So basically he's saying he has no faith or confidence in the criminal justice system? Wouldn't that kind of... I dunno... disqualify you from a job in the criminal justice system?
It all depends what your definition of genetic modification is.
No it doesn't.
It's a completely disingenuous argument and a false equivalency. We know that we are referring to GMO vs selective breeding. These are completely different mechanisms and in the latter case we understand the consequences and implications because humans have been doing it for millennia. In the former case we have not been doing it very long at all and do not yet fully understand the consequences and implications. I'm not saying that makes it inherently wrong, but it is a vast area of unknown ramifications. And given human's already long history of fucking with nature and finding out my money is on those ramifications being less than ideal.
It is selecting genes through breeding or doing the same thing in a laboratory.
It is a completely different mechanism. The best way to simply describe this is perhaps to say that in selective breeding you are allowing random mutations to happen naturally - IOW allowing the plant to naturally "adapt" to it's environment. This is crucially different in that you are not going in and saying "oh these genes are the ones we want let's only bring those out" but rather "these are the characteristics I want, let's select the organisms that display those".
To put it another way: in selective breeding you are selecting for a collection of characteristics. A great example is saving seed from a crop you have grown. Those seeds will always do better in your specific environment than commercially purchased seeds of the exact same cultivar. Why? Because there are small random mutations across a number of genes that are better adapted to your specific environment to produce the characteristics you want. Those genes are often not actually understood nor is the effect of different combinations of genes. By working backward from exhibited characteristics you are working from known successful combinations.
Golden rice could have saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives by now.
Serious question. If hundreds of lives were at stake, why were other mechanisms... such as just giving kids vitamin A, not apparently employed? Regardless of the merits of the opposition to this rice, why not pursue this on multiple fronts?
As the article points out, it's not just a question of safety.
“Farmers who brought this case with us – along with local scientists – currently grow different varieties of rice, including high-value seeds they have worked with for generations and have control over. They’re rightly concerned that if their organic or heirloom varieties get mixed up with patented, genetically engineered rice, that could sabotage their certifications, reducing their market appeal and ultimately threatening their livelihoods.”
The article said they felt it could endanger their livelihood by crossing with cultivars they'd spent decades developing and which were uniquely valuable economically.
It really doesn't though. If you point is... um... what exactly? That somehow the end result is the same? LOL. Only if you squint real hard and pretend to misunderstand words.
"Plant domestication by the earliest farmers 10,000 years ago is an example of genetic modification."
Technically, yes. That's true. Through DIFFERENT mechanisms.
But what do you expect when it's brought to you by Cargill, Bayer, Syngenta, Nutrien, BASF... among others.
The insect glue, produced from edible oils, was inspired by plants such as sundews that use the strategy to capture their prey. A key advantage of physical pesticides over toxic pesticides is that pests are highly unlikely to evolve resistance, as this would require them to develop much larger and stronger bodies, while bigger...
Edit: Apparently this isn't so obvious to people. Ok, let me explain:
No pesticide can be precisely targeted. You will always capture or kill more insects that are beneficial than are not. In the article it mentions that the sticky spray doesn't capture bigger insects like bees. That's certainly progress over other types of physical traps, but not all insects are very big. Key beneficials like lady bugs, green lacewings, various spiders, pirate bugs, etc are very small. They will be trapped by this spray. If it traps a thrip, it will trap those bugs (and the study abstract says this - "small anthropods"). This isn't mentioned in the article but I can speak to this from personal experience farming. I've tried various options and the results are always the same - you may get rid of some thrips (and boy do I have thrips) but you also wipe out the insects that will eat the thrips and you end up in a kind of arms race. The more beneficials you kill the more pesticides you need.
Um. No kidding. Did you read the article? (Edit: that I linked to)
This year again, we released green lacewing larva in the Public Garden, the Boston Common, and Commonwealth Avenue Mall. As generalist predators, the tiny larvae (Chrysoperla rufilabris) provide a vital service by eating aphids, small caterpillars, beetles, thrips, mites, whiteflies, mealybugs, and even insect eggs.
Edit: My point, which seems to be completely lost on most people here is that no physical means of trapping insects is going to only target the problem insects. You will always capture more of the insects you didn't mean to harm. Source: me, having tried sticky traps and various oils in commercial farming settings.
