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Ah, yes, the old "Let's increase everyone's standards of living by letting them be subsistence farmers!" I'm not saying there aren't giant issues with the Indian farming model, and the way the transition is occurring, but do you have any ideas for better ways to allow them to make the transition more carefully and with less cost, rather than generously consigning most of India's population to a life of hard labor? Tom Clancy is Dead fucked around with this message at 08:37 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 08:34
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Etalommi posted:Ah, yes, the old "Let's increase everyone's standards of living by letting them be subsistence farmers!" I mean, the "transition" has been going on since the late 19th century, when British mill operators started petitioning their government to "develop" the Indian countryside in order to get cheaper cotton. There was an initial transition to capitalism, where income dropped by close to 50% in "developed" regions, but it hasn't recovered since. It's not really a transition, the way you're thinking, so much as multiple generations of debt bondage in order to buy seeds - debt that can only be repaid by selling cash crops. Monsanto, the usurious lenders, and the buyers of cotton would certainly not like the farmers' standard of living to increase. That would mean they'd priced the seeds too low, the interest rate too low, or the cotton too high. Accordingly, it hasn't risen much since the 19th century. To repeat: not really a transition to a higher living standard so much as a lovely system leftover from the Raj, from which Monsanto is now profiting. Do you mean a more humane way to force farmers to grow cotton and coffee, or do you mean humane for the farmers? Mofabio fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 09:02
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from the climate change thread derailSalt Fish posted:Right now IMO the major 2 reasons that GMO food is bad: I will, again, point out that the African Orphan Crops Consortium is a thing which exists to make it easier for local breeders to improve their own crop varieties. The project will sequence the genomes of the 100 most important but internationally neglected African crops (plus Baobab because Baobabs are cool, which was the actual justification for adding Baobab), many of which are perennials and thus slower to breed and much less optimised to produce yields even under the local environment, and make the results publically available. Together with training in basic genetics for breeders and genetic engineering and plant sciences for local researchers, the idea is to make creating locally adapted but higher yield and nutritionally valuable crops either via GM or via more targeted breeding cheap and easy. Salt Fish posted:That's a little bit weird to say because although that can happen without GMOs the technology is specifically designed to propel a strain to dominance over all other strains. A region's local strains may be underperforming as crops which, see above, they sometimes are. I will, again again, point out that the African Orphan Crops Consortium, along with Rainbow Papaya etc., is a thing which exists. I will furthermore point out that not all companies that want to use GM are in the business of selling seeds, and that developing GM crops is getting cheaper and cheaper (the bureaucracy isn't, hence why giant multinational corporations are the main actors in the business of developing GM plants currently). For instance, the reason the people from the Mars research division (the Mars bar guys) give for being one of the main private sponsors of the AOCC is that they, being in the market for buying a supply of candy ingredients from currently dirt poor third world farmers and selling food products while being essentially a giant family owned company with long term plans, would like to make that supply steadier and sell their product in more countries which requires third world farmers to have better crops and disposable income. Salt Fish posted:Unfortunately we don't live in the alternate universe where GMO technology is used in a thoughtful perfect way. We live in *this* world where its used in imperfect ways. Just like a gun is not "just a tool" and has social and cultural connotations more significant than its literal form, so too do GMO foods. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 09:54 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 09:48
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Mofabio posted:That's fine. The problem is ultimately the pressure on farmers to grow crops to sell on a market. Selling on the market exposes farmers to price risk at harvest and default risk. Monsanto is one of many groups profiting off that arrangement, instead of the decidedly unprofitable ("inefficient") growing of subsistence crops. But then aren't you just admitting that this has nothing to do with Bt cotton, or really GMOs at all? Those same farmers would be choosing between subsistence farming and cash cropping, often relying on debt in the latter case, and some of these farmers would face financial ruin and suicide. This was the state of farming in India long before GMOs ever even existed. Maybe the problem isn't solved by banning Bt Cotton in India, but rather by India reforming its agricultural credit and risk mitigation systems? Your argument is also tantamount to arguing against efficiency advancements of any sort. You're saying that GMOs are making the crops cheaper and that this hurts small farms, but you could replace GMOs with literally any other farming advancement that increases farming production, like fertilizer or irrigation or countless others. QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 10:24
