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RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

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Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#131

Post by bluGill »

shawn-butler wrote: post #129
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Modern farmers are keenly aware of soil quality and spend a lot of time and money to keep their farms running at top efficiency. You sure about that? When I was ARS, sure there were 3-4 farmers I met who took SOC and and soil health seriously; individuals who wanted to think about their soil as an ecosystem and grow their soils as they did their crops. Then there were the other 96-97 farmers you would meet who could…

>> Its purely anecdotal, but the vast majority of farmers I had the opportunity were not good farmers It is purely anecdotal. It greatly depends on the location and the generational age of the farmer the extent to which they are concerned with soil conservation. Cultural practices in farming tend to have wide adoption swings, (neighbors see what their neighbors are doing, etc) Entire counties will be using convention…

> I find your identification of 96-97% of farmers as short-term profiteers rude and borderline offensive.

It could be right. The smaller the farmer the less likely they are to realize how much the investment in better farming is worth it. The very large farmers have the numbers showing the investment is worth it, they control a lot of land, but are only a minority of farmers.

I'm still with you that > 90% is a bad estimate, but it isn't as bad as you make it out.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#132

Post by fy20 »

s5300 wrote: post #37
deepGem wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first moved from India to US, this is the first noticeable difference I found. Huge ass veggies, devoid of taste. I just couldn't believe tomatoes. They looked so pretty yet had literally no tart. So yeah I'm cool with all of these RNA fiddling etc but for the love of God, do not turn vegetables into tasteless elements that just look pretty in super market shelves. My real shocker was onion. I mean, man I coul…

This is one of my points for people who gripe so much about California. There is absolutely nowhere else in the U.S. where you can go just about anywhere and get fresh, cheap, properly flavorful produce. Even several capitol cities of MidWest states don't have a real competitor to what's widely available and affordable in Cali.

In Europe I'd say Italy takes that prize. I suspect it's the fact that there are a lot of different climates within the country (much like California). Spain grows a lot of produce for Europe, but things like cucumbers don't taste as good as they do from cooler climates.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#133

Post by tehjoker »

pharke wrote: post #67
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention we don't need it. We don't have a problem with producing food, but with distributing it. The result here would be only more profit for some players, it's not going to help with world hunger. It's not going to take prices down (potatoes/rice price is not a blocker, but margin is nice). But it certainly will have a systemic cost that we will all share for a gain we will not. Problems we do have but that…

If this process is simple to scale then we absolutely do need it. There is little chance of us fixing our food waste problem and increasing the efficiency of foreign aid in a timely manner. If more and larger crops could be grown on even more marginal land closer to where people desperately need the food then it is a solution we should use. I'm assuming that we'd aim for making these modified plants easily available…

Foreign aid isn't the problem. It's the problem of the market pushing out local production and making countries entirely dependent on imports from hypercapitalist countries. What countries need is industrial and technical support to be more self-sufficient with aid filling the gap rather than replacing their entire economy.

This means trade barriers, tech-transfer, and not bombing the shit out of places.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#134

Post by bluGill »

dwiel wrote: post #119
yosito wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably if you have more productive crops, the ratio of petrochemicals to food output improves.

Why assume that more output doesn't come with more input? It doesn't seem presumable to me one way or the other.

> Why assume that more output doesn't come with more input? It doesn't seem presumable to me one way or the other.

It isn't. There is such a thing as too much. Inputs that wash off in the rain is wasted money. Inputs beyond what the plant needs are best sit around (or wash off - see above), but sometimes will make the plant grow taller instead of grow more food - or worse will kill the plant from too much.

There is a lot of room though. Today we can target small areas of land with different amounts of each input. 100 years ago you tried to give each field the same amount of every input since you didn't know what it really needed, and didn't have the ability to do anything about it even if you did.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#135

Post by tehjoker »

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #116
necovek wrote: post #21

While I see people worry about the nutrient content in the resulting food, I wonder more about the nutrient content of the soil after a few years of such products. While we fertilize the soil, the mention of "longer and deeper roots" means that such plants will take out more from the ground, making ground less usable for future farming. Basically, as others have said, there is an evolutionary reason plants do not nat…

> Basically, as others have said, there is an evolutionary reason plants do not naturally grow this big (they'd kill themselves off in a few generations). We're very far away from the wild versions of crops at this point. Evolutionary arguments here seem pretty odd to me, most of these crops have had huge selective pressure towards whatever people value, not necessarily what is good for them in isolation, without the…

Yet monocultures of plants are still able to deplete soil. With the sharp reduction coming in fossil fuels (which help make fertilizer), we may be seeing the end of crops that can only grow on life support in the next few decades.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#136

Post by bluGill »

idiotsecant wrote: post #111
HPsquared wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What matters is the ratio of soil depletion to food production. If the plants produce 50% more food, you don't need to plant as many of them. This might end up actually reducing the environmental footprint.

