How 4H Is Helping Big Ag Take Over Africa 377
Lasrick writes 4H is in Africa, helping to distribute Big Ag products like DuPont's Pioneer seeds through ostensibly good works aimed at youth. In Africa, where the need to produce more food is especially urgent, DuPont Pioneer and other huge corporations have made major investments. But there are drawbacks: "DuPont's nutritious, high-yielding, and drought-tolerant hybrid seed costs 10 times as much. While Ghanaians typically save their own seeds to plant the next year, hybrid seeds get weaker by the generation; each planting requires another round of purchasing. What's more, says Devlin Kuyek, a researcher with the sustainable-farming nonprofit Genetic Resources Action International, because hybrid seeds are bred for intensive agriculture, they typically need chemicals to thrive."
So, does water cost more? (Score:4, Insightful)
What are the possible choices for farmers?
1. grow crappy crops with free seeds and lots of expensive water,
2. grow good groups with seeds that you need to pay for but use less water?
#2 will make you more money, so the cost of the seeds is a non-factor. #1 will make you poor, because when it doesn't rain your crops die.
So, what exactly is the issue?
Re:So, does water cost more? (Score:5, Interesting)
You are demonstrating a classic lack of understanding about farming and agriculture. Reality is not the either or situation that you hypothesize.
In the real world we save our best seed and livestock year to year using that to grow the next generation. With each generation the plants and animals become more adapted, stronger and do better with the local conditions. The seed and livestock are free, other than having to save some back from the harvest. This is how we have traditionally improved our stock, both plants and animals, for thousands of years. It works without paying high prices for fancy seeds.
Thus the option is #0, which you completely neglected to consider.
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What you say is true but there is more to it. The GMO crops are often immune to diseases that plague traditional crops. They thrive where others die. They produce more per acre. There is a reason farmers buy the GMO seeds and that is that it makes them money. Yes they have to go back to buy more seeds but I remember my Grandfather buying new seed in the sixties. He didn't keep seed over year to year either. Even then it was often hybrid crops that didn't have the same properties when used as seed.
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How exactly are GMO seeds better that non-GMO seeds with otherwise similar qualities? highly selected, high yield, adapted to the conditions and ease of farming etc., even "evil" dependency on buying seed every year.
I believe you get very small gain at the cost of totally unpredictable genetic pollution of the environment and unknown costs of it.
The risk/gain seems bad to me. I'm the kind of guy to favor nuclear power and to push for a ban on agricultural GMOs. They're offensive for scientific and humane re
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GMO crops do reduce margins, no doubt. But the notion that they turn a formerly profit-rich enterprise into slave labor is laughable.
That's a notion that exists only in your imagination. Nobody's claiming that farmers were formerly wealthy (except folks like you looking to tilt at strawmen). What actually happens is that people who don't have a lot already (subsistence farmers) and what few resources they have get turned into profit-generation centres for multinationals. They *possibly* might grow more crops; they *possibly* might eat a bit better; they *certainly* will not be any better off economically, since all the money (and the pol
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They were using GMO crops, the big difference is that they we doing GMO through selective breeding, hybrid seeds, and a whole lot of guess and hope. Instead of what we think of today where we have the gnome of corn mapped and we can work with specific elements of it to intentionally cause the mutations we want to propagate. 100 years ago people worked to do the same thing, finding mutations that resulted in beneficial traits, then finding ways to breed it consistently.
The existence of hybrid seeds far preda
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I would argue that a more technically accurate term is unnecessary because they would both describe the exact same thing: the breeding and cultivation of a mutated of spring of an existing crop.
Mutations are constantly occurring, even when the organism has evolved to the point where it is no longer in need of additional mutations to continue its existence.
The difference between us manually manipulating a gene and naturally selecting a set of plants with the desired mutations boils down to a level of effort.
Re: So, does water cost more? (Score:3)
No, its because of point 4 and the fact the required yields were much lower as the revolution hit europe to prevent country wide starvation and social unrest because of famine.
Many areas of the world are dealing with more irregular rainfall, and many don't have giant excesses of water to waste (especially relative to the population you are trying to feed).
