Aside from the IP problems of patent-infringement-via-unintended-germination, I don't understand what's not to like about GMO. GMO seems like a great idea -- modern human medicine seems to include techniques that are similar to or just-short-of "GMO."
Are there any HNers who can articulate what they don't like about GMO?
Another issue is that most genetic modification work is done by massive companies, which then patent their results. If they develop cheaper-to-grow crops, farmers may essentially have no choice but to license their IP to stay competitive. That gives those big companies a lot of clout over farmers and probably advantages giant farming operations, who can negotiate to buy GMO seeds cheaper than small farmers can.
Some people also worry that there will be "bugs" in the genetic code introduced into plants that will have unforeseen consequences. On some level, plant genetics always been a software problem, but now we're potentially deploying updates in the (literal) field much faster. If new corn seeds distributed en masse accidentally produce toxins, or are unusually conducive to harmful bacteria, or just don't grow properly in some areas, what does it mean for farmers and consumers?
I think it's a lot of the usual technology-upends-formerly-slow-moving-industry issues, but that's especially frightening for a lot of people when it comes to things we're putting in our bodies.
As far as updates on the field producing toxins, GMOs are actually more controlled, genetically speaking, than something that doesn't come from big agribusiness. I can irradiate my seeds to create mutations to use then on traditional breeding, and call myself organic afterwards!
As far as growing well in an area or not, that's why there is testing. Selling a seed that yields poorly to a region would lead to a major economic damage to whichever company is selling those seeds, so everything we can find at a seed store from a major manufacturer, whether GMO or not, will have more than enough agronomic information to make a farmer's decision easy. And besides, I don't know how many farmers you've talked to, but they tend to be a pretty conservative bunch, as far as making sure that they don't bet a lot of hectares on tech that they haven't tested first in a smaller part of their fields, and only plant everywhere if they expect a significant profit. When yields are already very good, and grain is cheap, expensive seeds just sell less across the board.
You don't get much opposition to GMOs among farmers: they just go with what is more profitable for them. Same thing for industrial companies that use the GMOs products to feed cattle or make biodiesel. It all comes down to people that are afraid of what they don't understand, and just choose to be afraid in ways that work well with their political affiliations.
If we were REALLY afraid of food being dangerous, and with untested genetics, we'd actually ban the organics, because there's a lot more genetic variation that is unaccounted for in traditional farming products than in something that comes from agribusiness.
Just thinking about it, you'd want it to affect a metabolic pathway that's not present in other taxa, or at least animals, so the Shikimic Acid pathway fits the bill.
You also want something that degrades rapidly so that it doesn't accumulate in the environment. Now, there are a lot of people arguing that glyphosate doesn't degrade quickly enough, and that's fair, but it's still pretty good as far as these things go.
Finally, you need to have a resistance gene to use in the first place, which glyphosate had.
So, assuming an input-intensive monoculture, glyphosate is easily a lesser of evils. The argument then becomes that it enables a broken system of monoculture, which is a quite a different issue than what most argue.
As for the other arguments, the IP issue is a longstanding one, nothing new to GMOs. Plant patents are one of only 4 types issued in the US; it goes way back. Since the advent of hybrid crops, everyone farming has been at the mercy of the companies with the best inbreds. The 'bug' issue isn't that compelling, either; we've been testing and vetting new hybrids for decades, and the risks are very similar. Biology is often 'fuzzy', but when it gets down to it, you can see what pathways are effected, look at metabolites, etc. It's quite easy to look at two similar things and see exactly how they differ.
Modern industrial agriculture is both a triumph and a tragedy of optimization. It is now possible to buy a cheap, beautiful looking, round, red tomato any day of the year in most supermarkets near me - and they all taste like crap. At the same time it is getting more and more difficult to buy a good tomato when they are in seasonal around here. Many groceries store chains can't be bothered to move off their large distributors for a product like that for 3-4 weeks, and consumers have stopped being aware of the times when it really matters. I'm willing to say it is more triumph than tragedy, but the tragedy part is real, and it matters.
GMO as a tool allows for quicker iteration on optimizing various aspects of a crop - my distrust lies in the fact that I already think we have over-optimized some aspects at the expense of things that are important but more difficult to measure directly. So long as downward price pressure exists we are likely to continue this trend.
The other problem is hubris. GMOs tend to lead to more monoculture and more drift from naturally biologically stable systems around them. In this we are messing with complex systems we don't really understand that well, and I'm not sure it's worth the efficiency gains. At the very least, it's not clear...
There's absolutely nothing about transgene technology that implies monoculture; if anything, it dramatically lowers the barriers for breeding and developing new and interesting crops. Traditional breeding, driven by huge and colossally expensive GWAS studies, only benefits the biggest, most economically productive crops.
