question about GMO

[Tonio]

Sound a little freaky? Well, if you're living in the USA, it gets worse. 70% of the food in US supermarkets contains bioengineered ingredients (corn and soy being the two biggies), but GM labeling is forbidden in the USA; so you'll never know what it's in.

Eric[/quote]

Actually, GM labeling is not required in the US, hence my signature push. People want to know what the &^%% we are being offered. Though most GM product are in processed foods, FDA is welcoming more GM in fresh produce into our gastronomical habits...well heck , if I worked @ FDA, and big pharma gave some contributions under thy table, I guess I would need to support them??

Its all about greed and controlling their pockets.

[Tonio]

Rant over..

[rainbowgardener]

Thank you Eric. Just want to stress that you are very right. The kind of "genetic modification" that results in GMO crops has NOTHING to do with hybridization and selective breeding that humans have done for millenia.

GMO organisms can ONLY be created in highly advanced micro-micro biology laboratories, with recombinant DNA techniques. The techniques have only been available in the past 20 years or so.

They create organisms that could NEVER be created by any kind of selective breeding, because those genes do not naturally exist in the species (or genus or family!). You can only select naturally from genes that already exist.

And in general those techniques are not being used to create bigger or more flavorful crops. They are being used to make crops that are herbicide resistant or have insecticide built in.

Frequently the insecticide gengineered* in is Bt (bacillus thuringiensis). Bt has been the organic gardener's friend, relatively harmless in the environment (except to butterfly caterpillars). However 1) it does wipe out monarchs, swallowtails and other butterflies we cherish and 2) the massive use of Bt in huge monoculture fields is creating Bt resistant pest insects. So they are destroying another useful tool.

*gengineered = gene engineered. If this isn't a word yet, it should be!

[Smallgardener]

Hybrids simply come from crossing male and female plants. I will be upfront with you. I sell GMO crop seed. Be it Soybeans, Corn, Alfalfa, Sorghum. Canola is not in my area. You can come up with all kinds of opions on GM crops. Anytime you get your infomation from an activist group like Nature conservancy or Green peace or who ever that advocates getting rid of GM crops you are going to get bias information.
Do you know that Roundup was first invented for the purpose of a cleaner. They just happened to find that it killed weeds in the process of testing it. All it does is block a protein from being processed within the plant and it dies. It still works great for a cleaner . There is resistance to Roundup and everyone is trying to find the answer.
The biggest reason for GM advancement is to make crops more productive in order to feed the growing population of the world. The world needs protien to eat. Monsanto has created several GM traits that help farmers produce more food and make it more cost affective to do so. Without RR, BT corn we would be using multiple "Chemicals" to do the same job. I submit that using GM crops is safer than using chemicals with long half lifes that actually stick around.
The BT in corn takes care of Lepodoptra species by making the corn plant exibit higher amounts of the natural BT that is already in the plant. There is also a Drought resistant trait they are working on and some of it will be in on farm trials this next year. It uses a gean that they found in corn already that just makes the plant slow down in good times so it can make it through the dry times. That gene is actually a cold tolerant gene. Monsanto is not the only company doing work with GMO's. They however do get most of the blame. Dow and Syngenta are to big players aswell. You can also get Roundup Ready/Bt Sweet corn. Then you don't have to spray chemical on it 3 to 4 times to keep the earworm out and then you have nice pretty clean ears in the supermarket without spraying an insecticide on it 3 weeks before it goes to market.
Yes I am bias on this subject but so are most people.

[sciencegal]

GMO organisms can ONLY be created in highly advanced micro-micro biology laboratories, with recombinant DNA techniques. The techniques have only been available in the past 20 years or so.

They create organisms that could NEVER be created by any kind of selective breeding, because those genes do not naturally exist in the species (or genus or family!). You can only select naturally from genes that already exist.

Don't tell that to endogenous retroviruses (ERV's). About 45% of the human genome is composed of ERV genes. One of the proteins produced from one human endogenous retrovirus is responsible for the formation of the placenta. Sophisticated laboratories are, for the most part, just doing what retroviruses have been doing for about 5 million years.

