Earlier quoted context omitted.
While this is a hot button topic, I've seen some pretty horrible things Monsanto has done to farmers. Accepting GMO crops would mean accepting Monsanto who has a monopoly on the industry and are well know for using sketchy tactics when dealing with farmers resistant to using their seeds.
"I've seen some pretty horrible things Monsanto has done to farmers." [citation needed]
Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?
151–160 of 241 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?
#152Researchers at Audi are making synthetic diesel fuel using only water and air. Miracle? No. Science. http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/28/technology/audi-diesel-air-w...
Synthetic fuel is not exactly new, e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process
Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problems in the developing countries are at least partially caused by things not directly related to agriculture, for example speculation with food and subsidies in developed countries making local agriculture unprofitable.
Speculation is ultimately driven by scarcity. There's no purpose in speculating if you can't generate an arbitrage. Greater productivity on the part of small farmers will alleviate scarcity, driving food prices down. Similarly, there are lots of markets that are unserved by the global food chain. How can one say that food subsidies in developed countries can affect these unserved markets? They can't sell to the devel…
What is your point? You can not disprove what I said with one counterexample. Look for examples that confirm what I said.
I for example remember a documentary I saw a couple of months ago with starving people collecting single grains of rice, I think, from the streets at a market in India if I remember correctly. On the other side of the street behind a wall was a huge open space with hundreds, maybe thousands of tons of rice, bought by speculators hoping for rising prices but they didn't. Hell, even if everything worked as expected, less supply because everything got bought up causing rising prices in turn, this would be plain unethical extortion.
One other example that comes to mind is milk producers in Africa going out of business because of cheap subsidized milk powder flooding the markets. Cheap milk in exchange for now unemployed milk producers and capital leaving the country seems not such a great deal to me. And because of credits from the world bank they are not allowed to counter this development with import taxes. Free trade may be - not necessarily is - a good thing between equal parties, but between a rich, developed and powerful party on one side and a poor, underdeveloped and powerless party on the other side it becomes quite probable that it will not turn out as a win-win situation.
Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
While this is a hot button topic, I've seen some pretty horrible things Monsanto has done to farmers. Accepting GMO crops would mean accepting Monsanto who has a monopoly on the industry and are well know for using sketchy tactics when dealing with farmers resistant to using their seeds.
> Accepting GMO crops would mean accepting Monsanto No, actually, accepting GMO crops could quite well go along with targeting specific unliked business practices engaged in by Monsanto. > who has a monopoly on the industry No, they don't. They are the biggest player, but there a numerous others, several not much smaller. (There's some concerns that the relations within the industry are cartel-like, and I wouldn't be…
>>No, actually, accepting GMO crops could quite well go along with targeting specific unliked business practices engaged in by Monsanto.
Can you explain this? It would seem as the biggest player, they have a huge advantage over other smaller companies. So much so, I couldn't name two other companies who currently compete with them.
Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're GMOing crops long before the DNA revolution. Plants were selectively bred for certain qualities since the dawn of agriculture. None of fruits or vegetables we eat in the present (even without GMO) could be found naturally few hundred years ago. We were genetically modifying them without really knowing the mechanism. There some ecological as well as regulatory challenges. That doesn't mean GMO isn't a solid appr…
Selective breeding is not the same as editing a genome. You cannot "selectively breed" a fish gene into a tomato.
Uhm. You can, in fact, selectively breed any given gene into any creature. You are, of course, aware that plant mutation rates has been accelerated with mutagens for decades in search of desirable changes.
So while it may not be a gene copied directly from a fish, it will be a base-for-base identical copy of the gene found in a fish. Then it can be merged back into the main line of the plant via a recombinant backcross technique.
This is how plant breeding has been done for quite a long time now.
Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?
#156Mermistor (discovery in 1971 but actual implementation in 2008) http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/06/hp-pla...
Wasn't sure if you had misspelled "memristor" or if there was some sort of aquatic resistor I had not heard of.
Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants. It's not a good engineering solution to the real food problems we face. Of course, the DONT EAT THE SCIENCE OR IT WILL GIVE YOU THE CANCER political nonsense is wrong. That doesn't let GMO off the hook, though. The problem it attempts to solve, on the surface, is increasing the productivity of monocropping. But productivity i…
> The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants. It's not a good engineering solution to the real food problems we face. GMO isn't that, Monsanto is that, and the fucked up patent system is like that. This is like creationists saying they dislike evolution, when they really mean they dislike abiogenesis, but accept everything else about evolutionary theory.
But why is Monsanto pursuing GMO? What problem are they really trying to solve? It's not a problem of food supply. It's a problem of getting greater control and higher profits out of a saturated market.
What's good for a single business is often not good for the general public.
Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would first want to see people accept GMO crops. Then I'll be willing to think of people going to the doctor to change their eye color.
I think we're going to learn that at best eating GMOs are going to be as safe as eating McDonalds fast food. Which is quite safe but not a terribly wise dietary choice. Because GMOs are made (at best) to maximize the profitability of what's being sold. And when you do that you sacrifice other things and you lose awareness of others. This is especially true considering how little we know about nutrition. We are at the…
Why do you think GMOs are inferior? How are they fundamentally different from plants that have been human-modified for many thousands of years?
Let's get concrete. In what specific nutritional manner do you think Golden Rice is inferior to the varietal of white rice from which it was derived? And if the answer to this is that we don't know enough about nutrition to be sure, then what basis do you have for alleging its supposed inferiority?
Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants. It's not a good engineering solution to the real food problems we face. Of course, the DONT EAT THE SCIENCE OR IT WILL GIVE YOU THE CANCER political nonsense is wrong. That doesn't let GMO off the hook, though. The problem it attempts to solve, on the surface, is increasing the productivity of monocropping. But productivity i…
> But productivity isn't the problem of our food chain. We can grow plenty of food, and cheaply. We can. The rest of the developing world has a lot of trouble keeping people fed. There's only so much aid can do, but if we can find ways for small-time farmers to produce more, and also to transport those goods, then the rest of the world could feed itself, something small-time agriculture has historically had a lot of…
GMO crops aren't invented for developing world conditions. They're invented for the developed world that can afford them. They're an extension of Green Revolution agriculture ideas. The core of Green Revolution is a focus on cash crops rather than subsistence farming - high intensity monocropping to create raw feedstock for junk food factories in the global market, rather than immediately edible food for local consumption. You don't eat soybeans. You eat things made in a factory out of soybeans.
Green Revolution is often the cause of rather than cure for hunger in the developing world. Here's an example. Ethiopia is one of the most agriculturally bountiful places on Earth. For thousands of years, it has been farmed effectively, and nomadic cattle herding was a key part of that. In the 1970s, it joined the Green Revolution. River valley land was "bought" and fenced in for industrial cattle farming, raising low quality beef for the European pet food market. This cut off access to the rivers during dry season for the nomadic herders, backed up in force by a now internationally funded army. The nomads were forced to stay in the hills, overgrazing during the dry season. A decade or so later, and the hill country desertified and the rivers silted up, ruining both the nomadic and Green Revolution cattle farming. Suddenly, a peaceful and well-fed land became the scene of a world-shaking famine and civil war.
The picture is much, much bigger than just GMO.
Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants. It's not a good engineering solution to the real food problems we face. GMO isn't that, Monsanto is that, and the fucked up patent system is like that. This is like creationists saying they dislike evolution, when they really mean they dislike abiogenesis, but accept everything else about evolutionary theory.
But why is Monsanto pursuing GMO? What problem are they really trying to solve? It's not a problem of food supply. It's a problem of getting greater control and higher profits out of a saturated market. What's good for a single business is often not good for the general public.
Friend, a question if I may. Are you reading the comments of those who respond to and attempt to engage with you with an open and generous mind?