Organically extracted free-range agriculture discussion

Politics & News
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i’ve had this argument with you. you didn’t actually produce easily googleable credible sources, and instead conflated gmo and for profit pesticides into alarmism. The is a scientific consensus that modern gmo technology is safe and is already one of the most thoroughly tested methods compared to prior techniques. There is also a scientific consensus that certain pesticides are carcinogenic, and exert evolutionary pressures on insects, etc. Those are both true at the same time.

The reality is that GMO is a very widely applied term that covers almost all agriculture for as long as we have been alive, and the pesticide issue you are describing is a small (and smaller every year) part of it. yes, the very first few authorized plantings of gmo were roundup resistant crops. that actually helped quite a bit for a short time, but it did not overtake agriculture at large. the research showed that selected resistance to pests is at least price competitive, because the application of anything during the growing season is hugely expensive, and the trend turned to doing as few passes over a field as possible.

on top of it, other researchers successfully pressured regulators to limit and phase out roundup, etc. like there was a massive campaign to have people stop over-applying it around their homes, and farmers who were exposed to large amounts are suing the manufacturers, and have won better work safety for future farmers. perhaps not in usa, but they have in civilized countries. :stuck_out_tongue:

every year “gmo” lowers the need for resources and land, and helps species adapt to climate change. You are actually doing a disservice to environmental concerns by blowing out of proportion the pesticide resilience. The global climate crisis will necessitate a better packed tomato, not just in terms of water, but also nutrients.

we should fight for better regulation, not rail against gmo’s. it’s not the same equivocation as vaccines, but it still damages the very science that helped save lives in the 20th century, and will undoubtedly save lives in the 21st.

6 Likes
248

lol, no johnny, and merry christmas. i argued with you for like two days until you sucked the lifeforce out of me with something about labcoats. too bad you didn’t post anything sooner. of the things you call gmo, most that were authorized at the time were pesticide resistance, but it is in no way the total of all gmo research being done, or what’s going to be tested over the next decade.

it is factually incorrect to say that crop rotation is going to be just as effective at adapting to climate change effects. it also not itself an efficient carbon sink/soil builder, cover-cropping is. crop rotation is just an orthogonal technique to say no-till planting, or raising yields via selection.

most agriculture throughout history was utterly destructive, to hold up 19th century plows as the pinnacle sustainability or production is quite possibly the most johnny thing to say on this subject. except for the thing where you are upset technology hasn’t delivered salvation fast enough, spoken from the safety of a mobile device on the toilet having been jabbed and boosted from a deadly disease.

perhaps it is your expectation from technology that’s unrealistic

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this is not the same thing as gmo. it’s not even gmo in the most modern scifi sense. 80s and 90s agriculture could be described as heavier mono cropping with heavier fertilizer, pesticides, and water than now, and certainly higher than what is being researched right now.

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this is a mis characterization. old methods of agriculture were also very destructive, especially those done at scale. deforestation and tilling started around the same time as crop-rotation. no-till planting was invented at the same time as industrial fertilizer, and it took decades for any particular farmer to switch to it primarily (only a tiny minority did this anyway). yeah i’m confident saying those who are practicing it now are doing a responsible sustainable effort right now with GMO are doing it better than say europe 70 years ago, or asia up until late 90s.

old methods of farming also failed to prevent famines which cost millions of lives worldwide every year. thatbnumber dropped down 10x in the 70s.

i am not here to defend any corporate profit motive. sounds like you have so little faith in regulartory institutions, and such overwhelming fear of other people doing anything, that you’d rather take away the scientific motive to search for a better understanding and technology it produces.

256

dude, you are talking out one side of your mouth that profit motives are the same and thus it will result in similar horrible outcomes regardless of the state of the science, and some study achieved same yield without something synthetic. Yet out the other side you claim that you/noone ever said some older methods were in any way the equivalent as deploying gmo.

it’s fine being skeptical of claims about the future, that’s all a part of science. dismissing it like you did because of filtered cigarettes or clean coal is not healthy skepticism. it’s repeating points which are often deployed by anti-science. yeah, i get you don’t think of yourself as anti-science. you are just rustled by a lot of alarmism, perhaps to a degree beyond my own. which (surprise!) is a useful wedge employed by for-profit motives. to claim that it is more dangerous to change one gene in a tomato than to growing seeds hybridized in the wild is another fringe anti-gmo point. i’ll choose the one that had hundreds of tests done before being authorized tyvm.

i didn’t decide what you meant. you went with a very narrowly read that fertilizers and pesticides, and by extension gmos, are bad. That’s too broad of a statement, modulo all the usual human biases, dunning-kruger, occam, pareto, etc. Instead, try to accept that every GMO environmental nuance depends on the particular applications and deployment. and that it’s pretty obviously being researched by thousands of teams at every university and corporate lab for far more than just glyphosate resistance. i will repeat that equivocating on GMOs goes against an existing and hard-fought consensus that the methods themselves are both benign and useful. not marginally useful, it saves species, industries, ultimately lives.

i went back and reread what you cited, the crop rotation study used less of synthetic fertilizer, rather than none, but more manure which also comes with pollution costs btw but let’s not open that can of shit. by a very reasonable standard it was also monoculture. 4 crops in 4 years and 3/3, rather than 2/2, isn’t what environmentalists consider as biodiversity, which i am sure you know, but the study still headlines “System Diversity”. it’s sus to me, but maybe it’s accepted in that circle.

anyways it is the entire point of a whole lot of GMO research, using less stuff we now know is harmful yet sometimes necessary, or necessary yet expensive. it is highly doubtful to me that yields would have been the same if no synthetics/selected/hybrids were ever deployed. at least not without major soil restoration to the current environment.

the organic study was interesting on reread, pest-resistant cotton (i.e. gmo) without the use pesticides had similar environmental advantages to organic. if the yields come close, i don’t have anything against using one seed vs another, but i doubt that’s the whole story. in light of literally hundreds of studies that show that organic yields are lower and more sensitive to weather, gmos are safe, gmos raise yields, gmos adapt better, etc.

i remember now why i have this thread on mute. you are downright rude when internet points are at stake. i think i brought more citations that you to this thread, but if you want to stan behind the one soy/alfalfa study you hinge it on, go right ahead. your approach of “tell me what i believe, then try to disprove it, it’s not my job” works excellently with minutae. congrats on missing out on the benefits of an agricultural revolution.

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right back at ya. try not to kill any labcoats.