In practice, this is not how it would work out - the farming entity is incentivized to produce the maximum profit - if you can make 50% more food and sell it for the same price, you will just make 50% more food. Even if you can make 50% more food and sell it for 80% of the price per unit you will still do that because it means more profit.

You missed something important: demand is not elastic like that ( to some extent people will switch from beans to meat, but eventually you have enough to eat and won't buy more at any price). Thus as farming gets more productive someplace needs to stop growing food. We can allow a bit to go to waste, but eventually someone is going to realize that the price they can get for their crop isn't worth the cost for putting it in the ground and stop farming. Not sell out to a different farmer because no other farmer will invest in that land.

The above happens all the time. It doesn't happen on the most productive land, it happens on the marginal land.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#137

Post by tehjoker »

jessaustin wrote: post #108
Nicksil wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Like monasto pesticides causing cancer. Has this been determined?

Not conclusively. Some studies find that glyphosate causes increased incidence of non-Hodgkin lymphoma [0], although most environment regulators have minimized these results. Anecdotally, in my hometown, of the two men who over the last several decades personally have applied the most glyphosate (although, to be fair, most other herbicides as well), one is already dead before his time from cancer and the other's heal…

It's worth noting that the chemical companies have long histories of inventing a new kind of poison and then covering up what it does to humans so that it takes decades to figure it out. Such was the case with DDT.

https://groovyhistory.com/silent-spring-rachel-carson-ddt

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#138

Post by bluGill »

phonethrowaway wrote: post #100
ravenstine wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me wonder if we aren't using human waste properly. I'm being serious. We don't absorb all of the nutrients and calories that we consume, partly because we are overnourished (our bodies might spontaneously combust if we utilized every single calorie we ate), so there's plenty of leftovers in our feces. Does it ever get recycled for use in agriculture in "developed" nations? (I can't think of a word for that w…

humanure is a thing

IT very much is. Just be careful, it is also full of harmful bacteria that you shouldn't eat. It is very useful fertilizer but needs to be properly cared for or you could poison whole cities.

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#139

Post by bluGill »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #73
necovek wrote: post #21

While I see people worry about the nutrient content in the resulting food, I wonder more about the nutrient content of the soil after a few years of such products. While we fertilize the soil, the mention of "longer and deeper roots" means that such plants will take out more from the ground, making ground less usable for future farming. Basically, as others have said, there is an evolutionary reason plants do not nat…

> While we fertilize the soil For the most part farmers only add 3 macro nutrients when they fertilize: N,P,K. As you suggest there are many micro nutrients that are likely being depleted because they're not being replaced.

Farmers are starting to put in Sulfur. It isn't common, and not a lot is needed, but some farmers need to. As acid rain goes goes down more and more will. (I'm always amused to see there is a downside of eliminating acid rain - still worth doing)

Re: RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent more potatoes, rice

#140

Post by bluGill »

ArchD wrote: post #31
necovek wrote: post #21

While I see people worry about the nutrient content in the resulting food, I wonder more about the nutrient content of the soil after a few years of such products. While we fertilize the soil, the mention of "longer and deeper roots" means that such plants will take out more from the ground, making ground less usable for future farming. Basically, as others have said, there is an evolutionary reason plants do not nat…

If the concern is minerals, aren't there rocks in the soil that as they get broken down over time will release minerals? As for non-mineral things like nitrogen, isn't the soil supposed to have an ecosystem that replenishes these things? In healthy soil, there are bacteria, fungus, earthworms, ants etc to make the soil conducive for plant growth. Nature doesn't add artificial chemicals for fertilizer yet left to its…

> As for non-mineral things like nitrogen, isn't the soil supposed to have an ecosystem that replenishes these things?

Iowa farmers grow corn for money, and Soybeans to replenish the nitrogen. They have discovered enough uses for the "waste" soybeans that sometimes it is worth more than corn, but the original reason soybeans were planted was for the cheap nitrogen.

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