[GardenRN]

GM sugar beets are already out there and are a big profit for Monsanto in that it's where more and more of your regular white granulated sugar comes from. Not using regular sugar is one way people are trying to "stick-it" to Monsanto now.

NorthernFox I like biology a lot too. I see where you're coming from, but I think you missed the fact that they are splicing genes from completely different species. It's interesting.....but.....(let me add to the fire here) not the way God created things and, I think, dangerous. Not to mention just plain not right.

That's why I posed the question about if genetic modification was ONLY used to cross genes from the same species.

[GardenRN]

Actually, GM labeling is not required in the US...

Except on fresh produce...

[applestar]

Then you don't have to spray chemical on it 3 to 4 times to keep the earworm out and then you have nice pretty clean ears in the supermarket without spraying an insecticide on it 3 weeks before it goes to market.

This raises an interesting question whether people would be less apt to buy GMO labeled products vs. products made with unlabeled conventionally grown (I.e. fungicide/pesticide treated seeds grown in fields that have been sprayed with fungicides, herbicides, and pesticides before planting and then sprayed regularly with pesticides and fungicides until harvest) staple produce.

[GardenRN]

I'd rather have neither apple. But if I had to choose....idk, I guess the conventional stuff. I feel like at least I know the risks.

I think the side effects of eating GMO foods are yet to be seen. And I don't like being the guinea pig.

By the way...are those cross breed fruits like grapples and plumicotts GMOs? I was thinking about it when I got offered one today. The number code on the lable wasn't a gmo, conventional, OR organic code. It started with a 3 and was 4 numbers long. I opted to not eat it.

[DoubleDogFarm]

I'd rather have neither apple. But if I had to choose....idk, I guess the conventional stuff. I feel like at least I know the risks.

I think the side effects of eating GMO foods are yet to be seen. And I don't like being the guinea pig.

By the way...are those cross breed fruits like grapples and plumicotts GMOs? I was thinking about it when I got offered one today. The number code on the lable wasn't a gmo, conventional, OR organic code. It started with a 3 and was 4 numbers long. I opted to not eat it.

Grapple https://www.grapplefruits.com/process.html

Pluots, apriums, apriplums, or plumcots, are some of the hybrids between different Prunus species

Eric

[lily51]

Like it or not, farms have become very large. Goes back to " how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm...". So less and less people farm more land.
My question is what is a farmer to do to control weeds on 1000 acres of corn?

[GardenRN]

Farms have become large because subsidation and other government regulations heavily favor industrial farms. Organic farms are more productive (proven). More, smaller, diverse farms would be easier to manage in every aspect including weeds. But the big companies don't want to hear that when they sell the herbicide and pesticide resistant hybrid gmo seeds, and the herbicides and pesticides to use on the weeds around them.

Smaller, or basically unlucky farmers are chased out of business all the time. If they don't want to use hybrid seeds, if they are caught saving seeds etc.

Can you explain stupid rules such as that meat processing plants must have a bathroom exclusively for the use of the USDA inspector? Who can afford to add a whole other bathroom just for the use of the inspector? Oh that's right, huge industrial places can, it's only a problem for the local, free range, grass fed type of places.

People managed weeds in their corn fields for a very long time without herbicides. It just takes work, which is what farm work is, very hard work. But nobody wants to do hard work anymore, because we're all lazy (by comparison).

There was a quote in the movie "Fresh" that I thought was very interesting. The man said in college he got a roommate that had just moved here from Pakistan, and his observation was that "...the only thing Americans fear is inconvenience..." There's a lot of truth to that. Most of the things that get us mad, bent out of shape, and the things we grumble over are things of inconvenience. It's why we like fast food, why we buy so much processed food, why we need herbicides to keep down weeds. Everything we do is in the most convenient way. Even if it's not the healthiest way, the most traditional way.

I wonder if in a country where people come from so many different places and have so many different backgrounds such as America, the lack of tradition and culture is what leads to such unhealthiness. A lot of people can't fix you a traditional meal from wherever the origin of their family is. And I don't mean someone with Italian lineage fixing a bowl of spaghetti with Mueller's spaghetti noodles and Prego. I mean a truly cultural experience. From the food and drink down to the way it is eaten. (google "the french paradox")

Sorry for the rant....I'm done for now.

