top | item 45119601

(no title)

psolidgold | 5 months ago

Farmers spend millions on seeds partly because they are/were contractually obligated to NOT harvest and reuse seeds gathered from the patented GMO plants. While you're correct that resistance traits generally are less effective in F2/F3 generations, they would be committing a crime if they even attempted. Aside from this farmer-hostile position, there's plenty of other reasons to believe Monsanto and now Bayer were historically and continue to be evil. There's a relevant Veritasium video posted just 2 days ago about this very topic and I think "evil" is a very apt description. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxVXvFOPIyQ

Secondly, your claims about organic farming are way more nuanced than you're making them out to be. For instance, the pesticides used in organic farming have way different toxicity profiles than conventional farming pesticides. The argument of "they use more pesticides" doesn't hold water under serious scrutiny.

Finally, you're creating an false dichotomy where everyone who criticizes Monsanto/Bayer must have a pro-organic stance. I am allowed to think that Monsanto/Bayer is evil while also supporting GMO farming. In fact, that's my exact position.

discuss

order

luqtas|5 months ago

so show me any meta-analysis pointing less poison usage on organic crops vs. GMO. i also challenge you to show me any paper pointing organic uses less land than GMO... organic pesticides have different toxicity profiles for sure, some have even greater impact than synthetics [0], most of the times applied without the safety of a high-tech cabin [1]. the very few independent meta-analysis studies done on health, points no health impact on eating GMO too

organics literally don't even compose 3% of the whole world food production. if we have a sane society that doesn't think only about meat and money, GMO research on various other crops would be pretty beautiful by now

again, i don't like proprietary science nor greed billionaire companies with no pro-social intention but they are screwing the planet much less than farmers going organic because "sustainability". rural flight is a solid phenomena, which by the way, still happens. high-tech farms allows machines do the work everyone doesn't want to and don't cite me some few people that would stay there if wasn't for the "aggressive competition of GMO [3]"(which goes from resources efficiency, investment and financial returns), because farming scores uber high on modern slavery. being a field worker applying a substance that can kill you in a minute if you swallow a swig and the hard endurance work of farming stuff has no comparison against city jobs... i worked for a year volunteering on WWOOF and the situation of some workers is miserable. most of the times organic is about the tech enthusiast or medium/upper class retiring into the country while running their production out of cheap labor that even if it was well paid, you probably don't want to retire as a working class farm field worker

[0] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402... [3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4218791/