saving seed, not intellectual property issues. However, for non-hybrid biotech crops, such as transgenic soybeans, seed companies use intellectual property law and tangible property common law, each expressed in contracts, to forbid farmers from saving seed.

Corporations say that they need product control in order to prevent seed piracy, to fulfill financial obligations to shareholders, and to invest in further GM development.

Detractors say that patent rights give corporations a dangerous amount of control over their product. Others claim that patenting seeds gives companies excessive power over something that is vital for everyone.

I would say that a good example for this debate is autoflowering seeds. I don't want to be stuck continually buying shitty seeds. You can't even clone autos. They are far less potent too. This would lead me to assume that such seed breeding for other crops are not designed for anything other than patentable traits and traits conducive toward controlling seed piracy while being easier to grow is a side effect.

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You think Monsanto and other biotech firms are trying to make a buck? Get out of town.

If these GM crops were not desirable for farmers, i.e. more profitable, then why on earth would the farmers buy and plant them? Farmers have a choice, they don't have to buy the new wonder crops. They can continue on in the old ways.

If the biotech firms cannot make a buck selling the product of their labors, then they are out of business. Is that in the best interest of the world? Is it better for the billions of poor people to starve? Norman Borlaug did not seem to think so.

"
And, thanks to supposedly environmental campaigns spread from affluent countries, we are perilously close to this position now. Biotechnology has not been stopped, but it has been made prohibitively expensive to all but the very biggest corporations.

It now costs tens of millions to get a crop through the regulatory systems in different countries. In fact the latest figures I’ve just seen from CropLife suggest it costs $139 million to move from discovering a new crop trait to full commercialisation, so open-source or public sector biotech really does not stand a chance.

There is a depressing irony here that the anti-biotech campaigners complain about GM crops only being marketed by big corporations when this is a situation they have done more than anyone to help bring about.

In the EU the system is at a standstill, and many GM crops have been waiting a decade or more for approval but are permanently held up by the twisted domestic politics of anti-biotech countries like France and Austria. Around the whole world the regulatory delay has increased to more than 5 and a half years now, from 3.7 years back in 2002. The bureaucratic burden is getting worse."

Canna Sylvan said:

Ban Cannabis Sativa sub-species Rudaleris!

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Ruderalis is not a subspecies of Sativa. Ruderalis is a species of cannabis. Cannabis is classified as a genus, it's species are classified as Indica, Sativa and Ruderalis. However, since they meet the criteria for subspecies, Cannabis should be reclassified botanically as a species and cannabiceae as the genus but we all know scientists have better things to do than study cannabis.

If you want to talk genetics in a thread about genetics on a fucking cannabis growing site, know your shit or get ridiculed.

Don't worry, I provide ire free of charge.

UncleBuck said:

your disparity and double standards when it comes to acceptable scientific evidence is startling and would make any sane, rational person want to light their face on fire.

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MONSANTO!!!!

Check your drawers, Buck, I think you soiled yourself.

By the way, have you paid your federal, state, and local income taxes for your 2012 treadmill sales?

Leach.

desert dude said:

You think Monsanto and other biotech firms are trying to make a buck? Get out of town.

If these GM crops were not desirable for farmers, i.e. more profitable, then why on earth would the farmers buy and plant them? Farmers have a choice, they don't have to buy the new wonder crops. They can continue on in the old ways.

If the biotech firms cannot make a buck selling the product of their labors, then they are out of business. Is that in the best interest of the world? Is it better for the billions of poor people to starve? Norman Borlaug did not seem to think so.

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Just like Iceland didn't have to take loans from the IMF. Before you decry strawman, it is an analogy.