[applestar]

This https://www.sare.org/content/download/29704/413134/A_Whole-Farm_Approach_to_Managing_Pests.pdf

[lily51]

Do you Know how big 1000 acres are? Do you think one family could even start to keep it weeded by hand?
And farms became larger long befor subsidies. People left the farm due to industrial revolution, machines came to the farm enabling the farming of more acres.
Proof is all in which study you read.

[gixxerific]

To answer you question Jeff again it is a no but to expand on that.

GMO's are scary and the people that own most of them (%90) Monsanto is even scarier. How long will it be before GMO's are banned and found out to be life threatening like so many of their other products. Don't see that happening too soon.

Like Good old PCB's how many people died and are still dying from that mess. Just one of their wonderful major breakthroughs, scientific advancements, betterment of man products that was banned. What are they not telling us, they are famous for hiding pertinent info from us because they know the consequences of us knowing the truth, a loss of profit.

BGH Bovine Growth Hormone another assuredly safe product was uncovered to be very unsafe and even banned in multiple country's. But not the US, why, too much money to be made.

In the late 80 early 90s a [url=https://todayyesterdayandtomorrow.wordpress.com/2007/06/09/gm-tryptophan-ems-killed-37-and-permanently-disabled-1500-people/]GM Tryptophan[/url] killed 37 people and seriously disabled 1500 or so more in the US. This was not made by Monsanto but is a Genetically Modified food supplement. The company Showa Denko quickly destroyed all bacterial stock and any and all evidence after this came to light. Go figure. Same tactics Monsanto use, people that get in the way are fired and threatened. When scientist unveil fact that is counterproductive to progress (making money) they are let go, even at times discredited from the colleges they attended. This is too hide the truth from the consumer. So many lies and half truths surround GMO. They say it is safe but is it??? Obviously not. Can you really trust these people?

I believe Apple touched on [url=https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGNI_enUS446US446&q=monsanto+farmer+patent+infringement]patent infringement[/url] how many farmers have been sued and at times bankrupted, harassed and threatened due to his neighbors GMO crop spilling over or cross breeding with their open pollinated crops. Or just because of falsely created accusations of a farmer saving seed. Sued for saving seed is this where we want to go with this, is this progress? I for one think not.

Mexico had I want to say 400 - 500 different variety's of wild corn. These are threatened and becoming extinct due to GMO. It may be something as simple as a seed accidentally being dropped along the road. The plant grows and crosses with local variety's ruining them forever. The local corn grows well without fertilizer or pesticide if [url=https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGNI_enUS446US446&q=monsanto+farmer+patent+infringement#hl=en&rlz=1T4GGNI_enUS446US446&sclient=psy-ab&q=transgenic%20corn%20in%20mexico&oq=&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=f4724e78e1fe5bb4&biw=1280&bih=822&pf=p&pdl=300]Transgenic corn[/url] takes over all could be lost and more farmers bankrupted. A wholesale life change could be brought on by this. They may be forced to rely on GMO (Monsanto) corn which needs fertilizer and pesticides to grow. Resulting in loss of profit and more importantly a loss in variety. The family farmer may not be able to produce a crop to feed his family.

We all eat this stuff it is everywhere, of course there are no regulations forcing GMO labeling. So we don't know what we are eating. The worst part is not even the GMO manufacturer's know exactly what they are doing when zapping genes to and fro. They know they are getting what they are looking for but do not know what other mutations have occurred which could be quite a few and quite dangerous. Take the average supermarket tomato for example, though not dangerous, they came out with unexpected mutations. The wanted to alter the genes to make a fully ripe tomato without green shoulders, but in the process shut off the flavor gene. You ever wonder why they are solid, bland, lifeless tomatoes, that is why, but hell they sure look pretty don't they.