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Halloween Jack posted:Taleb strikes me as one of those rich businessmen who think that because they made a zillion dollars, they are now an expert on every subject imaginable. He claims to hate guys like that, but everything he does paints him as one of those guys. Taleb is not so much a business guy, more like a big time physicist who thinks that because he's a big time Serious Scientist, he is competent to comment on anything at any level of detail, when even a cursory assumption check would tell him his position can't possibly be justified (e.g., his original GMO paper neglected to actually demonstrate any concrete evidence of a ruin risk, since he has no idea how to do that and likely doesn't understand why that matters). he is an honest to god great statistician, and his critique of payoff-decoupled risk analysis is not wrong as a general principle. there are huge swaths of problems with modern statistical/inferential practice across nearly every field and industry that basically comes down to not considering payoff/effect size as an essential and integrated part of analysis, but more as an optional afterthought. on a personal level he's a complete rear end and he will never be the person who gets things fixed simply because of how unlikable he is, but he got the ball rolling on addressing a fundamental problem in statistical theory with a comprehensive and explicit solution, and he deserves credit where credit is due. don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. disclaimer: blocked on Twitter, not a fan of his avowed commitment to basing off Fisher/N-P over Bayes 
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Jan 4, 2016 13:07
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More climate change derailEl Perkele posted:I don't think you understand the concept of "genetic diversity" and how it applies to agriculture. Crop genetic diversity acts as a buffer and a safety mechanism in case of unforeseen environmental changes, ranging from pathogens to something like "increasing ozone concentration in lower athmosphere causes XYZ" to "nuclear war". Genetically homogenous populations can flourish in suitable conditions, but genetically heterogenous populations can survive adverse conditions. You speaking about "biodiversity" in terms of different varieties "optimized" for different conditions makes it look like you believe genetic diversity is something that can be just introduced when necessary. It most emphatetically is not. You can just GM something into a crop and then selective breed for it after crosses to other strains of the crop to get some of the remaining variation. Again, you fail to explain why any other method that produces a high yield strain which displaces other strains is not as noteworthy as GM considering the rich history of high yield strains displacing other strains. You also ignore the situations where the crops already have zero genetic diversity in the first place so displacing the existing crop with a new higher yield or higher water use efficiency or higher whatever strain changes nothing about their genetic diversity (e.g. virtually all banana). Please explain where adverse effects would come from. Note that "can be crossed within the crop species" is not the same as your idea of going full YOLO, and that honestly I wouldn't even consider your full YOLO scenario to be really worth worrying about. GM takes genes from existing organisms and puts them into other organisms so if your worries were to be taken seriously then these ~genes~ should have already destroyed the world. Furthermore don't assume the people you're talking to have never had an evolutionary biology class.
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Jan 4, 2016 15:42
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blowfish posted:More climate change derail Here's the original argument: [quote="Salt Fish"[ 1) biodiversity deceases because farmers are going to displace local varieties with higher-yield GM crops. This reduces the bredth of disease and stress resistance in the total population. The consequence is that eventually you can have an event that wipes out large amounts of the crop.[/quote] computer parts posted:No, if anything the opposite is true here. A strain of (eg) wheat that requires less water would be optimized for desert environments, while another version would be used for wetter environments. That's increasing the number of varieties. This is what I called insane bullshit. The original discussion did not have strains with zero variation. I will happily call people who pretty obviously think genetic diversity can be just magiced from thin air uninformed in evolutionary biology. If he had taken one, he would know. I do not know why you wish to defend such a statement - unless the entire point of your interception was about opposing those you believe to oppose genetic manipulation. Hm. Weird. Also, of course I didn't really rant about ~genes~, that was wholly your invention, so I don't really know why I should bother with your strawmans.