The issue we have right now is that stigma prevents all but the most 'serious' transgenics to come to market. Fortunately, what we have so far are good transgenics, albeit ones that propagate monoculture. The future could look really good, quite disappointing, or even scary, depending on how we approach transgenics, both for regulation and as a culture.
I think that is actually the root of the problem for some people, including me. I have seen what modern medicine does to people. "You cholesterol is too high, take this statin and your number will get better. Don't take it and you will have a heart attack". And then you have family members and friends take the drugs, and start having side effects.. random pain, random problems that stop them from being physically active. So then they go back to a doctor and get some new medicines, that maybe fixes the pain, but then adds a new side effect. And pretty soon they are bed ridden and taking 14 pills to stay alive. What a bunch of crap.
I am not anti-medicine, but I am anti-cutting-edge-for-margain-gain medicine. If you have AIDs, you probably should take some medicine. I vaccinate myself and my children. However I think that if you are active and eat well, I don't care what my cholesterol is. Maybe it is high, maybe it isn't. And if you aren't active or eating well - you need to fix that (not take medicine). If I start dying of cancer, I will throw every medicine I can find at it. But if I am good and healthy, I am going to leave well enough alone.
So to tie this back to food... I don't have a big desire to be a food beta tester. I am sure 75% of GMO is fine. Could some cause something horrible to your health in 20 years, like increased cancer risk? For sure. In fact we are seeing that a lot of the veggies we grow now through traditional breeding practices have reduced the vitamin content compared to the same veggie 20 years ago. But if I can pay a few pennies more for stuff that has a 100 year track record vs something that came out of a lab a month ago? Yes please, sign me up.
Let there be GMO. Let me be able to pay to not beta test food. I like beta testing software, I don't like beta testing food and drugs when I am otherwise healthy. It is insane that there is such resistance to putting a label on food telling me the GMO status. GMO status is just the start, I would love to know 100 more things about the food I eat. Fertilizers used? Harvesting technique? Etc. Let me have more info and make an informed choice about what I put in my body. It may be a bunch of busywork for no gain, but that is my choice.
- Be very conservative in what foods/medicines you use, limiting yourself to those with a proven track record.
- Ignore warnings about specific figures (e.g. cholesterol, blood pressure) if you're otherwise healthy and active.
- If you have a terminal condition, take risky treatments since you have little to lose.
it's fucking ridiculous how hard they push expensive pills.
I think GMO is a critical tool to solving the climate and population growth problems we face.
In theory, GMOs could be more healthy than not GMO.
In practice, this has not happened. The objectives instead have been to increase crop yield. The side effects have been to make the plants more toxic in very subtle ways that are hard to track and take decades for people to show symptoms.
Maybe in a few more decades we'll see "good" GMOs.
It should also be noted that many of the problems with GMOs are shared by crops that have simply been selectively bred for a long time... which is most crops that we eat a lot of...
It thus behooves us to be have some concern and caution regarding the food supply.
I was at a demo farm once, where a set of 5-6 corn plots were laid out in farming practices from 1850 to 2000. While the 2000s plot had almost no weeds, very little pest damage, had tall and strong stalks, closer together, with high levels of nutrients, the 1850s plot had far more weeds and a large amount of pest damage. Now, what struck me the most was that the 1850s plot was integrated into the ecosystem in a way the 2000s plot wasn't. The modern view is "kill weeds, kill pests", because that increases yield. Much like we view software bugs and filing pointless paperwork. But I think that there's an ecosystem problem arising with the giant fields of corn that are hostile to other life. This is understood by the US Federal government: "Refuge" crops must be planted in the field to help keep native life around.
So I'm very ambiguous about this approach, recognizing the advantages of cheap food, but concerned about the second and third order effects on the flora and fauna of the farming regions.
GMOs are a form of proprietary lock-in backed by legal restrictions.
The underlying problem with almost all GMOs is that they are tied to a particular chemical combination, and the seed must be re-purchased every year (the harvested seed is sterile and/or you cannot (legally) re-seed).
Those chemical/GMO businesses then have a strangle-hold on the farmers. Farmers are enticed by low prices until a substantial percentage are 'hooked' and then the prices rise - just like Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish policy.
Here in the E.U./U.K. we've resisted GMOs but the pressure (mostly from global/U.S. seed/chemical producers) on the politicians to allow them is constant.
Until these global seed producers emerged (latter half of the 20th century in concert with the chemical manufacturers) farmers either kept back some of their own harvest for seed or bought at-will from other farmers without restriction. Such seed sells for a slight premium (due to quality and cleanliness - low numbers of alien species) over other seed.
It's only when you recognize this that the decline of seed co-ops makes sense. It didn't just start to happen recently, it's been going on for decades.