Argentina and Brazil among others I am sure are being inundated by [url=https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGNI_enUS446US446&q=monsanto+ctraband+seed#hl=en&rlz=1T4GGNI_enUS446US446&sa=X&ei=vow_UJOXL4OgqgHUnYCYDA&ved=0CBwQvwUoAA&q=monsanto+contraband+seed&spell=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=f4724e78e1fe5bb4&biw=1280&bih=822]contraband[/url] seed. Brazil had a ban on GM seed but was forced to revoke this ban. This is where GMO seed is going. They are taking over the world. Again with Mexico seed was brought in there unknown and the spread of these are threatening the very existence of thousands of years worth of natural corn growing. It is quite possible these GM corn were brought in on purpose to get a foothold, since a 10+ year ban on GMO had been going on. Monsanto again forcing it's wares upon us. Other countries have been growing GM seed with less production than before. The cotton in India is BT infused but is more susceptible to other disease, now farmers have to pay more for seed only to have crop failure which spiked a huge rise in farmer [url=https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=1&oq=indian+contton+farmer+suicide&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGNI_enUS446US446&q=indian+farmer+suicide+bt+cotton+&gs_upl=0l0l1l4110867lllllllllll0&aqi=g2&pbx=1]suicides[/url].

Add to this all Monsanto is trying to squash out the small farmers that refuse to grow their corn, beans etc. They also use very shady tactics to make scientist who uncover dirty facts seem wrong in their findings or at least incompetent. They even go as far a pitting farmer against farmer encouraging you to snitch on your neighbor if they are doing something against the system with an 800 number to call. Possibly saving seed or in the case of an unintentional cross.

I keep bringing up Monsanto even though the op's topic was GMO. Again Monsanto owns 90% + of all GMO seed patents. Really are patents needed for food. The GMO seed is producing massive monoculture crops and even further killing diversity. Not to mention the small farmer. Even causing more sickness and death due to chemicals needed to grow GMO crops both fertilizer and pesticides. This is a big deal in smaller third world countries. Does this make sense, I thought this was supposed to a better alternative. To solve food shortages in the world. Funny it is doing the opposite in certain sectors of the world. You may say how is GMO making monoculture worse. Monsanto is forcing seed on farmers asking if not demanding they expand, this way they can sell more of there high priced seed, oh wait you are going to need some chemicals for that. Just so happens we make those too. How convenient for them. This forcing of seed, their variety is wiping out other variety's by expansion and even unintentional crosses. Not too mention farmer Bob here with his roundup ready corn spraying death all over his field, Guess what happens when he passes by farmer Don's non GMO field. Herbicide drift and crop failure. You are almost forced to join along or get run over.

They, the GMO kings, are trying to wrangle in several other foods as well, mustard, beets, radishes etc. The will control the worlds food if this is allowed to continue. If you control the food you control the world, as simple as that. One company with that much power, they aim to be the new GOD!

This terrifies me of where this world is going. Downhill fast I can see that. I fear for my kids future and even more so their kids future, its exponential.

[gixxerific]

[url]https://wideeyecinema.com/?p=105[/url]

This is a great movie though a bit long. I suggest you watch it espeaciallly if you are pro GMO or even pro Monsnato since they are one in the same for the most part.

[DoubleDogFarm]

[GardenRN]

Lily I know exactly how big 1000 acres is. of course a lot of the big farms now are tens of thousands of acres. No I don't think a family could keep 1k acres weeded by hand, and I'm not against machinery. But I think that a 500 acre farm could be kept under control without the use of pesticides and herbicides, AND produce more than that thousand acres in terms of total calorie output AND income.

Anyways, all of those thousands of acres of corn you are talking about, 70% of it is grown for feed for animals that aren't supposed to be eating grains anyways.

Btw, Hope I'm not coming across as ticked off, I'm not. really just enjoying the debate. If I start to get there I'll promptly exit the convo.

[GardenRN]

[url]https://wideeyecinema.com/?p=105[/url]

This is a great movie though a bit long. I suggest you watch it espeaciallly if you are pro GMO or even pro Monsnato since they are one in the same for the most part.

Saw that video gix...funny how the guy in the beginning says using round-up ready soy beans is "good for the environment" and a "sustainable system". How can it be when you are breeding round-up resistant weeds and pesticide resistant pests and you have to use more every year. That's not sustainable...not to mention what it's doing to the soil underneath the soy beans.

[rainbowgardener]

Do you Know how big 1000 acres are? Do you think one family could even start to keep it weeded by hand?
And farms became larger long befor subsidies. People left the farm due to industrial revolution, machines came to the farm enabling the farming of more acres.
Proof is all in which study you read.