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Jan 4, 2016 17:10
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El Perkele posted:Here's the original argument: I don't really understand the whole "biodiversity" canard. You want biodiversity in a forest or prairie. You don't want it on a farm. The whole point of a farm is having a monoculture to maximize yield and profit. Some crops already are world-wide monocultures. Bananas are all one variety, clones from a single plant. That industry has already dealt with a crippling disease and had to switch to a new variety, back in the '60s, so it's a problem that has been faced and handled. Coffee is another with nearly all varieties world-wide descended from a single Arabica plant. The same strain that does well in one area won't necessarily do well in another, so there are naturally going to be variations in the specific variety of a cereal crop planted in different places. The notion that every single wheat plant in the world, for example, may fall prey to some unknown fungus or something seems alarmist at best. GMOs have a tangential relationship to this, in any event. Many crops have become monocultures without any GMO intervention at all. At least with the tools of genetic manipulation, if a problem is found with a widely used variety of a plant, a new version of it that is not susceptible to that disease is could be produced, as in the case of the Rainbow Papaya in Hawaii. (Since I don't read the climate change thread, I don't really know who's on what side here, so I'm not necessarily picking on you, El Perkele. This is more of a general comment.)
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Jan 4, 2016 17:28
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Salt Fish is right that biodiversity is an issue due to GMO usage, but GMOs can also be used to increase biodiversity. A reduction in diversity -- or more accurately, maintenance of low diversity, if we're talking about the US -- is more likely thanks to market forces, though, so it is a considerable concern and needs to be addressed rather than waved away with scientific alternatives that will never be implemented. El Perkele posted:Here's the original argument: You're aggressively misreading that. In theory, you could take existing variants/landraces and just throw a transgene in there. Assuming nothing else, you do increase the total diversity by doing that. And in theory, that can allow greater regional genetic variation by reintroducing natural variants to places that have been reduced to a couple hybrids. It's kind of laughable that would happen, though, because the market isn't interested in it and because nobody could afford to get them out there (producing them is trivial compared to field testing, passing regulation, etc.) [edit: ugh, you said this above in that quoted post, I only saw the second post. sorry. Leaving this post here anyway.] BRAKE FOR MOOSE fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 17:29
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Deteriorata posted:I don't really understand the whole "biodiversity" canard. You want biodiversity in a forest or prairie. You don't want it on a farm. The whole point of a farm is having a monoculture to maximize yield and profit. This post will largely be about diversity, rather than about genetic engineering. There are two issues at play. The first is a true monoculture, which is a single crop grown in a single area -- e.g. all corn all the time. This is unambiguously an issue. Before modern hybrids, this was often impossible to do because of how badly it wrecks the soil. We're now at a point where many places grow only 1-2 species, and most of the US grows fewer than five. This lack of diversity in very large areas of the US is an obvious ecological problem because it will gently caress up pest control, water cycling, soil health, beneficial species, etc. In recent history, GM corn and soy have allowed US farmers to more effectively respond to economic incentives to produce more corn and soy. At the very least, it's causing input inefficiencies that are important considerations in managing the environment and combating climate change. That said, though diversity is declining, each region is different, and diversity isn't really declining that quickly. Most of it has already happened, before genetic engineering was on the table. Here's an article that measures it: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0136580 We need to be implementing policies that fight monoculture whether we have GMOs or not. Still, though it's not a problem inherent to GMOs, and though GMOs are not going to magically cause jumps to monoculture, they can and do incentivize it, it's a concern. The second issue is diversity within a single species, which is your focus. This is not such a substantial problem, but it is still a problem. We are expecting increasing instability of yields thanks to climate change, so little natural variation means there will be fewer crops that escape a substantial challenge. If there is only one variety of corn planted throughout the US, then a single event could wipe out the corn crop for that year. If the banana or the papaya gets hosed, then you screw up the local economies that rely on it, but you don't completely upend the food system. If a staple grain gets hosed, then you're in for serious trouble. Your third paragraph actually hits on the problem; better advances in genetic engineering reduce the need for local adaptation. The GM product derived from a foreign variety could be better than the adapted variety. You manage to get good or better yield for the dollar without worrying about diversity, so farmers could choose to replace landraces with new seed. Anti-GMO activists often harp on the possibilities of cross-pollination wiping out wild species, but this is basically a non-issue. GM crops are not invasive weeds. The whole issue derives from choices on what gets cultivated, not from accidental release. BRAKE FOR MOOSE fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 18:58
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El Perkele posted:Also, of course I didn't really rant about ~genes~, that was wholly your invention, so I don't really know why I should bother with your strawmans. If you rant about ~adverse effects~ from just crossing a GM thing with another thing just because GM then yes, that sounds like ~genez~ rambling.