As long as GMOs are so expensive to take to market (and they're dirt cheap to develop), then they're only available to the big companies. Open up the market, and you can have GMOs that serve other interests.
I tend to think GMOs are fine, but at the same time, I understand why one might be skeptical. Humans are pretty great at inventing toxic consumer products (e.g. plastics, lead pipes, asbestos) and even "health foods" that later turn out to be disastrously unhealthy (e.g. trans fats). Sometimes the lag between invention and the confirmation of deleterious effect is many decades.
The unreasonable objection, which is probably the most common, is based on the belief that there is something inherently dangerous about GMO.
The reasonable objection is based on the belief that there is nothing wrong with GMO itself since it is just another tool and so whether it is good or bad in a particular instance depends on the user rather than the tool, but many (most?) of the current users do not have the inclination and/or wisdom to only use it for good.
Many of the interests of food producers (I'm including everyone in the chain before the food actually reaches the eater) are not aligned with the interests of food eaters. For instance a producer of a vegetable might prioritize uniformity of size and shape and predictable growing rates over taste and nutrition, because the former directly affect how effectively he can automate production. As an eater, I care a lot more about nutrition and taste than I care about having all of my vegetables be the same size and shape.
We've seen what happens when food manufacturer interests get too far out of alignment with what is healthy and nutritious--just look at all the health issues we have in the US that are reasonably attributable to our poor national eating habits.
> GMO seems like a great idea -- modern human medicine seems to include techniques that are similar to or just-short-of "GMO."
Medicine is highly regulated. You can't just make a new medicine and start selling it. Not so with food.
For a worst case scenario from an eater point of view, suppose you've got organism X and organism Y. These are very different, and cannot be crossbred. Suppose that Y produces something that has health benefits, but that some people are allergic to. X does not produce this substance.
A person allergic to that substance has a simple strategy for staying safe: do not eat Y.
With GMO, in theory some X manufacturer could modify X to include the genes from Y that produce that substance. For most people this would be a benefit--they are now getting that healthy substance from Y when they consume X.
For our person allergic to that substance, this sucks.
Now our allergic eater has to worry about both X and Y. And since GMO foods do not have to be labeled currently, he cannot simply avoid GMO X. He now has to avoid all foods with X. (And if our allergic eater is particularly unlucky, the maker of GMO X does not announce they are doing this, and so the allergic eater first finds out about it the hard way).
Manufacturers like to tout health benefits. For our poor allergic eater, those genes from Y for that substance he is allergic to might end up being put in all kinds of foods.
My opinion is that we should go ahead with GMO, but not blindly. As a first step, it needs to be labeled, and longer term we need to develop some regulations to make sure it is used safely and wisely.
Also, modern cultivation techniques can strip the produce and soil of essential vitamins and nutrients. So yes, in some cases, the "inefficient" and "unsustainable" farms yield more nutritious and eco-friendly foods.
The notion that these facts are purely a fabrication of marketing companies is total bullshit. There's tons of research out there supporting this (nb4 WHO SPONSORED THE RESEARCH??), you just have to look for it.
I would like to know why you think farm-to-table is inherently unsustainable? Many farmers in the Highlands of Scotland make a good living selling superior beef to restaurants and butchers in the UK. They do this without regular factory farming methods. Is it less efficient compared to clearing thousands of acres in order to grow a single product which is fed government subsidised corn? Pound for pound, absolutely. Which is why some people decide to eat meat less regularly, but eat the best when they do.
Rather than "Sysco" or one of its smaller competitors in the food distribution business.
Big cases in the US were the Peanut Corp of America [2], Jack in the Box E Coli [3] and the most recent Chipolte [4] and more [4].
Supply chains are protecting themselves through tractability and this is being turned into an opportunity.
It doesn't mean that the food is wholesome, just that if you get poisoned, the origin of that poison can be determined.
[1] http://www.foodnavigator.com/Policy/EU-traceability-requirem...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_Corporation_of_America
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Jack_in_the_Box_E._coli_o...
[4] http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2015/12/the-10-biggest-u-s-foo...
In these cases, though, restaurants weren't just saying "farm-to-table"--they were making specific claims about what farms were supplying the food that just weren't true. In some cases, they weren't even correctly identifying the species involved, like saying cheap fish was something more expensive or even that pork was veal.
I believe buying from wholesale distributors would be the opposite of farm to table.
Sadly, some restaurateurs have been taking advantage of the "farm-to-table" terminology.
In France and Italy some foods and wines have AOC/DOC designations meaning that the food item's name means was produced in a geographically defined place, usually with traditional methods and NOT from some random factory in another country. There are penalties in place for people that attempt to label a product with a controlled name.