Remember mass starvation isn't allowed. It leads to large scale uprisings. So the question you have to ask is how do we remove the pest and water issues
Re: So, does water cost more? (Score:4, Insightful)
The market chooses GMO.
Um, which market would that be? Over here it looks like the market has chosen otherwise.
Also, get back to us when you understand what "choice" means. The fact you can begin a sentence with, "It not like someone takes a gun and forces...," and apparently keep a straight face tells us that you don't.
Re:So, does water cost more? (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, if that's really how it works, why do American farmers plant so much agribusiness seed? Are they all wrong, and losing money? Because if there's one thing that a farmer will ask when you suggest a change to his growth protocol, is how is it going to make him more money.
Hybrid vigor is a thing, and the only way to maintain said vigor across generations is to grow inbred plants, and then cross them purposefully. This works without GMOs, and is easy to prove.
Again, for your option to be true, hundreds of thousands of farmers in the US are making terrible choices, season after season. 95% of soybeans planted in America come from agribusiness: The seeds people had just can't compete in yield. How do you explain farmer's behavior?
Re:So, does water cost more? (Score:4, Informative)
"Most do not, and most farmers have failed or are underwater financially specifically because the only buy pioneer/du pont/etc."
I live in farming country and believe this is simply untrue. Provide a cite please.
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And selling GMO seeds is taking away option #0... how?
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Yeah but if that were working so well then DuPont would be buying seeds from the Africans, right? Clearly in this instance DuPont has done a better job making superior seeds than the locals have. Otherwise this would not be an issue.
Re:So, does water cost more? (Score:4, Informative)
We did that for millennia before switching to hybrid seed. Ever consider that there might be a reason why farmers would be willing to pay more for their seed? Over the past century hybrid seeds, as well as increased focus on plant breeding, have given massive yield gains. No one is saying that locally adapted traits shouldn't be used, of course they should, everyone including the companies selling they hybrid seeds know that, but hybrid vigor is a very real and very powerful thing, and there's no way around that.
Re:So, does water cost more? (Score:4, Informative)
??? Dude, that is the way my great-grandfather farmed when he moved from New York to homestead in the Iowa territory. Most grains haven't been grown from saved seed for two generations. Pigs are now hybred breeds. Dairy has been using artificial insemination breeding programs for two generations. You are a little behind the times, my friend. Before you go spouting off about agricultural science, I suggest you learn some..
Mod Check (Score:3)
This post is spot on, because many of the people impacted by the influx of GMO seeds are sustenance farmers, not profit based farms. Attempting to convert them to a money making agriculture system does not work very well because the people have little to no income sources to go buy food that people are selling. The few jobs these companies create do not support the economy, and the pay is so low that it can't support the economy.
The current reality is that these small governments must subsidize what used
Re:So, does water cost more? (Score:4, Insightful)
#2 will make you more money, so the cost of the seeds is a non-factor. #1 will make you poor, because when it doesn't rain your crops die.
So, what exactly is the issue?
The issue is that you didn't RTFA.
Most farmers cannot afford the seeds, so the cost turns out to be the main factor.
Add in the price of synthetic fertilizers and most farmers can only use DuPont seeds if their government subsidizes the products.
There are important questions surrounding the wisdom of allowing 1 corporation to be a choke point for a significant portion of any country's agricultural output.
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What are the possible choices for farmers?
You forgot 3. grow good crops with free seeds.
So, what exactly is the issue?
Repressive Intellectual Property laws are prolonging global poverty and hunger by restricting access to technologies that could realistically be provided freely or at cost.
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But, BIG AG! I mean, how do I understand these things without attributing them to boogeymen?
Re:So, does water cost more? (Score:4, Interesting)
What are the possible choices for farmers?
1. grow crappy crops with free seeds and lots of expensive water,
2. grow good groups with seeds that you need to pay for but use less water?
#2 will make you more money, so the cost of the seeds is a non-factor. #1 will make you poor, because when it doesn't rain your crops die.