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Jan 4, 2016 19:54
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QuarkJets posted:But then aren't you just admitting that this has nothing to do with Bt cotton, or really GMOs at all? Those same farmers would be choosing between subsistence farming and cash cropping, often relying on debt in the latter case, and some of these farmers would face financial ruin and suicide. This was the state of farming in India long before GMOs ever even existed. It's not really a choice. If you're currently a subsistence farmer and debt free, you can choose to grow food or choose to grow cash crops. If you're currently in debt, you can only repay the debt by selling cash crops, and hope that there's enough leftover to buy food. The problem is bigger than Bt cotton. If Bt cotton were introduced in the 18th century, when Indian cotton was grown for personal consumption on home mills, it would have been a boon for both the producer AND the consumer. Because it's come at a time when Indian farmers are exposed to the global cotton commodity market, Bt cotton lowered the price and actually hurt farmers - perhaps especially those that can't afford Monsanto's seeds (contra that big essay I was yelling about). In our case, it's only nice for consumers of cotton. QuarkJets posted:Your argument is also tantamount to arguing against efficiency advancements of any sort. You're saying that GMOs are making the crops cheaper and that this hurts small farms, but you could replace GMOs with literally any other farming advancement that increases farming production, like fertilizer or irrigation or countless others. You have to ask who benefits from the efficiency improvement. If the price remains the same or rises after the introduction of Bt cotton (which is plausible: cotton manufacturers prefer uniform bolls, and adopting Monsanto's seeds in lieu of older American strains might have increased the value), then the farmers have benefited. But that doesn't seem to have happened, eh? I've read and listened to so many breathless predictions from GMO zealots saying things like, it'll end world hunger, it'll help out farmers, it'll end pesticides. Well, it's been 20 years. Did it do any of those things, or was it just another minor farming efficiency improvement?
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Jan 4, 2016 20:37
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Mofabio posted:You have to ask who benefits from the efficiency improvement. If the price remains the same or rises after the introduction of Bt cotton (which is plausible: cotton manufacturers prefer uniform bolls, and adopting Monsanto's seeds in lieu of older American strains might have increased the value), then the farmers have benefited. But that doesn't seem to have happened, eh? The issue there is the capitalist system GMOs exist in, not the GMOs themselves. If the hardier strain of cotton were organic rather than GMO, the situation would be identical, because the rest of the system would remain in place. In what way is this problem different from the problem of industrial mechanization, except that it's got a scary acronym?
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Jan 4, 2016 20:54
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El Perkele posted:And since GM crops are usually designed to be sterile and are usually genetically quite homogenous because that's where their strength lies, you have to create separate GM strains for all the cultivars. No. They aren't. There isn't a single sterile GM seed on the market. Monsanto has the terminator gene patent but has vowed not to use it. Mofabio posted:I've read and listened to so many breathless predictions from GMO zealots saying things like, it'll end world hunger, it'll help out farmers, it'll end pesticides. Well, it's been 20 years. Did it do any of those things, or was it just another minor farming efficiency improvement? You say this like it's a bad thing. It's a new technology that anyone with sense realizes is just another tool in humanity's belt. You've also missed that it has changed the world - an enormous portion of our medicine is produced by GMOs, just not of the plant variety. Once the synth languages get a bit more mature, it might change into something completely revolutionary, but all macro GM is at the moment is a way to get some desirable traits into crops less time and with less side effects than traditional breeding or mutagenesis. Tom Clancy is Dead fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 21:01
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BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:Salt Fish is right that biodiversity is an issue due to GMO usage, but GMOs can also be used to increase biodiversity. A reduction in diversity -- or more accurately, maintenance of low diversity, if we're talking about the US -- is more likely thanks to market forces, though, so it is a considerable concern and needs to be addressed rather than waved away with scientific alternatives that will never be implemented. Yeah, that was basically the gist. The idea I originally took offence to was that you can increase biological diversity (in this case genetic) by simply adding a nice little feature whereever you want. That's just wrong on so many levels, starting from the concept of genetic diversity itself! Furthermore, saying that GMOs increase genetic diversity makes many assumptions about how things could or ought to be, not how things are. Pff. Flying trains fantasies.
