something NEW* to fight about

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm not saying it's not potentially useful, just that it will be of dubious benefit on its own.

My problem with a lot of GMO food is that it puts more of the control over food into the hands of the people who are largely to blame for much of the situation.

My other problem is with single-generation seeds.  There's a horror story in there.  We've had 3 dark ages, and we have never lost the knowledge gained from the agricultural revolution.  Making seeds that don't make more seeds makes that hideous possibility more likely in the next dark ages.  And there will be a next dark ages, sooner or later.

That has nothing to do with GMOs though. Pretty much every crop plant is a sterile hybrid now.

Do you have a citation for this? Because my understanding is that while some are sterile hybrids, most are fertile hybrids that will revert.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Let's put it this way. Pests: The heart of the problem is that pests are eating the plants. You can kill the pests with broad spectrum insecticides, which is a hugely harmful process. Or you can insert a gene which kills a much more limited number, which is still not the best solution. The best solution is to make it so the insects don't even recognize the plants as tasty, so they get left alone.

We already know pesticides are a losing strategy.  We should be, as you say, taking an entirely different approach, like sacrificial plants that attract insects away from the plants we want.  Making that plant LESS resistant to pests and MORE attractive.  That way you don't lose the crop and you don't lose the bugs.

Or something.  When you approach A doesn't work, you don't do it MORE, you walk around to the other side of the problem and attempt approach B.

This is starting to sound suspiciously like polyculture, a farming method that works on small-scale farms and is primitive, in the sense of being very old, but proven.

It is typically dismissed as being "inefficient", but what that actually means is that it isn't adaptable to subsidy-driven factory-farming.

What makes poly culture so inefficient, is it that conventional automated farming means can't be applied?

Yes, the crops pretty much have to be tended by actual farmers, and aren't eligible for subsidies. Lots of the small farms in my area practice a modified polyculture where they grow ten or twenty types of crop and rotate their fields, which allows some machinery to be used but it isn't efficient on the same level as having vast fields of, say, beets, with giant machines to weed between rows and harvest them.

They tend to have a higher overall food yield per acre per year, but crop yield isn't counted that way, it's based on individual crops not combined yield.

[Kai]

I'm not saying it's not potentially useful, just that it will be of dubious benefit on its own.

My problem with a lot of GMO food is that it puts more of the control over food into the hands of the people who are largely to blame for much of the situation.

My other problem is with single-generation seeds.  There's a horror story in there.  We've had 3 dark ages, and we have never lost the knowledge gained from the agricultural revolution.  Making seeds that don't make more seeds makes that hideous possibility more likely in the next dark ages.  And there will be a next dark ages, sooner or later.

That has nothing to do with GMOs though. Pretty much every crop plant is a sterile hybrid now.

Do you have a citation for this? Because my understanding is that while some are sterile hybrids, most are fertile hybrids that will revert.

You know what? I pulled that out of my ass from recollection. I can't find anything supporting that statement, which means it's probably bullshit.

It does call into question Roger's fear about single generation seeds, though.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Of course, another thing about small farms and polyculture is that they are also highly beneficial for local economies, and resistant to large-scale disaster-induced famine in a way that our current centralized food production model isn't.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Maybe, or maybe sustaining 7 billion people isn't feasible.

It isn't, nor is it desirable.  But to allow a die off isn't the solution, even if you can live with it.  Because the starving people will not starve quietly, and they'll drag everyone down with them in an attempt to survive.  The chaos would do far more damage than the famine.  It always does.

Plus, who wants to be responsible for making the Nazis look like pikers?  Population CONTROL is one thing, population REDUCTION is a horror.

No, I wasn't suggesting it either. But when it does happen, those are the choices that are going to be presented. The higher risk with more unknowns will be the path taken and it will end up being a fingers crossed solution.

I can tell you what will actually be done when things get that bad, but you probably don't want to hear it.

I'm going to look at Syria and say I suspect it's several years of inaction and talking about a solution, until the suffering becomes so unbearable that there is little left to do and a token gesture is thrown to make it look like something was done but it will be too little and too late?

I was thinking more along the lines of closed borders and non-persistent nerve agents.

Masque of the Red Death material.

[Kai]

I think polyculture is a great idea, and wish it became the standard. I don't think it should stop the research on GMOs though.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm not saying it's not potentially useful, just that it will be of dubious benefit on its own.

My problem with a lot of GMO food is that it puts more of the control over food into the hands of the people who are largely to blame for much of the situation.

My other problem is with single-generation seeds.  There's a horror story in there.  We've had 3 dark ages, and we have never lost the knowledge gained from the agricultural revolution.  Making seeds that don't make more seeds makes that hideous possibility more likely in the next dark ages.  And there will be a next dark ages, sooner or later.

That has nothing to do with GMOs though. Pretty much every crop plant is a sterile hybrid now.

Do you have a citation for this? Because my understanding is that while some are sterile hybrids, most are fertile hybrids that will revert.

You know what? I pulled that out of my ass from recollection. I can't find anything supporting that statement, which means it's probably bullshit.

It does call into question Roger's fear about single generation seeds, though.

I've been looking for the last 15 minutes. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm not saying it's not potentially useful, just that it will be of dubious benefit on its own.

My problem with a lot of GMO food is that it puts more of the control over food into the hands of the people who are largely to blame for much of the situation.

My other problem is with single-generation seeds.  There's a horror story in there.  We've had 3 dark ages, and we have never lost the knowledge gained from the agricultural revolution.  Making seeds that don't make more seeds makes that hideous possibility more likely in the next dark ages.  And there will be a next dark ages, sooner or later.

That has nothing to do with GMOs though. Pretty much every crop plant is a sterile hybrid now.