So, what exactly is the issue?
this is a completely wrong analysis. if (2) was true those people would have been dead centuries or millenia ago. the fact that they are still alive tells you that they get by, and that, honestly, is good enough.
there was an attempt a few decades ago to do exactly what DuPont is doing [again]. i do not understand why 1st world countries do not leave the 3rd world alone to grow their own food. 1st world conditions are NOT THE SAME as 3rd world conditions.
the study that i heard about was exactly the same situation. a 3rd world country which had extremely poor yields was interfered with by a 1st world country providing donations of high-yield maize. for three to four years the success of the trials resulted in bumper crops and the surrounding farmers clambered onto the 1st world genetic variety maize.
then there was a drought.
the high-yield 1st world maize died, and the entire area went into famine. next year, because nothing had grown, nobody had any food the year after, either.
basically it turned out that the low-yield maize had a MASSIVE genetic diversity. some variants thrived in good conditions, some grew successfully *EVEN IN DROUGHT CONDITIONS*. no matter what happened, those people always got some food. not necessarily a lot, but enough so that they didn't die.
now the problem was with this stupid, stupid interference by a 1st world country was that because everyone in the area had converted over to this wonderful high-yield maize, NOBODY HAD ANY OF THE OLD GENETIC VARIETY LEFT.
it was a decade before the country properly recovered, and that was just from one drought.
so the conclusion is, unescapably, that DuPont is intent on killing people just to make a profit, as this isn't the first time that providing 1st world maize to 3rd world countries has gone very very wrong.
just leave them alone. we *DON'T* know better.
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DuPont does.
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Who exactly are you alleging is being "corrupt" here?
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It's plain old organized crime in every aspect. That is the cause of most of the world's poverty today.
Works as intended. WONTFIX [lewrockwell.com].
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No, a liberal.
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Are you saying breeding and engineering DuPont's special seeds is 'trivial'? I don't know if I'd say that.
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Remember that patents are location bound, so only if they're patented in that specific country AND that country accepts that accidental cross-breeding falls under the patents, big ag may be able to do something.
Alternative? (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of disparaging charitable works in Africa that a rational person will perceive to be doing good to feed hungry people, why don't you focus on donating money to promote "open source" crop lines somewhere in the States so there are good alternatives to give to Africa and the rest of the world? Put your money where your mouth is (in a couple of senses).
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This is very much the case. Much of west Africa (Ghana in particular is mentioned in TFS) alternates between "too wet" and "too dry". In the dry season, the winds from the Sahara leave farmland covered in moisture-sapping dust, which isn't particularly fertile when the wet season comes, but it sure is good for letting the water run away downhill.
The best chance a farmer has is to have mostly-level farmland where he can control the runoff, to lengthen the short ideal growing season. There's not much land tha
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They don't even need "open source crop lines", whatever that is. The best alternative, least likely to be applied, is for them to lay down their damn weapons. They already produce enough food to feed themselves. Most of it rots in warehouses, waiting for a higher price, or for lack of transport, or the truck's been hijacked. Your "charitable organizations" are only creating a dependency situation for profit.
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Your "charitable organizations" are only creating a dependency situation for profit.
The 4H? Seriously?
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" And Big Ag doesn't just feed hippies, it feeds the world, and there currently isn't any good substitute for it."
Bullshit. We have plenty of alternatives to chemical-intensive agriculture. From vertical farming methods to advanced hydroponics methods that can reduce water AND nutrient requirements by 95% and 60% respectively.
~former research director for international horticultural company
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" And Big Ag doesn't just feed hippies, it feeds the world, and there currently isn't any good substitute for it."
Bullshit. We have plenty of alternatives to chemical-intensive agriculture. From vertical farming methods to advanced hydroponics methods that can reduce water AND nutrient requirements by 95% and 60% respectively.
~former research director for international horticultural company
How about cost effective alternatives? Methods that don't require the poor starve to death because your sci-fi bullshiat costs so much compared to planting seed in a field.
If your alternatives really were cost effective alternatives, where are the large scale operations producing food and selling it for less than the "chemical-intensive agriculture"?
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Yes, there are plenty of crazy-ass ways to grow food that reduce water and nutrient requirements... but they don't work in the real world. In my back yard I can afford to have my crop crash one year because my crazy food plot experiment failed. In Africa, you die. There is no government safety net for your family to fall into. They'll die to. You need crops that will grow no matter what. They need to grow in drought, in flood, survive pests, survive in poor soil. For that you need GMO/Fertilizers/Pesticides
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There is more to GM seeds than short-term feeding of people.