Lily - Did you even look at the PDF article that apple posted the link to just above you? It shows a number of different examples of organic farming, pesticide and GMO free. The first e.g. is someone with 175 acres, still pretty much for hand weeding and it shows the farmer sitting on his tractor (not one of the gigantic ones with A/C cab like the agribusiness spreads use, but still mechanical tractor). The second e.g. is someone who wrote a book Future Harvest: Pesticide free Farming. It says he farms 650 acres of mixed grains and legumes and 100 head of cattle.


So non-GMO, organic farming is clearly possible AND it does not rely on hand weeding. What it does entail is not putting your whole thousand acres in one crop. You have to be willing to do mixed crops, early and late crops, etc. It is a much more thoughtful approach. The business of agribusiness is designed to use as few people as possible to maximize profit. In any business, the biggest costs are people/ labor costs, and everything related like health insurance etc. That's why there's this huge push for "efficiency" in all industries. Efficiency we define doing more with less PEOPLE, not necessarily (or usually) less energy, less resources, less pollution, etc, just less people.

So I think sustainable farming is in general more labor intensive (even though we are not talking about hand weeding 650 or however many acres). But I don't think that is such a bad thing. We have a chronic unemployment rate in this country over 10%. (I know we say 8%, but that doesn't count the people that have given up trying, etc). Why shouldn't we put some of them back to work on farms?

The changes in population farming all have occurred in the last 100 years. 100 years ago, half the population farmed. 50 years ago (well into the mechanized farming age) 20% of the population farmed. When I suggest we should move a lot of people back to farms and give them healthy productive employment, people say that isn't possible, you can't move people around like that. Immediately after WWII there was a huge mass migration off farms. People moved themselves (and their families and lifestyles) away from where they had lived for generations into the city. Did they do that because they hated the farm or loved cities? Absolutely not! They did it because they thought that's what they had to do to support their families.

If supporting their families became possible on farms again, many would still be glad to go back.

There's a wonderful novel about the people moving off the farm and what their experiences were : The Dollmaker , by Harriet Arnow. It was published back in 1954 when this was all happening, but is still available and still very moving to read. And will give you a very different understanding of what was happening when we moved people off farms.

[lily51]

This is awesome! not the post, but we now have dsl and I don't have to try to read everything on my iphone!

I was just using 1000 acres as a nice round number. Even here in little Ohio there are farmers with multiple K acres.
And yes, I think a lot of people left the farm because it wasnt' the romantic way of life we paint it in retrospect.
Many links did not work with my phone, so some I have read, some not.

What do you suggest....Moving people back to farms against their will? Because I do not see people wanting to do this at all.
Having taught in a vocational school for over 20 years, there was a defnite progressionn or regression of students who had any background in physical work or inclination in doing any in the future. Talk to the trades instructors in such areas.

ANd what the heck is this thing against AC for farmers. People in town that work in offices and businesses get to work in it. Sounds like discrimination.

[MaryDel]

Would be people dislike GMO veggies as much if the genes being added to a specific veggie were restricted to genes from a different variety of the same veggie? Wouldn't this just be a way of fast-track hybridizing?

Take the best traits from 10 different types of corn and add them into one pest resistant, disease defying, drought tolerating, heat withstanding beast of a corn? I realize you'd still have the issue of viable seeds as with other hybrids. I'm just curious what others think.

I'll omit my opinion for now.

I know mother nature never intended it, but I sure do believe I could go for an ear or two of Lobster Corn right about now........all dripping in melted butter......mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Lobster Corn

[DoubleDogFarm]

I know mother nature never intended it, but I sure do believe I could go for an ear or two of Lobster Corn right about now........all dripping in melted butter......mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Lobster Corn

Well, Good luck harvesting those bastards with pinchers. Screaming when thrown into hotwater. Who needs that!

Porktato

Eric

[rainbowgardener]

Course I'm not talking about forcible removal. People will go where they can support themselves and their families. People move around this country all the time for these reasons. We spread west that way. All the Okies moved to California in dust bowl days that way. People moved from rural south to urban north after WWII that way. People these days move more than ever. Immigrants leave their home country and extended families and come to a foreign land with a foreign language solely to support their families.