No pesticide that physically traps insects is specific to one kind. It's not really possible. It may not capture bees, but it will capture other smaller insects than thrips that do no harm. For example green lacewing larva.
It’s literally in the post. Not even in the article, it’s in the synopsis. Why didn’t you read that before commenting?
Can you be more precise? When you say "it" is "literally in the post" what exactly is "it"? Serious question because yes I read the article.
I would surmise that you are referring to the line "while bigger beneficial insects, like bees, are not trapped by the drops".
The problem here is the word "bigger". So great, it doesn't trap bees, that's something of a step forward. But it will trap other non-targeted smaller insects.
They are if the stickiness is tuned so that larger, predatory insects are easily able to escape the glue.
Most beneficials that go after thrips are not that much bigger than them. The study doesn't seem to mention this (tho I'm still looking for the full text).
We can’t just stop spraying the toxic stuff without an alternative because global food systems could collapse.
Food security isn't an issue of production but rather distribution and specifically equitable distribution; 2. It's estimated that 40% of all food produced in America is wasted;
So given #2, what is the reduction in yield that would result from not "spraying toxic stuff" and is it more or less than 40%? The answer is very like no, not even close and further, this is that a "collapse" of food systems or a collapse of corporate profits?
I've mentioned some in posts here but among the smaller ones I'd include ladybugs, green lacewings, spiders, minute pirate bugs, spined soldier bugs, braconid wasps, trichogrammatid wasps, etc. Trichogrammatid wasps for example are only about 1mm in size! But they perform a vital function.
How do you stop consumers from wasting food from the production side?
I'm glad you asked. More diversified and de-centralized production that shortens the food chain. That actually solves more problems than it may appear, key among them consumer understanding of what "good" is when it comes to produce, which pulls demand. A lot of produce is wasted simply because it's not the right size or blemished in some way - sorting to meet consumer demand for perfect produce is that very first layer of waste. And because consumers don't really know what fresh is they assume that 2-4 week old corn you buy wrapped in plastic is just perfectly fine. Yet, because it's 2-4 weeks old it isn't going to last much longer. Long food chains also mean increased handling which means increased risk of contamination which means increased washing and treatment, leading to degradation and waste. Bagged salad is a great example of that. When I sold salad at the farmer's market it was picked that morning or the night before and easily lasted 2-3 weeks refrigerated.
When you shorten the food chain more "imperfect" produce gets used, it's in the hands of consumers sooner and thus lasts longer and, crucially, is more nutritious both because it doesn't need to be optimized for shelf life and because it's fresher. (if you search for something like "loss of nutrition in produce over time" you'll get lots of resources on this - tl;dr this got studied a ton during WWII and it's very much a thing.
There's a ton more detail I could add here - it's a complex subject. But the bottom line is a lot of waste happens because of decentralization and our own, as consumers, distance from production.
We can have less efficient agriculture that doesn’t require indiscriminate killing of species.
Thank you!
One of the big lies of modern industrialized agriculture is that we have a production problem. We don't! We have a "profit problem" in the sense that industrialized food producers demand ever greater profits which means they have to continually find ways to get people to eat more "value", in volume and/or value-added processes.
In reality we have a distribution problem that is caused by industrialization and centralization. The real solution is decentralization and diversification.
Fundamentally you misinterpreted what I said. I'm not being disingenuous about why we use pesticides, I'm simply saying we are doing it wrong and should not use any. The whole premise of "we must use pesticides or we'll starve" is, to put it simply, a fallacy. Because we are no longer producing food so we don't starve but so that huge corporations can profit more.
The big problems with the "well this is slightly better than the alternative" are: First, the alternatives don't necessarily kill all insects - they can be highly targeted too. Secondly, killing any beneficials is treading backwards. The more beneficials you kill the more you need things to kill the pests. In other words, it's pushing "solutions" in completely the wrong direction. And industrial ag pursues this with such fervor it's accelerating the process to the point where we may have no functional insect populations left. This is an existential threat.
We don’t kill bugs because they’re gross, we kill them because they eat our food.
In fact they don't in the large scheme of things. Or as the joke goes, they only eat a little.