There's the patents - putting too much power in the hands of a handful of people. In the end we may be stuck with eating Soylent Green.
Then there's the problem of plants grown from hybrid seeds, which do not produce viable seeds themselves, so you have to buy seeds every time. You can't use seeds you harvest from your own crops any more. Cross-breeding between hybrid and traditional strains (this will happen, if only accidentally) introduces these
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Re:Alternative? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to, but Big Ag and GMO proponents have lobbied hard to keep labels on food from saying if it is GMO or not. If this shit is soooooo good for us, then label it and let the market decide.
GMO foods are harmful in exactly the same way that homeopathy can cure major illnesses. i.e. it may be true, but nobody has proven it yet, so it hasn't entered the pages of peer reviewed research, just like homeopathy hasn't penetrated Western medicine. I would guess that's the reason that laws about labeling of GMO foods aren't ubiquitous. If you are aware of respectable studies that prove otherwise about GMO foods, I'd love to see them -- seriously.
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Wholly feck, did you just say that? (Score:3)
Kosher labeling is required by the Jewish community, and a Kosher Jew can't purchase anything not stamped and certified Kosher. People pay for the Kosher labeling and won't purchase anything else. The Jewish inspectors that stamp approval take pride in their ability and don't try and hide the Kosher label. They stand by the label and it's prominently displayed on _every_ package. Culturally speaking "Kosher" means "up front", "on the up and up", "open and honest"
You are really trying to compare that to
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Stamping Kosher is like stamping something non-GMO. Stamping GMO is like stamping non-Kosher. Jews absolutely do not get foodstuffs stamped "this is not Kosher". It's 100% beef far more often than it's 0% pork.
If you require that you only eat non-GMO food, then get food stamped as non-GMO. I will support *that* stamp. If that stamp is not legally defensible, then you have a legitimate grievance. I support mandatory labelling of known health consequences (like nutritional information), and I support tr
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They already mark organic foods and it's not hurting sales of non-organic produce at all. If they put GMO on the label most people aren't going to pony up to pay two or three times the price for non-GMO. If they were the high priced organic produce would sell better.
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Any company can sell products and label them as GMO-free, right? If so then the analogy to Kosher is apt and no government action is required. If you want organic (which is meaningless) then buy organic. If you want no HFCS then buy no HFCS. If you want GMO-free then buy GMO-free.
GMO is safe. All concerts are nonsense. That's fine, people are allowed to clint to nonsense and they are allowed to make purchasing decisions based on nonsense and companies are allowed to cater to those decisions. But let's keep
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This is a bad car analogy. Homeopathic medicine does not cure anything, you might as well compare homeopathy to prayer.
My point was that homeopathy has the same level of peer reviewed, scientific research supporting it as do hippie paranoias about GMO food. Specifically: none at all.
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Actually there was a study a couple of years back that showed people who used homeopathy methods were healthier then the norm. It was theorized that the reason for this was that the users of homeopathy also made various other choices that led to healthier outcomes, things like not smoking, exercising and eating a better diet.
The same idea applies to GMO crops, while no more unhealthy then regular crops that are pushed by big agriculture companies, the problem is that the traits they are aiming for does not
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So wouldn't that mean you would want homeopathic remedies clearly labeled as such so you can make an informed choice?
First, your comment is actually hilarious given the subject matter. Simply drinking tap water or inhaling air wherever you are may involve inadvertently taking in homeopathic "drugs", because there are always trace amounts of interesting things floating around in different places. (Yes, the land of homeopathy is a silly, silly place to be.)
To answer your question seriously, absolutely I would like a medication to inform me whether it is merely homeopathic. And relax, because the government is way ahead
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First, your comment is actually hilarious given the subject matter. Simply drinking tap water or inhaling air wherever you are may involve inadvertently taking in homeopathic "drugs", because there are always trace amounts of interesting things floating around in different places. (Yes, the land of homeopathy is a silly, silly place to be.)
Which is not what anyone would possibly be referring to.
Before going any further in this conversation... do you know what homeopathic medicine is?