If we changed our farming practices and once again had decent farmhand jobs (I'm not talking about migrant workers/stoop labor/piece work jobs), people would come for them.

Heck, I put in volunteer hours at my CSA farm doing hand hoeing/ weeding, etc in the hot sun, just to be part of it, and get the fresh local grown organic veggies, and feel like I contributed to raising them.

[applestar]

This is getting a bit OT maybe, but I just came across this and it seems pertinent to ongoing discussion:

Pam Warhurst: How we can eat our landscapes
https://www.ted.com/talks/pam_warhurst_how_we_can_eat_our_landscapes.html

[rainbowgardener]

I love it! "Vegetable tourism" Growing veggies in the cemetary, because the soil is so good. She's funny, but she really is promoting a revolution and what they are doing is brilliant. It's amazing what can happen, when you can pull a whole community together around it. Corn growing in front of the police station! She is amazing. I love all of it... the help-yourself attitude to what they grow, "investing in kindness," teaching horticulture in the high schools. She has made so much happen.

Thanks for sharing this, Applestar. I may have to go intern with her and try to figure out how to do this here.

I shared this with all my FaceBook friends...

[DoubleDogFarm]

"Vegetable tourism" Growing veggies in the cemetary, because the soil is so good.

Ghost peppers
Mummy berries

....+
.++++ Cross breeding
....+
....+

[rainbowgardener]

A very grave business..

[GardenRN]

...That people are just dying to get into...

[DoubleDogFarm]

Sorry to lead you astray.

Eric

[DoubleDogFarm]

GMO organisms can ONLY be created in highly advanced micro-micro biology laboratories, with recombinant DNA techniques. The techniques have only been available in the past 20 years or so.

They create organisms that could NEVER be created by any kind of selective breeding, because those genes do not naturally exist in the species (or genus or family!). You can only select naturally from genes that already exist.

Don't tell that to endogenous retroviruses (ERV's). About 45% of the human genome is composed of ERV genes. One of the proteins produced from one human endogenous retrovirus is responsible for the formation of the placenta. Sophisticated laboratories are, for the most part, just doing what retroviruses have been doing for about 5 million years.

ERV's

Are they not naturally evolving viruses with naturally evolving suppressor genes accruing along side.

How does this relate to unnatural GMO's

Just the little I have read and my not comprehend.

I think I also read it makes up 8% of the genome not 45%.

Eric

[sciencegal]

ERV's

Are they not naturally evolving viruses with naturally evolving suppressor genes accruing along side.

How does this relate to unnatural GMO's

Just the little I have read and my not comprehend.

I think I also read it makes up 8% of the genome not 45%.

Eric

A retrovirus is a virus that has to insert its genome into the DNA of the host cell in order to replicate. Once inserted, if the cell survives, the genome, called a provirus, becomes part of the DNA of the host. The virus that causes AIDS is a retrovirus. Goats host a similar retrovirus called CAE. I developed [url=https://www.goatbiology.com/caelifecycle.html]an illustrated article[/url] that describes the life cycle of this retrovirus which may help explain the process in better detail.

Endogenous retroviruses are the genome that became part of the DNA when a reproductive cell (or a very early embryonic cell) was infected by a very primitive class of retrovirus a long long time ago. So, they are not an evolving type of virus but a very old virus. With a few known exceptions, endogenous retroviruses can no longer create more viruses or cause disease usually because they have lost one of their genes, but the DNA can still be transcribed along with the host DNA and proteins made from it.

8% of the human genome contains identifiable genomes of infectious retroviruses based on the presence of all three necessary retroviral genes. Up to 45% of human DNA contains remnants of retrovirus genomes (retroelements). It might be interesting (or not depending on your persuasion) to know that chimpanzees have most of the same ERVs as humans.

Retroviruses do not bring foreign genes along with it when it integrates into the host genome like scientists can through modern genetic modification, but the viral genes themselves are foreign. Since the retrovirus inserts it's genome in random locations in the DNA of the host this can (apparently did) cause mutations if the viral gene was inserted in the middle of a host gene. This would greatly speed up the course of evolution which would be a much slower process if we had to wait around for a random mutation to just sort of happen.

