There is growing evidence that GMO foods significantly decrease fertility in males, and the effects are transfered to the next generation. So your kids might be half the man instead of twice the man.
^ What evidence? Anything peer reviewed suggest that or Jenny McCarthy type evidence? Or the Austrian study that was scientifically punted? I’m legitimately concerned on the GMO issue, I’ve just never seen any quality evidence that there is anything to worry about. Again, there is a difference in selective breeding big breasted chickens and corn that glows in the dark. But the stuff in the food supply is pretty harmless.
I am with geo on this one. I just ran a few searches through pubmed, etc and there is nothing even remotely close to indicating that GMOs have any effect on fertility. This new fad health/nutrition trend is completely unbacked by science. The people who pick up random nutrition facts and believe they are true are probably the same people who base their trades off of CNBC. Having dealt with the FDA twice in a research setting on GMO food additives, I can tell you nothing hits the general food supply now days unless it is thoroughly tested. The arctic apples have been doing “clinical” trials since 2012, and I assume they were testing 3-4 years before that. It is far easier to get a new drug approved than anything related to food. For some interesting reading you should read about nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics, since those are what people are worried about when they hear GMO. Those are 2 branches of science that are gaining a lot of traction the last few years. On an investing note apparently that company was just acquired after they got the FDA approval. http://www.thepacker.com/news/maker-arctic-apple-acquired
The GMO debate is very simple.
Non-organic farming methods produce higher yields at a lower cost point than organic farming. It’s a fact. Not sure? Check prices at your local super market and consult free market logic while keeping in mind that current commercial farming is food science, they aren’t leaving money on the table.
The US produces 32% of the world’s corn, 50% of the world’s soybeans and 10% of the world’s wheat. As a major global exporter, if the US abandoned evil GMO’s and hybrid seeds, it would increase prices globally and change the fundamental economics of third world hunger and starvation. Also a fact.
So while GMO and hybrid food may not be the best choice for a San Francisco based hipster programmer making $180k a year (and I encourage their right to eat healthy options), this does not make GMO’s a bad thing on the global scale where it can make the difference between whether or not there is food on the table for a starving family.
And I love the ongoing hatred for Monsanto without regard to Dupont, Dow, or any of the other GMO Ag majors. Particularly around the reviled Terminator seed that was never brought to market.
It’s one thing to spend money researching how you can improve yields, etc but it’s quite another to delay ripening process of a fruit. How does it help global starvation if you can stop apples from turning brown?
^ Easy. Less waste = more food. Pretty straight forward.
^
then I take it you’d prefer a McD burger over home made cheeseburger too? McD burgers are famous for not going bad. If memory serves me right then I think one guy in Iceland bought a cheeseburger, has had it for viewing for a couple of years, with no sign of it going bad.
I’m all in for less waste but I’ve seen the difference in extreme cases - though, this could be specific to UK…
It’s not about prefererence, I’m simply saying global food economics undermine the demonizatin of GMO firms. I eat mostly organic because my gf is into that and I support the healthy eating plan she’s got me into. However, I view it as a luxury I have and realize that GMO’s are a necessary part of the world’s food supply chain. If it were just me ordering food, I eat pretty bad and I love my McD’s.
I’d prefer the homemade of course, but if everyone had to eat organic/GMO free, many thousands or maybe millions would die. There is food scarcity, its real. Many people don’t have enough to eat. Lots of that is due to spoilage.
+1 Geo: This debate seems confused, meandering, obfuscated and ultimately…wrong.
GMO: our fruits, vegetables, animals have ben bred and modified for millenia. GMO is just a current variant of a very old strategy.
Starvation & mass mechanized farming:
We have plenty of food, a little less browning is good for efficiency but i doubt it will reduce starvation.
Try reading “How Asia Works”, smaller farming along with a developed agricultural policy likely is more efficient than mechanized farming. In developed countries there isn’t the labor to do this anymore, in 3rd world countries the infrasttructure is missing. i.e., interesting but ultimately this is an unrelated statement on completely different topics…
…this thread reminds me of one of Charlie Munger’s sayings about investing, “The most important facts about investing are all counterintuitive, and the most obvious ones are all wrong.”
^ You’re confusing efficiency as measured by production per acreage with cost efficiency. Higher land efficiency at the cost of lower gross output is completely contradictory to the world’s needs. Also, the Asian farming model relies on labor at substinance rates which are not an asset the US has or wants to have. Reducing the midwest to poverty is not a solution to the world’s food problem. Most importantly, the world does not have “plenty of food” given that the UN finds 1 in 9 of the world’s population is suffering from chronic malnutrition, with 3.1 million children a year under the age of 5 dying from poor nutrition. The kicker to your whole bullshit story is that World Food Program lists Asia as the continent with the most hungry people, two thirds of the total, ironic given that “we have enough food” and “Asia is the solution to the world’s food problems”. Lastly, poverty is the leading cause of hunger in every major study, which adds credence to the argument in favor of cost efficient (as opposed to land efficient) farming techniques. Browning in fact does lead to waste which by simple economics increases food prices and also reduces the viability of transportable raw foods.
I grew up on a small ~300 acre farm and can tell you as a fact that smaller farming is not a solution to anything and is not and never will be more efficient in any realistic metric. Your post reaks of liberal arts regurgitation.
If Asia as a whole were so efficient, the US would not be producing 32% of the world’s corn, 50% of the world’s soybeans and 10% of the world’s wheat with a fraction of the world’s land and China wouldn’t be currently buying millions of arable acres in Africa as we speak.
Lol @ this thread. Peasants buying a big rooster to bang big chicken is not on the same scale as modern genetic engineering. But you guys probably also think that global warming is BS.
^Lol @ your takeaway from this.
If you’re gonna troll, at least go back to criticising the Greeks after having all your Nazi debts forgiving in the interest of a better Europe from the second world war you lost. K, thanks bye!
^ He’s only a pretend German.
That said… I don’t think anyone is saying modern GMO is the same as 500BC animal husbandry. But we also had millions if not billions starving and dying pre-GMO, so I’m not sure we want to go back. Obviously we need to be careful with this stuff, but there is absolutely no evidence its harmful (I don’t mistakenly equate that with evidence its safe).
But a world without modern agricultural practices is much more bleak than the one we have today (where millions of kids still starve to death).
Wow. You just went full retard. I am not even German.
Very well said. All arguments against GMO equate to zero when you realise that whilst we’re thinking how we’re going to put our money to work tomorrow, there are kids who don’t even know when they’ll be fed next.
Fucking pisses me off as hell that in a world so capable, we could allow this to happen.
I would not have been where I am if I was worrying in my childhood about where my next meal is coming from!
Dude how am I a pretend German ? I have posted multiple times about where I am from originally. You and I have also discussed it. I am a bit surprised that you would write that about me.
Just because people are starving doesn’t mean we don’t have “plenty of food”. That just means they’re too poor to buy it.
^plantir, if there’s a large enough surplus prices will fall to lower levels based on basic demand curves. I also went on to point out the roll of poverty in the very next sentence after you cut off the quote. Regardless, raising the cost with less productive farming techniques would obviously be detrimental in the broader equation.