Re:Nope (Score:4, Insightful)
You are confused about what homeopathy means: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]. Homeopathic medicine is very specifically not medicine.
You are thinking of traditional medicine. Which is, indeed, not 100% hogwash (not 0% either).
quite frankly if there is no proven harm there should be no harm in a label.
It's just arbitrary. Might as well label something as made by people with princess leia hair. I'm pretty sure there's no proven harm, but I would oppose a label for that.
Agitate for people to label things as non-GMO. That's what you really want anyway. When you go to the store for milk you don't check each liquid vessel to exclude the ones that contain traces of apple, orange, alcohol, etc.., you go for milk. If you want something that contains no GMO, then ask for no-GMO labels (and enforce truth-in-advertising laws).
Lets not forget that a large reason for GMO seeds is to increase yields by protecting plants from pests. We are already seeing super pests [ucsusa.org] that can bypass the built in GMO protection and creating a much larger threat to agriculture than existed previously.
Here is an actual point. However, labelling isn't likely to solve that, you'd have to completely ban them. I'm extremely skeptical that we are worse off, but I'm willing to hear more. So far it looks just like the same "Red Queen's Race" evolution has always provided.
Re:Alternative? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's really about a binary label of GMO/No GMO being pretty deceitful, and pretty expensive for what you get, especially for very processed foods.
The argument of wanting information would make a lot more sense if the labeling was actually detailed, as it's not like there is only a single strain of GMO corn in the market: We are well in the hundreds over the years, just with corn and soybeans. Surely a variety of GMO that has been out there for 10 years is different than one that is new for this season, right?
When you make the label binary, then what you are really telling the consumer is that all that matters is whether there are GMOs in there or not, and that only makes any sense for people that just think that GMOs are bad in principle.
There's also the costs involved. It's not as if most companies out there buy their grain from a single farmer, so accurate labeling puts quite a bit of expense into the entire supply chain.
You'd be better off just labeling certified organic. Then you at least only put the onus on those that really want a certification, instead of on everyone. Not that it increases food safety anyway: You'd be surprised by how toxic many treatments that are certified organic can be,
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When you make the label binary, then what you are really telling the consumer is that all that matters is whether there are GMOs in there or not,
When you make the label unary, you are telling the customer nothing. It is left as an option for the manufacturer to engage in more detailed labeling which provides more information than mandatory. A GMO labeling requirement does not preclude the manufacturer providing information on the type of genetic modification in question on the package, or on their website (perhaps provided to the customer via QR code.)
You'd be better off just labeling certified organic.
Ah, but which organic certification? The USDA certification is a pathetic joke.
Not that it increases food safety anyway: You'd be surprised by how toxic many treatments that are certified organic can be,
Would I be?
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Is there a law against labeling food as GMO-free? If so, let's get rid of that law with great haste!
If not your argument is baseless.
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Why no labels? This is an issue that comes up again and again, and there are plenty of good reasons:
1) You irrationally single out a single aspect of crop improvement. Where are the labels for hybrids, open pollinated lines, crops developed with mutagenesis, crops developed with induced polyploidy, bud sports, crops produced with somaclonal variation, crops produced via embryo rescue or with wide crossing in their lineage, ect.? We don't label them. We don't label them because corn produced via a double
Dihydrogen Monoxide. (Score:2, Offtopic)
because hybrid seeds are bred for intensive agriculture, they typically need chemicals to thrive
...unlike natural, free-range grains that are invulnerable to pests and thrive under the gentle light of the waxing crescent moon. Sorry, but you lost me at "chemicals". Yes. They're matter-based lifeforms, and need a whole slew of chemicals to exist.
Chemicals! (Score:4, Funny)
Chemicals are *everywhere*, in all of our food, and many will kill you! I only eat chemical-free food, mainly neutrons and assorted leptons.
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Well, if your assortment of leptons includes positrons, some of them will hit the neutrons and undergo inverse beta decay, and then the electrons in your Mixed Lepton Soup will bind with them and make atoms, and then chemistry. So you're not safe.
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I would mod you up so much if I hadn't already posted.
It is about time bullshit journalism and marketing got castrated.
Hybrids (Score:2, Troll)
Sure, hybrid corn gets weaker by the generation, but it's also far higher yielding.