How is this related to "unnatural" GMO? Scientists use the same chemicals and pathways that retroviruses use to insert genes into DNA. We learned how to do it from studying nature. Is this, by itself, necessarily a bad thing?

I am not concerned about the safety of eating GMO foods, and in fact in some cases GMO foods can be a great benefit, such as creating rice that produces vitamin A, preventing vitamin A deficiency blindness that is so common in poor countries. Round-up ready plants do not make any molecule that is dangerous. Weeds have been able to produce the same resistance (in probably the same way) to round-up without the help of scientists.

The evil of the whole GMO thing is that these large companies receive over a billion dollars a year in tax-payer funded (looted) subsidies and use their influence through appointments to government agencies to force people into using their products. That's the part I can't stomach.

[Smallgardener]

Back to the farm size and poeple leaving the farm.
Most people leave the the farm because they can't get along with the family. Many farms sell because families cant get along. Economics play a part as well. When times are tough and it can't support the whole family someone has to leave. Farming practices have played a role as well. No till and Strip till take a lot less labor so then the farm expands to fit the equipment. I would love to go back to the farm but the size is not there. There is a lot of competition between farmers for land also. Many time large farmers have the upper hand when it comes to getting more land. They have the equipment and the labor force to do it. Equipment is expensive these days tractors will cost $250,000 new and combines are now $300,000 new. No wonder people need a lot of land just to pay for the equipment.

[rainbowgardener]

But that's all a vicious circle.. If you have small farms, you can farm with small equipment or even with horses. Wendell Berry farms his Kentucky land with horses, or did for many years, he's about to turn 80 now. His book "In Defense of the Family Farm" is still well worth reading.

[Smallgardener]

I would prefer small farms as well. They would keep the small town going. In many cases the smaller farmers also have a job in town year around or in the winter at least. With commodity prices high now would be the time for farmer to get smaller. However, when commodities get high so do expenses. Sort of a supply and demand issue.

[imafan26]

GMO is not as bad as people make it out to be. The papaya industry in Hawaii was nearly devastated by papaya ringspot virus until GMO Sunup was developed. Sunup was used to create Rainbow. Around the world, diseases and pests threaten agriculture and they are looking toward developing GMO seeds to save them. There is also research being done to see if they can make plants more drought resistant in response to climate change.

I do agree that there should be legislation to require labeling of GMO products because there are people who would choose not to eat them. That being said, if you eat bread, pastries, edamame, beef, chicken,pork, or corn (not organically certified), you have probably eaten something containing a GMO product.

The majority of commercial corn, soy, canola, and wheat are GMO. Most of the corn fed to livestock are GMO corn. Most of the modifications were to make the crops roundup ready so the farmer could more easily weed the fields and some created terminator seeds. Terminator seeds, farmers see as a way to keep them a slave to the companies by forcing them to buy expensive seed. The companies want to protect their patents. Use of terminator seeds will protect non-GMO fields from contamination if the GMO plants cannot reproduce.

In the past companies have sued unsuspecting farmers for patent infringements for growing seed from pollen that blew over to their farms. The tide may be turning as organic farms complain about their fields being contaminated by seed and runoff from other farms.

There is really nothing wrong with a GMO product, it does not look any different from any other product. Many people have unreasonable fears about it. They have been on the market for years and is less risky than smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, or consuming the average American diet which has way too much fat, calories and more protein than a body needs to stay healthy. Even Japan, has recently relaxed their ban and is allowing some GMO products to be imported.

What should be of concern is the effects of unwanted GMO contamination. GMO pollen can blow in the wind, be carried by insects or people and contaminate other field crops and even some wild relatives. The altered genes do not make these plants aliens, they are perfectly able to interbreed and their modifications may make them the better survivors and potentially become the dominant genes. Or should we just call this evolution?

https://www.ifama.org/events/conference ... _paper.pdf
https://www.bigislandnewscenter.com/japa ... om-hawaii/

[rainbowgardener]

GMO covers a lot of ground (literally and figuratively). GMO just means its genetic code has been tampered with. The question is how and for what purpose. An infinite variety of modifications could be done and a wide variety have been done, including creating glow in the dark cats that have had a phosphorescence gene inserted and inserting anti freeze genes from Antarctic fish into tomatoes to make them more frost resistant.