Do you have a citation for this? Because my understanding is that while some are sterile hybrids, most are fertile hybrids that will revert.

You know what? I pulled that out of my ass from recollection. I can't find anything supporting that statement, which means it's probably bullshit.

It does call into question Roger's fear about single generation seeds, though.

That particular technology has been shelved, at least for now, due to public pressure. Or at least so Monsanto says.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Those and their wonder-potato that McDonald's refused to buy.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm not saying it's not potentially useful, just that it will be of dubious benefit on its own.

My problem with a lot of GMO food is that it puts more of the control over food into the hands of the people who are largely to blame for much of the situation.

My other problem is with single-generation seeds.  There's a horror story in there.  We've had 3 dark ages, and we have never lost the knowledge gained from the agricultural revolution.  Making seeds that don't make more seeds makes that hideous possibility more likely in the next dark ages.  And there will be a next dark ages, sooner or later.

That has nothing to do with GMOs though. Pretty much every crop plant is a sterile hybrid now.

Do you have a citation for this? Because my understanding is that while some are sterile hybrids, most are fertile hybrids that will revert.

You know what? I pulled that out of my ass from recollection. I can't find anything supporting that statement, which means it's probably bullshit.

It does call into question Roger's fear about single generation seeds, though.

That particular technology has been shelved, at least for now, due to public pressure. Or at least so Monsanto says.

I've been involved with certain dealings my company had with Monsanto that we backed out of because of ethics concerns (read, PR concerns).

You heard it right.  An energy company didn't want to dirty itself with those bastards. 

Monsanto is truly vile, but they are not themselves the entire GMO argument.

[Kai]

Well, you can try to sell it, but if people won't eat it, the idea is kind of moot.

Another entirely separate issue to food security that I would love to talk about is the rapid loss of cultivars in pretty much every kind of crop.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm not saying it's not potentially useful, just that it will be of dubious benefit on its own.

My problem with a lot of GMO food is that it puts more of the control over food into the hands of the people who are largely to blame for much of the situation.

My other problem is with single-generation seeds.  There's a horror story in there.  We've had 3 dark ages, and we have never lost the knowledge gained from the agricultural revolution.  Making seeds that don't make more seeds makes that hideous possibility more likely in the next dark ages.  And there will be a next dark ages, sooner or later.

That has nothing to do with GMOs though. Pretty much every crop plant is a sterile hybrid now.

Do you have a citation for this? Because my understanding is that while some are sterile hybrids, most are fertile hybrids that will revert.

You know what? I pulled that out of my ass from recollection. I can't find anything supporting that statement, which means it's probably bullshit.

It does call into question Roger's fear about single generation seeds, though.

That particular technology has been shelved, at least for now, due to public pressure. Or at least so Monsanto says.

I've been involved with certain dealings my company had with Monsanto that we backed out of because of ethics concerns (read, PR concerns).

You heard it right.  An energy company didn't want to dirty itself with those bastards. 

Monsanto is truly vile, but they are not themselves the entire GMO argument.

They aren't, but they hold the patent on Terminator™ seeds, so for the time being that particular technology is not one we have to worry about.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Well, you can try to sell it, but if people won't eat it, the idea is kind of moot.

Another entirely separate issue to food security that I would love to talk about is the rapid loss of cultivars in pretty much every kind of crop.

That is incredibly distressing, and oddly we just don't seem to learn from the various blights and famines that it's a bad idea to lose diversity.

[Faust]

Let's put it this way. Pests: The heart of the problem is that pests are eating the plants. You can kill the pests with broad spectrum insecticides, which is a hugely harmful process. Or you can insert a gene which kills a much more limited number, which is still not the best solution. The best solution is to make it so the insects don't even recognize the plants as tasty, so they get left alone.

We already know pesticides are a losing strategy.  We should be, as you say, taking an entirely different approach, like sacrificial plants that attract insects away from the plants we want.  Making that plant LESS resistant to pests and MORE attractive.  That way you don't lose the crop and you don't lose the bugs.

Or something.  When you approach A doesn't work, you don't do it MORE, you walk around to the other side of the problem and attempt approach B.

This is starting to sound suspiciously like polyculture, a farming method that works on small-scale farms and is primitive, in the sense of being very old, but proven.

It is typically dismissed as being "inefficient", but what that actually means is that it isn't adaptable to subsidy-driven factory-farming.

What makes poly culture so inefficient, is it that conventional automated farming means can't be applied?

Yes, the crops pretty much have to be tended by actual farmers, and aren't eligible for subsidies. Lots of the small farms in my area practice a modified polyculture where they grow ten or twenty types of crop and rotate their fields, which allows some machinery to be used but it isn't efficient on the same level as having vast fields of, say, beets, with giant machines to weed between rows and harvest them.

They tend to have a higher overall food yield per acre per year, but crop yield isn't counted that way, it's based on individual crops not combined yield.

Automation techniques are still advancing in leaps and bounds, I don't know anything about farming but is the drive not there to find a hardware solution?

[Kai]

Well, you can try to sell it, but if people won't eat it, the idea is kind of moot.

Another entirely separate issue to food security that I would love to talk about is the rapid loss of cultivars in pretty much every kind of crop.

That is incredibly distressing, and oddly we just don't seem to learn from the various blights and famines that it's a bad idea to lose diversity.

That actually is a good argument against GMOs and hybrids in general, that it homogenizes the genetic diversity within a species by crossing everything together. There's also the problem of cultivar sale, that the number of kinds of cultivars out there has decreased dramatically. Even apples and tomatoes, which retain a relatively higher average number of cultivars for sale, are tiny in comparison to 100 years ago.