American farmers buy it because they make more money buying seeds every year than they would saving seeds. Thinking that farmers from Ghana will not be able to make a rational decision between buying industrial seed every year or saving whatever strain they have already from year to year is a not so subtle form of racism.
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Or maybe what is or isn't rational varies based on local conditions. Capital availability is a concern. Distribution infrastructure (and differences in cost based on same) is a concern.
Ghana is one of the best-governed countries in its region, but even so, there's still an infrastructure gap --
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Thinking that farmers from Ghana will not be able to make a rational decision between buying industrial seed every year or saving whatever strain they have already from year to year is a not so subtle form of racism.
Now that you've made your mind about it, why don't you go read the actual article, and more about the issue.
Its far more complicated issue than a simple price per yield, with aspects of the ethics of using 4H as free advertising for Dupont, with the consideration that the money paid to Dupont fo
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So, the Dupont corn tastes better & produces more edible grain. Enough so that the local competition is a "losing proposition".
And this is bad, why?
Do keep in mind that industrialization pretty much requires that you get some of those farmers out of the fields and int
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The problem comes in if in a couple of years the DuPont seed is not readily available, perhaps due to war or perhaps just a corporate decision to raise prices above what is locally affordable.
Always stupid to be too dependent on an entity across the sea who doesn't give a fuck about you.
So "Big Ag" is short for (Score:2, Insightful)
"Big Agriculture", and not "Big Silver". I thought this was about mining silver in Africa.
Proprietary seeds (Score:2)
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People that say things like this have never been to Africa. These farmers don't have debt. There's no one on earth that'd give them a loan. The likelihood of them dieing in the next 12 months is higher than them defaulting on a loan. Yes, there are countries where farmers have big enough farms that they end out taking out loans for seeds and going into debt. If we could actually get Africa to that point? We'd have already worked a miracle and can start worrying about the debt problems.
This is bad (Score:5, Funny)
I've never owned a farm.
I've never planted or harvested a crop.
I've never used fertilizer.
I've never seen GMO seeds.
I've never gone a day without food.
I've never been to Africa.
But I know this is really bad.
Sent from my iPhone
You're everything that's wrong in this world. (Score:2)
I've never owned a farm.
I've never planted or harvested a crop.
I've never used fertilizer.
I've never seen GMO seeds.
I've never gone a day without food.
I've never been to Africa.
But I know this is really bad.
Sent from my iPhone
You don't know anything about the topic, and aren't involved or affected, but you're going to pass judgement on other people's choices.
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DuPont only cares about the money (Score:2)
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Of course they only care about the money; that's what corporations are supposed to do.
(I mean, could you please make up your mind whether you want corporations to engage in politics or not? Sometimes you want corporations to get drawn and quartered if they as much as utter a squeak on social or political issues, at other times, you whine and complain that "they only care about the money".)
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Of course they only care about the money; that's what corporations are supposed to do.
(I mean, could you please make up your mind whether you want corporations to engage in politics or not? Sometimes you want corporations to get drawn and quartered if they as much as utter a squeak on social or political issues, at other times, you whine and complain that "they only care about the money".)
How is anybody forcing you to buy their plants? If you think that non-sterile, non GMO crops are a better deal, just buy those instead. Where is the "criminal extortion"?
This is not marketed to me, but their seed is contaminating the gene pool in African seeds via the subsistence farmers who wind up trying to use them.
If you think that its OK to screw over people to make a buck then I really don't need to elaborate further on the ethics involved.
Open-source Seeds....kill Big Ag (Score:2)
A few years ago, this was started: http://www.opensourceseediniti... [opensource...iative.org]
For some reason they haven't spread into Africa - but are all over North America/Europe in a large way, someone needs to start providing higher quality seed options for the poorest farmers of the world rather than leave the door wide open for obvious pillagers like most of the shameless extortionists in the Big Ag industry. Once they convince people of the higher yields and lock them in, ah.. one of the saddest things in the world - and see
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How are they locked in? Can they not go back to using traditional seed? Or do you mean they're locked in by the better value?