As you say, one of the commonest modifications is "Round-up ready," making the plant resistant to Round-up, so the fields can be sprayed with it instead of weeding. The problem with that is not the modifying, it is the spraying. Round up has lots more environmental impacts than was first understood, e.g. :

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is acutely toxic to fish and birds and can kill beneficial insects and soil organisms that maintain ecological balance.

Glyphosate is the third most commonly-reported cause of pesticide illness among agricultural workers in California.

The surfactant ingredient in Roundup is more acutely toxic than glyphosate itself and the combination of the two is yet more toxic.
https://www.ecologycenter.org/factsheets/roundup.html

Another significant problem with the wide spread use of Round up ready GMOs and therefore routine spraying of Round-up over square miles of crops, is that more and more weeds are now becoming Round-up resistant. By over-using/ abusing the tool, they are rendering it worthless.

he area of U.S. cropland infested with glyphosate-resistant weeds has expanded to 61.2 million acres in 2012, according to a survey conducted by Stratus Agri-Marketing. Nearly half of all U.S. farmers interviewed reported that glyphosate-resistant weeds were present on their farm in 2012, up from 34% of farmers in 2011. The survey also indicates that the rate at which glyphosate-resistant weeds are spreading is gaining momentum; increasing 25% in 2011 and 51% in 2012.
https://www.cornucopia.org/2013/02/glyph ... ore-farms/

Did you get that from 34% to "nearly half" in ONE YEAR? !!

A similar phenomenon is occurring with GMOs that have genes inserted to produce Bt (bacillus thuringiensis). Bt has been beloved of organic gardeners, because it is a bacterium that infects various kinds of crop chewing caterpillars/ worms, but nothing else and causes no environmental harm. Used selectively, in small areas of outbreaks, we might have used it forever. But now that Bt is being inserted in to everything and blanketing square miles of monoculture crops that produce the Bt toxin in every cell, we are also breeding Bt resistant pests, such as:

corn rootworms https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?ti ... nt_Insects

cotton bollworms
Daniel Stolte, "GM crop trouble as pests adapt," Western Farm Press, June 21, 2012.

and a number of others.

So the problem isn't the simple fact that something is GMO, but what particular kind of modification for what purpose and what are the impacts of that modification.

What I hate is that consumers have no way to know when they are purchasing GMO organisms / products, so no choice and no way to vote with their dollars for whether they want that modification. I believe GM organisms and the products containing them should have to be labelled as such, so that consumers can at least exercise some choice.

[imafan26]

You are right rainbow, there are more ramifications to GMO than just the product themselves. There is the collateral damage and corrections that occur in response that was not considered or forseen like weed resistance and the interbreeding of the GMO crops with other crops and relatives.

The risks to people and the environment from the spraying of chemicals is well known. It is something that all agriculture and communities deal with. Homeowners are probably the most guilty parties because they are not required to have training nor do they follow directions with any regularity

Mother nature always strives for balance. When GMO develops plants with its' own built in pesticides, it is so less pesticides have to be sprayed, but then some insects will adapt and survive. In the effort to improve on mother nature, she proves that all these stressors stimulate a response for organisms to adapt to survive or die.

It is probably a much better choice to work with mother nature than against her. Promoting and encouraging beneficial insects to control pests and selecting plants that are best adapted. Think more in terms of environmental systems and communities, about how the ecosystem and its parts fit together. Try to consider as many possibilities (it is probably impossible to foresee them all) that may occur for each action. Remembering that every action invokes an equal and opposite reaction.

However, in this ever shrinking world where pests and disease are accidentally introduced into pristine environments where there are no natural predators to control them, many species of plants and animals tenuously holding on or have no defenses (isolation was their defense) will be lost. It will be the price of survival of the fittest.

Did you know the cockroach has been around for 300 million years, longer than man has been on earth, and will probably still survive long after the human race becomes extinct?

[Dillbert]

a thousand years ago I remember one very organic type remarking:
(words to the effect)

"I'm not too worried about RoundUp. in a couple years the weeds will be converting it into fertilizer and all the mega-ag farms will go broke."

[imafan26]

touche'