The Case for GMO's
When you can grow more food using the same inputs of land, water and fertilizer, everyone — farmers, consumers, hungry people and anyone who cares about CO2 concentrations in the earth’s atmosphere — is better off.
From a profile of an environmentally-minded owner of a California-based R & D biotech company, who says he wants to
use the the tools of plant biotechnology, and point them at saving the environment.
I guess that makes him an enemy of Greenpeace and all the other anti-GMO fanatics who call themselves environmentalists.
Long term, GMO is not a solution. Condom is.
But in the meantime, there are billions to feed, for many decades to come, so GMO’s better be the interim solution.
I find opposition to GMOs to be of the same intellectual quality as opposition to vaccines. Funny how anti-vaxers get shifted from one pool of opponents to another, innit?
I was curious as to what some of the fuel was to the anti-GMO sentiment and found this from the wonderful Union of Concerned Scientists.
Reading the article, one easily can see the bias and omissions (i.e. Organic Farming is way better than Modern Convention etc.). Anyhow, not being too knowledgeable in the field, I sought a counterview. And, viola!
An analysis of “Failure to Yield” by Doug Gurian-Sherman, Union of Concerned Scientists.
Dr. Wayne Parrott of University of Georgia provides a more comprehensive and (dare I say…) scientific approach to point out Doug Gurian-Sherman’s nonsense.
Union of Concerned Scientists seem unconcerned with precision. Though a side note, I do believe UCS have changed position on nuclear power from Greenpeace to neutral 😉
intrepid_wanders Says:
July 28th, 2011 at 2:16 pm
<i>I was curious as to what some of the fuel was to the anti-GMO sentiment</i>
Small farms(less then 100 acres) have a very hard time competing against large farms.
Farm tractors range in size between something not much larger then a riding lawn mower to larger then a house. The cost of the person driving the tractor doesn’t change. The farmer with the largest acreage and biggest tractor is going to be able to win the price contest.
Organic vs GMO provides a product differentiation that attempts to justify the higher unit costs of small scale farming.
Harry, the cost of the person driving the tractor has increased orders of magnitude counting the training and knowledge that a modern farmer needs.