GO f**k YOURSELF SYNGENTA

[Dylan]

Thwt doesnt make sense. You can est well and still eat out. Tonight I'm trying out this place with the same chef as momofuku. I hear it's meh but I have to try. Dim sum for days.

[Mo~]

[Professor]

[Professor]

[exploited]

The general scientific consensus is that eating GMOs does not harm human health, although to be frank, there is no standardized method of testing individual products, and all of these studies are fairly short-term. I think they are fairly acceptable to eat, probably far less harmful than half the shit we put into our bodies.

That said, GMOs do still present a danger, which I have gone over numerous times elsewhere in this thread. It would be like determining a car is safe for humans while ignoring the impact of car emissions - sure, getting behind the wheel is going to be fairly safe, all considering, but the more potent problem is what it does to the larger environment, what it means for sustainability, what impact it has on natural habitats, etc. Like cars, that is the true threat faced by unfettered GMO growth. Unlike cars, we actually can't quantify the damage we are doing - the research community hasn't caught up to the technology, and there is a tremendous amount of concern about what relying upon GMOs (which guarantees monoculture and pesticide-use) will mean to food security.

[Professor]

[exploited]

I think that the viable alternatives are pretty well-known, but they aren't cheap and they will require real effort.

First and foremost, we need to take a census on the state of our soil. Thirty years of monoculture, which led to the necessity of GMOs, has had some pretty disastrous effects on long-term soil productivity. I kid you not, there are farms in my area that were some of the highest quality farm land around, that have been growing corn for twenty years straight. There is an excellent chance that these farms are dead zones at this point - it will take probably close to a decade to rejuvenate them, if it's even possible.

Second, we need to offer an economic reason for smart farming, or at least remove the economic incentives for dumb farming. I think a program that decreases taxes by a graduated scale based on number of crops grown per farm would be good. Start rewarding farmers for practicing sustainable farming. Or, as I said, stop rewarding them for being idiots.

Third, we need to develop a nationwide policy of pesticides. That shit is out of control. There needs to be firm limits put in place. Pesticides are for dire emergencies, not standard practice. This would be hard to establish, but it would ultimately benefit farmers, consumers and companies, so there is a faint hope.

Fourth, we need to encourage natural alternatives to pesticides, like biological pest control. It would even be conceivable that you could genetically modify good bugs to die off after a certain amount of time, which means you could dump them on fields and be assured that they'd die within a reasonable time span. They would handle the pests, dwindling their numbers down to below the problem threshold, then die. This isn't to say this would necessarily work - I am bringing it up to show that there are alternatives, not only to GMOs, but how GMO technology is currently used.

Lastly, require better standardized testing. Long-term. If your product needs to be altered every year to withstand pests, there is a problem with your product and how it is being used. Place clear limits on how often we can up the biological ante - this will at least slow our stupid march towards the pest singularity.

[uebermann]

[exploited]

The issue isn't just in the areas surrounding fields, it is the fields themselves. I can tell you with absolute certainty that those practicing long-term monoculture are creating a massive problem, one that puts our food security at risk.

Have you ever been in a corn field that has used GMO seeds, and the accompanying pesticides and additives, over the long term? They are dead zones. There is literally nothing there - there are no birds, no insects, no rodents or wildlife to speak of, and that is because many farmers have utterly destroyed the ecosystem in that field. They kill off all the pests, but pests are beneficial up to a certain level - it is only when an imbalance occurs that they become undesirable.

This is why they are forced to bring in fertilizer and lime by the truckload, which only makes the problem worse, making the field ever more imbalanced. So you'll get greater yield from one crop, but your soil has far less productivity. I spoke at length about crop rotation, and I'll sum it up: rotating crops is absolutely essential to sustainable farming, and it is both arrogant and shortsighted to imagine humans can stay ahead of biological evolution in the long-term. GMOs are intricately linked to this problem, because they are the bandaid we put on our self-afflicted wounds. Monoculture created the need for them, and GMOs now makes it possible to push back the consequences, which increases them long term, all based on the idea that human intelligence can keep up with biological evolution.

[Winchester]