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They can always grow seed crops as well as GMO crops. I know all about the cross pollination issues and that needs a solution. It's ridiculous to sue people because your crops got crossed inadvertently. I wonder how this happens anyway when their seed is programed for one generation?
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How is the repurchase "forced"? How are they "locked in"? They can go back to regular crops at any time they choose.
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Do some research before you make stupid statements that show you don't understand the issue.
If farmers do want to go back to normal seeds - *once their contract with Monsanto is up* - they typically have to wait an average of 7 years and use a lot of round-up on the soil before growing non-GMO. That's pretty much locked in, no?
"any time they choose" -- not in this reality.
Lol (Score:3)
"the sustainable-farming nonprofit Genetic Resources Action International"
Yea, that's an unbiased and science based organization right there.
SO many stupid comments these are hybrids not GMOs (Score:3)
It's called selective breeding. It's been going on since man discovered agriculture.
Hybrids loosing effectiveness in subsequent generations, is a well known problem. It's not something engineered in by man. Mother nature is a bitch,
This isn't Monsanto enforcing a patent for their GMO seeds, that do spread that gene.
These are hybrid seeds, with no GMO genes. They've just been carefully selected.
Many hybrids are mules. Look at seedless grapes. The desired hybrid can't reproduce.
The post is a bit skewed, the text for the link to the story tells the story. The author has an agenda.
Hybrid vigor FTW? (Score:3)
Re: SO (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, consider that the 'better' crops can essentially be held hostage. When you don't have natural seeds commonly sold anymore, guess who suddenly has a monopoly on agriculture?
'This year's a seeds are going to cost double because of manufacturing problems.. You DO want a crop this year, right?'
Re: SO (Score:3)
most farmers in Africa are subsistence farmers. It is a good year if they have enough for themselves and a little extra to sell. Free seeds that improve yields by 9-25% in developed countries, and an additional 14% points in developing countries is a chance to get ahead instead of just scraping by (planned to post a link to the article on the economist website
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it's easy to look down on GE seeds with a life time of full bellies in your past, your future, and your children's futures as far as you can see. Try going hungry despite spending all you can spare on food and then rail against seeds that have never made a single person sick and have fed billions.
The same argument was used for the green revolution. But it's led to starvation as cropland has become nonviable due to use of its inherently destructive methods. Some sources suggest that the green revolution did not actually save a single life, but we know beyond any shadow of a doubt that it has had massive costs. You can in fact get more crops per acre with zero-tilth intensive planting of guilds, but it requires a lot more human labor so we went another direction and now our ability to produce food by
Re: SO (Score:4, Informative)
World hunger is at the lowest it has ever been. https://www.wfp.org/stories/10... [wfp.org] How exactly to interpret that to mean that the green revolution has led to starvation?
Producing foods by traditional means was a large part of the reason hunger was worse in the past than it is now. There were fewer people, more of them were directly involved in food production (both in real terms and as a percent of the population) and yet there was MORE hunger than today. The modern techniques were developed because the worked better, not out of some perverse desire to make people less food secure. Large agriculture takes feeding the world as a mission statement. Every conference I've ever attended is peppered with references to the disconnect between population projections (going up FAST) and available land projections (trending downward in developed countries, and stagnant in developing ones).
We need to produce twice as much food in 2050 as in 2010, yet we need to do it with LESS land and finite resources than we did in 2020. Going backward with regard to efficiency and yields is not a viable solution unless you are willing to let a lot of people starve needlessly.
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I don't have access to data that goes that far back, but the FAOStat page for India puts the per capita food supply at 2459 kcal/person/da, which is 25% higher than the FDA RDA of 2000 kcal/day. It is also a little more than 200 kcal more than 1996.
Greater consumption by the wea
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People are starving right here, where these farming methods dominate overwhelmingly. There is more than enough food on the planet to feed everyone on it. Suggesting that we need to use destructive farming methods is foolish at best.
Yes, and much of that food is produced using modern farming practices. If the US were to revert to the traditional agricultural practices people view through the rose-tinted-glasses of affluence and satiety there would be MORE people starving both inside and outside of the US. We are a net exporter of grains, and those surpluses are possible because of those modern production techniques. There are many nations that are dependent upon US grain to feed a significant portion of their population. Cutting off US
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Seriously? Get lost you corporate shill.