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Jan 4, 2016 21:26
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blowfish posted:If you rant about ~adverse effects~ from just crossing a GM thing with another thing just because GM then yes, that sounds like ~genez~ rambling. Did you realize what I meant by those adverse effects? In the context? "Wantonly introducing transgenic material may have long-term effects that we are not certain of, therefore caution should be used, since there are quite a few examples that things in seminatural environments may work differently from intended, and organisms do not always function as intended" is ~genez~ for you? El Perkele fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 21:30
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Muscle Tracer posted:The issue there is the capitalist system GMOs exist in, not the GMOs themselves. If the hardier strain of cotton were organic rather than GMO, the situation would be identical, because the rest of the system would remain in place. In what way is this problem different from the problem of industrial mechanization, except that it's got a scary acronym? I think it's totally within bounds to think critically about how new technologies play out within their economic systems. Long story incoming. It's funny you bring up industrial mechanization in reference to Indian cotton. Before 1600, the finest textiles in the world were produced in India, on Indian home mills. World-renowned. Europe was a wool-based backwater. I'll summarize a long history, but basically England's navy monopolized all trade routes in and out of India, stole their manufacturing technology, brought it home, banned Indian exports except through the East India Company, improved upon it mechanically with the water wheel and flying shuttle et al, and flooded the market with cheap, low-quality product. Indian peasant supplementary wages fell by 50% and have never recovered. Because cotton can't be grown in England, manufacturers were constantly petitioning their government to increase cotton production in the imperial holdings. In 1861, the Union blockaded Confederate ports, there was a world cotton famine, English mills stopped turning, workers rioted in Liverpool - and the British government started listening. They massively developed the Indian countryside with railroads, built ports, and started forcing Indian farmers into the multi-generational debt traps - debts that could only realistically be repaid by selling cotton to the British. Bloody brilliant! That isn't the worst part though. This began in 1861, and development continued through the decade. Then in 1877 the new system faced its first El Nino. During ENSO, the western Pacific warm pool, and the hot, humid air above it, sloshes up against the Mexico/California coast. Without the humid air, Indian monsoons failed. Normally, community grain stores can keep people alive during a bad harvest. But the grain had been exported on the railroads, sold at the ports, and shipped to Europe. Grain prices increased while cotton prices held steady, and people started to starve. The Raj set up concentration/labor camps, where they fed sub-Auschwitz rations. The camps, and famine-weakened immune systems spread diseases. The British refused charity grain from the US (which had an El Nino-powered bumper crop), saying "the Indians need to learn the value of hard work". People started eating their homes. The British continued exporting both grain and cotton from India to England. Around 10-30 million people died in the largest man-made famine in history. Then the British did it two more times, in 1888 and 1900. So who's to blame? The transition to capitalism? The Raj? The new mill technology, without which the railroads and ports would've never been built? It's actually a really hard question. But protectionism and the new mill technology started a chain of events that led to one of the largest genocides in history. It doesn't make sense to me to look at Bt cotton independent of capitalism or the history of Indian cotton. It's the system it was introduced into. It'd certainly benefit farmers more in a system without usury or the colonial legacy, but we aren't in another system, we're in this one. Monsanto is just the newest keeper of the keys to the jail.
