The Future of GMO

Thursday 25 July 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

The future of GMO crops could be brilliant. Vegetables that are able to grow without the use of pesticides could be a huge boon to the poor worldwide, dramatically increasing yields per acre and decreasing the cost of production, while using far fewer chemical pesticides and fungicides that pollute the land. Fewer chemicals make for a more sustainable method for stewardship of the land and decrease the cost making more food more accessible to those where food production is both inefficient and harmful to the environment. But there are issues; not with the technology itself, which is scientifically sound, but with those who oppose GM tech in a very cult-like manner. Amy Waxman of NOVA:

Weeks later, De Jong tells me the panel [on GMO crop production] opened his eyes. He was shocked at how people who don’t live near farms feel entitled to advise farmers, especially on environmental matters. “There is a romantic notion of environmentalism, and then there is actual environmentalism,” De Jong says. “Farmers are very conscious of the environment. They want to hand off their operation to their kids and their kids’ kids, so they maintain the land the best they can while doing what they need to do in order to sell their harvest,” he says. “My guess is that the majority of people who are anti-GM live in cities and have no idea what stewardship of the land entails.”

“I find it so tragic that, by and large, crop biotechnologists and farmers want to reduce their pesticide use, and yet the method we think is most sustainable and environmentally friendly has been dismissed out of hand.” He pauses as he recalls the event and says, “There is no scientific justification for it—it is just as if there is a high priest who decided, ‘Thou shalt not be GMO.’ ”

Urban “environmentalists” that have no fucking idea how to produce food and whose beliefs are based on nothing but anti-science superstition telling farmers how to run a farm and preserve farmland. Awesome. But there are other hurdles as well. Governments around the world have made the approval of GM crops nearly impossible, and for no good scientific reason. These hurdles are man-made, and based on environmental and public health voodoo rather than science.

At the moment, only large corporations have the financial resources to weather the approval process, which, by and large, isn’t standardized and can drag on for several years. Multiple US federal agencies, driven in part by the public’s fears, ask for proof on safety and efficacy beyond a point that feels reasonable to some scientists. For example, people worry that inserted genes will spread to wild crops, but reported occurrences have been exceedingly rare and their existence is debated among the scientific community. As agencies examine and re-examine all imaginable scenarios, public sector projects and small businesses crumble under the pressure of paying employees while taking in no revenue.

“Some of the regulations required for crop approval are not science-based, and they have crippled the ability of the public sector to deploy GMOs for public benefit,” De Jong says, “I can make a transgenic potato for less than $50,000, but I cannot afford to pay five to ten million dollars to go through regulatory hoops.” As a result of hurdles like these, Monsanto’s engineered corn and soybeans monopolize the market for GMOs. By enforcing their patents on GM seeds, Monsanto and other large corporations with GMO products can dictate how much farmers pay for seeds—a precarious dependency to be in when an additional 2 billion people in developing nations need to be fed in 2050. De Jong is pushing for policy reform.

Bureaucrats in suits who have no idea how to produce anything at all except tomes of regulations about things with which they have no practical experience, driven, in part, by fanatics opposed to GM crops, have made entrance in to the market virtually impossible for all except the very largest biotech corporations (surely those corporations with large enough pockets, like Monsanto, have willingly helped create this overly burdensome regulatory environment that effectively bars any competition from entering the market, using the army of federal regulators as a method for their own economic protectionism).

I, and everyone around the world, have to continue to buy food which is more susceptible to diseases and insects while the production of said food continues to pollute the land at drastic rates because city-dwelling greenies are luddites. Fucking great.

2013-07-25  »  madlibertarianguy