I think this sums up your misinterpretation of what I'm saying and I concede it's understandable because I was a little obscure in my jest. The "eww gross" line comes from a basic prejudice that people have about insects - that they are always pests and don't serve an important purpose. And so our approach to pest control has always been one of "insect bad! kill them all!". Even the fact that if someone finds a bug in their store-bought produce - and I've seen this with my own eyes - they are inclined to take it back. That's the level of ridiculous over-reaction we have when in reality we should be enlisting the help of the insect world.
And I can personally attest this works on a commercial scale.
Looking at the marketing of big ag and big food, it's not surprising. The first lie of industrialized agriculture was that it was necessary to feed the world and "free people from slavery to the land". It's absolutely true that technology has massively improved agriculture and a great deal of that technology is hugely beneficial... but it also created an industry that, in essence, produces too much. It is driven to lower costs, and thus margins for producers while increasing profits for large corporations. The longer the food chain the more hands needing profit, thus spreading out value and increasing the need to add value through processed food, clever packaging and increased consumption.
By decentralizing agriculture we can shorten the chain - reducing excess production, leaving more value for the producers, reducing the impact of monocultures by spreading them out and reducing their size and ultimately bringing better and more equitable distribution of nutrition to consumers.
I know there are great alternatives, but they all have higher labour requirements.
Not necessarily - I'd argue any higher labor requirements are more than offset by the increased value the producer (ie higher margins); 2. So what. Modern capitalism can't tolerate that - this is very true. Because we have these very long complex food production chains that demand the lowest possible input costs in order to survive. But there is a way out and it doesn't require re-inventing capitalism: decentralization of production and promotion of smaller more diversified farms. This absolutely can be done and we know because we have been doing it, just not quite enough to offset the corporate forces of centralization. Small farms and farmer's markets need help and part of that is up to consumers to make the choice. Part of it is regulatory capture by big food corporations who have shaped our food chain to make sure that small farms are at a huge disadvantage.
On #1 - a diversified farm growing "speciality crops" (USDA speak for food we consume directly instead of commodities) will typically have margins >20% and can easily net $25k or more an acre. In commodities, even the highest net for almonds and pistachios might only get you $1.2-1.5k per acre. Many commodities like corn can have a negative margin and only survive through subsidies.
All this matters because farmers have literally been digging their own graves and become little more than share croppers. It's so hard to be viable direct to consumer there is little choice - a really classic example being chicken production where it's virtually impossible to be an independent producer because companies like Tyson have made sure all the regulations favor them. So now they'll loan you the money for facilities you'll never pay off and you have no choice but to sell to them at whatever price they set.
I've been wondering for a bit why during the time the Democrats controlled the legislature, executive, and judicial branches during Obama's first term in 2008 more wasn't accomplished. Shouldn't that have been the opportunity to make Row V Way law and fix the electoral college? I understand the recession was going on but outside...
I can’t imagine something like that being as cheap as you describe, even if it’s not a multi million dollar vessel.
To add to some of the excellent answers: There is a whole category of folks who do van life, but it's sailboat life. They live on the boat full time and go extremely low-budget -- few of them are wealthy at all. People get hung up on "yacht" and all the baggage that word brings. Many purchased a boat in lieu of a van or a house. So even if you spent $100k it's a cheaper life than on land in most cases.
Examples of low budget sailors you can check out:
Sam Holmes - I don't know what he paid for his current boat but he's super frugal. I'd be shocked if he paid more than $15k and it was probably a LOT less, knowing him. While back in the US he was sailing a boat (Bayfield 29) he got for free.
Sailing Uma - While this couple are now doing much better financially (thanks to their Youtube content) they originally paid $3k for their boat, put as I recall about another $3-5k into it and have been sailing ever since, including across the Atlantic and up to Svalbard, Norway, Iceland, etc.
Wind Hippie Sailing - Holly, who is pretty damned poor, sails a Grinde 27 which was a real fixer upper when she bought it. Not sure of the price but probably under $20k.
There are of course a ton of sailers out there who are not visible. I know of a couple of people who got their boat for free and have sailed at least from the US West coast to Hawaii or around the Carribean living on practically nothing.
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The insect glue, produced from edible oils, was inspired by plants such as sundews that use the strategy to capture their prey. A key advantage of physical pesticides over toxic pesticides is that pests are highly unlikely to evolve resistance, as this would require them to develop much larger and stronger bodies, while bigger...
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What foods and drinks would you buy more often if money was not an issue?