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Jan 5, 2016 00:32
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BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:Salt Fish is right that biodiversity is an issue due to GMO usage, but GMOs can also be used to increase biodiversity. A reduction in diversity -- or more accurately, maintenance of low diversity, if we're talking about the US -- is more likely thanks to market forces, though, so it is a considerable concern and needs to be addressed rather than waved away with scientific alternatives that will never be implemented. But the current market forces lead to each GM crop company producing dozens or more varieties of each given crop, with some crops getting up to hundreds of varieties in the catalog - and that's just from each company. When you combine the numbers of strains among all vendors for each crop, you easily have hundreds of varieties just in the specifically GM seeds alone, let alone their conventional seeds.
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Jan 5, 2016 00:35
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El Perkele posted:Did you realize what I meant by those adverse effects? In the context? "Wantonly introducing transgenic material may have long-term effects that we are not certain of, therefore caution should be used, since there are quite a few examples that things in seminatural environments may work differently from intended, and organisms do not always function as intended" is ~genez~ for you? You're using the precautionary principle as a point against GMOs, but really it's a point against any kind of plant breeding techniques. It's also a point against doing nothing and letting nature take its course. That's why the precautionary principle is basically worthless, and your use of it against GMOs and nothing else is why your argument comes across as "omg genez"
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Jan 5, 2016 00:43
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Mofabio posted:So who's to blame? The transition to capitalism? The Raj? The new mill technology, without which the railroads and ports would've never been built? It's actually a really hard question. I obviously disagree. The problem isn't that efficiency is increasing, it's that the benefit of those efficiencies is not being distributed equitably.
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Jan 5, 2016 00:58
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Mofabio posted:The problem is bigger than Bt cotton. Yes, that's exactly right. The issue at hand in India was not caused by GMOs, but rather it was caused by a crippling and inescapable system of debt that existed long before the introduction of GMOs Mofabio posted:
You have to ask that question for every yield-increasing tool. When yields increase, supply increases and prices possibly decrease. This is not a problem that is unique to GMOs Mofabio posted:I've read and listened to so many breathless predictions from GMO zealots saying things like, it'll end world hunger, it'll help out farmers, it'll end pesticides. Well, it's been 20 years. Did it do any of those things, or was it just another minor farming efficiency improvement? Rainbow papaya single-handedly saved the Hawaiian papaya industry. Crop yields have measurably improved, while simultaneously using less pesticide, thanks to GMO varieties. And Golden Rice could prevent thousands of deaths yearly, if only the places where it is needed would allow it to be grown. QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 01:10
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fishmech posted:with some crops getting up to hundreds of varieties in the catalog - and that's just from each company. For genetically engineered crops in particular, and with genomic diversity, not just distinct sets of transgenes? I seriously doubt this, and you'll need to provide evidence. You must have misunderstood what I meant about genetic diversity. There aren't hundreds of distinct varieties for almost any agricultural crop.
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Jan 5, 2016 01:21
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QuarkJets posted:You have to ask that question for every yield-increasing tool. When yields increase, supply increases and prices possibly decrease. This is not a problem that is unique to GMOs Wait, did someone in this thread just admit GMOs might possibly have negative consequences for the growers of GMOs? 
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Jan 5, 2016 01:50
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Mofabio posted:Wait, did someone in this thread just admit GMOs might possibly have negative consequences for the growers of GMOs? You're a loving idiot.
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Jan 5, 2016 02:02
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Deteriorata posted:I don't really understand the whole "biodiversity" canard. You want biodiversity in a forest or prairie. You don't want it on a farm. The whole point of a farm is having a monoculture to maximize yield and profit. Unfortunately, for us Banana lovers, the war still seems to be raging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H0dy8fv33M
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Jan 5, 2016 02:38
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BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:For genetically engineered crops in particular, and with genomic diversity, not just distinct sets of transgenes? I seriously doubt this, and you'll need to provide evidence. You must have misunderstood what I meant about genetic diversity. There aren't hundreds of distinct varieties for almost any agricultural crop. Just for a point of comparison, grapes? Are the different varieties genetically distinct enough to qualify?