Yes, I'm a paid shill for corporate interests. I've been paid 50 million dollars to piss you off.
Re: SO (Score:5, Insightful)
If he is, he has the weight of evidence supports him.
http://www.plosone.org/article... [plosone.org]
In short, after factoring in the higher costs of using GM seed, GMO crops help developing farms substantially. Even more so than the farmers in developed markets.
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...GMO crops help developing farms substantially.
What, are they bullet proof? Africa is a victim of corrupt resource management. Nothing can be done until that is addressed. GMO won't do it.
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Yes, you can't fix hunger without fixing the underlying social issues. Everyone knows that, stop stating the obvious like it is an actual argument. You want to end world hunger, fix corruption, poverty, income inequality, infrastructure, education, healthcare, social welfare, sexual inequality, and all those other ills. But that is easier said than done. Do you have a solution to all those social, economic, and political problems? Because you're smarter by far than me if you do. Ticktock, people are h
Re: SO (Score:5, Insightful)
Africa is a victim of corrupt resource management. Nothing can be done until that is addressed.
Africa is not monolithic. There are certainly corrupt countries in Africa. But Ghana, the subject of TFA, is one of the least corrupt, and most prosperous countries on the continent. The are a democracy, with well functioning institutions, a free press, near universal literacy, and a per capita GDP of about $4k, which makes them a middle income country.
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In short, after factoring in the higher costs of using GM seed, GMO crops help developing farms substantially.
TFA isn't about GMO seeds. It is about good old fashioned hybrid seeds.
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How are you getting to that conclusion? The title of the study is "A Meta-Analysis of the Impacts of Genetically Modified Crops" The author's results are
"On average, GM technology adoption has reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22%, and increased farmer profits by 68%. Yield gains and pesticide reductions are larger for insect-resistant crops than for herbicide-tolerant crops. Yield and profit gains are higher in developing countries than in developed countries."
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Actually, just beware people
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You have the time to post using Slashdot's new laggy as fuck and sometimes browser-lagging system, but not the time to RTFA?
Bullshit, son.
Go RTFA first, then try asking questions.
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I don't know about these exact seeds but typically these special breeds are engineered to have terminator genes [wikipedia.org] meaning they can't breed. Even if some cross-polination happened somehow, the resulting seeds would be sterile.
The benefit of this is to restrict GMO products from leaking into the environment. The downside, according to the hippies, is this thing about "but then you are beholden to the company!" If we didn't put in the terminator genes, allowing the seeds to be reused in subsequent generations, y
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Maybe not attending those colleges is a good thing anyway.
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JROTC is one thing but the Boy Scouts have pretty much become the Hitler Youth. Anyone who strongly rejects those who agree to be part of that organization has my support.
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I think you mis-read that.
Intensive agriculture means you can grow more crops with higher yield in a more confined and limited environment. This could be as simple as yield per acre but in this case it's going beyond that and actually giving greater yields with fewer resources.
GMO seeds get weaker by the generation because the produced seeds are produced in very specific controlled conditions wheras wild seeds will get cross contaminated with native crops or will degrade amongst themselves due to relative e
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'bred for intensive agriculture' is a meaningless statement
Is it meaningless to you? To me it means "plants that grow where there isn't much rain", or other things like salty soil or lack of phosphates. You didn't get that meaning?
What's preventing farmers from saving their own seeds is threats of litigation from the GM corporations not that the seeds get any weaker.
The legal aspects are interesting but the seeds definitely have terminator genes [wikipedia.org]. That is an even stronger enforcement of DuPont's policy than
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not that the seeds get any weaker.
Imagine you have a crop with genetype AB. It produces pollen (male gametes) with gene A, and with gene B. It produces eggs (female gametes) of A and B as well. The means you get a 1:2:1 ration of AA:AB:BB in the progeny. Say you only want AB, as it is the best, and now imagine this same thing is happening is a dozen traits. Do you see why seed saving of hybrids is problematic?
Through over use, weeds are developing resistance to these chemicals, meaning that more of it has to be used.
And this is a problem because it threatens to diminish just how useful those crops are, and it highlights the need for resista