"Farm-to-table" has a different definition than AOC/DOC, but there's a lot in common in spirit.
AOC : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellation_d%27origine_contr%...
DOC : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denominazione_di_origine_contr...
"The food supply chain is so vast and so complicated. It has yielded extra-virgin olive oil that is actually colored sunflower oil"
That's not "complicated", it's outright fraud. More objectively so than the subjective "local".
Yeah, once the government gets involved, it'll still be all lies, but it'll be legal because somebody paid off the right regulator, or because the regulator owns shares in the restaurant, etc. And then this kind of thing will be used as a weapon to inhibit the entry of new competitors into the market, to the benefit of the entrenched players.
Farm --> Table
and
Farm --> A Bunch of Other Places --> Table
He said "there should at the very least be a sink between farm and table."
We know which Farm --> we know about this bit --> Table
If you want to get a good feel of how much proper locally grown food is, pop in to a butchers. It costs £15/$21 for a single t-bone, but man is it worth it. I think we are too used to eating sub-standard meats/fish as we want to consume it more often.
I've had plenty of local meat, and I'm in a rural setting known for its farming. I'm skeptical.
I'd love to see this actually tested, because I think this is an alternate view of the article; the "hipster" crowd is so keen on getting locally sourced food because it just tastes oh-so-much better (and they're more than happy to tell you). Half the time they're not even eating locally sourced food.
The global food supply chain is pretty amazing. Why do we assume that Joe Schmoe farmer down the road is automatically "better" at food production? Outside of the fact that some produce can lose nutrition in transport, I'd bet 90% of people couldn't tell the difference between garden fresh or grown-in-China...or that if they identified a difference they'd necessarily choose the former as a preference. Taste (in the literal sense) is a funny thing.
Much of the unstated benefit of locally produced food is in a shorter time between harvest and plate (fresher), less handling (bruising), less transportation (ecological), less packaging (resources + cost), shorter supply chain (less middlemen; farmer/producer should receive higher % of retail price), generally more pride and care involved (better quality) plus of course supporting the 'local' economy by keeping the money circulating locally and local smaller family farms in business.
For animals it should mean quicker time-to-kill (less stress) due to less travel and coral-ling at abattoirs, and, depending on the butcher, better cuts of meat (less mechanical cutting) due to following the grain.
In the U.K. the biggest immediate benefit is the farmer receiving a greater slice of the retail price, which is essential in some sectors (such as dairy) where many farmers receive less than the cost of production, and certainly not enough to protect against poor years.
Combined with low investment returns pushing capital into land 'investment' which is driving land price growth to ridiculous levels; subsequently driving rents for farmers who don't own their own land to bankruptcy levels (we recently sold 10 acres @ £10,000/acre which was bought for around £2,500/acre 15 years ago [0], but the gross yield hasn't moved from around £400/acre).
Even amongst farmer land-owners many are selling off small parcels in order to cover shortfalls in farming income or to invest in new facilities and equipment.
The big farming agri-businesses (10,000+ acres) are about the only ones that have the production scale to make profits and invest in land.
Born-n-bred and still living on a 1,000 acre farm, but hacking code.
[0] http://pdf.savills.com/documents/Savills-ALMS-Feb-2014.pdf
See: seafood, rare spices, berries, nuts.
It has been ever thus. This is where regulation comes from.
Being illegal and being able to do something about it? No always the same.
Sure if your swap killed a bunch of people, you would get caught. Who is going to instantly die form eating a GMO though?
From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Central Florida's season for vegetables is the winter. Summer is too hot for growing most things, the main things in Central Florida that are in season during that time are citrus. Some vegetables and fruits don't really grow here at all. Some do grow but do kind of poorly.
Sure, a climate controlled indoor hydroponic farm can grow produce that is an "exception to the rule", but the Tampa area only has a couple (one?) of those. Definitely not enough to cater for all the restaurants that claim "farm to table". So seeing out of season "farm to table" vegetables would be a bit of a red flag.
The same with animals. For instance the trout mentioned in the article would be a potential red flag of sorts, as Florida doesn't have rainbow trout. Florida does have "spotted sea trout" but that's a different species of fish, and the commercial harvest of that in Florida is rather limited.
You can apply this rule to other climates, of course.
My Sister sells chocolate. She gets it from Winan's from Ohio. Knows the supplier folk; visits the place they make all the stuff. Knows their supplier. They get chocolate in liquid form from their plantation in Nicaragua. Folks there grow it, process it and ship the liquor to Ohio. So verified fair trade.
Also, its healthier. Imported beans (like everybody else) have to be fumigated upon import. Agricultural product. But the liquor is a finished product; no fumigation! SO that makes some people happier.
Anway she only knows all this (and trusts it) because she knows the Winans personally, and visits the plant regularly.