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Jan 5, 2016 03:15
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BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:For genetically engineered crops in particular, and with genomic diversity, not just distinct sets of transgenes? I seriously doubt this, and you'll need to provide evidence. You must have misunderstood what I meant about genetic diversity. There aren't hundreds of distinct varieties for almost any agricultural crop. What counts as "distinct"? There are over a dozen companies and other entities offering genetically modified crops, with most major world crops having offering from all or most of them, and each company offering many distinct products in that crop. Considering plant patents have been a thing for a long time, if the varieties were actually provably the same, you'd think they'd have sued each other over the "theft" from the first to file!
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Jan 5, 2016 03:30
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Discendo Vox posted:You're a loving idiot. I learned a bit about bioethics from your previous posts in the thread, and I appreciate you writing it all up. It gave me a starting point to research its development.
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Jan 5, 2016 04:12
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Mofabio posted:Wait, did someone in this thread just admit GMOs might possibly have negative consequences for the growers of GMOs? Not GMOs specifically, no. Did you actually read my post or did you just skim it? The possibility of a production increase resulting in a price decrease is a problem faced by all people in all industries everywhere, it has absolutely nothing to do with GMOs specifically. This is as idiotic as saying that GMOs are bad because they need to be watered.
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Jan 5, 2016 04:13
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QuarkJets posted:Not GMOs specifically, no. Did you actually read my post or did you just skim it? The possibility of a production increase resulting in a price decrease is a problem faced by all people in all industries everywhere, it has absolutely nothing to do with GMOs specifically. You're responding to the butterfly guy. Assume he didn't read anything anyone posted, including himself.
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Jan 5, 2016 04:16
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Mofabio you're saying that plow horses are bad because a plow horse can increase my production, leading to a small decrease in price. Therefore we should make plow horses illegal? That's dumb.
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Jan 5, 2016 04:17
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Kalman posted:You're responding to the butterfly guy. Assume he didn't read anything anyone posted, including himself. Guess I'm the only one who read the article I was responding to, then, which was one long argument that went: the Indian farmers who committed suicide aren't necessarily the same farmers that bought GMOs. Therefore, the GMO-suicide link is a myth. My basic point was that cotton exists on a global market, and there is evidence that Bt cotton lowered the market price, and that might not be great news for producers in general, whether or not they decide to grow GMOs. Small producers caught in debt traps would be hit hardest by the general fall in the market price of cotton. I'm not saying there's a link, I'm saying the essay author's reasoning was faulty. It's funny being in an argument where both people basically agree, assuming that when you said "This is not a problem that is unique to GMOs" you're admitting that GMOs are possibly creating negative consequences for farmers. I mean, I get that the problem is system-wide (this is like, the 3rd time I've said that), it's just amazing reading an even heavily-couched criticism of GMOs come out of this otherwise perfect thread. Mofabio fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 04:42
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Mofabio posted:Guess I'm the only one who read the article I was responding to, then, which was one long argument that went: the Indian farmers who committed suicide aren't necessarily the same farmers that bought GMOs. Therefore, the GMO-suicide link is a myth. The author's reasoning is fine. Your criticism is what's faulty. Anything that lowers the global cost of cotton contributes to their problems. Singling out GMOs is absurd, since GMOs would actually help relieve their problem by lowering their own cost of production. The price of oil falling, making international transportation cheaper, would be a larger effect.
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Jan 5, 2016 05:01
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Deteriorata posted:The author's reasoning is fine. Your criticism is what's faulty. Anything that lowers the global cost of cotton contributes to their problems. Singling out GMOs is absurd, since GMOs would actually help relieve their problem by lowering their own cost of production. The price of oil falling, making international transportation cheaper, would be a larger effect. Did the farmers get the difference, or was it taken as rent by the lenders or Monsanto, or lost to price pressure (there are a LOT of desperate cotton growers in the world)? Mofabio fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 05:04
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Mofabio posted:Did the farmers get the difference, or was it taken as rent by the lenders or Monsanto? Is that the fault of GMOs, or capitalism and colonialism?
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Jan 5, 2016 05:06
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All the producers of agricultural commodities are extremely vulnerable to supply gluts. It's a poo poo industry to be in the world over.
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Jan 5, 2016 05:10
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 Male and female farmer suicide rates (per 100,000) in all states, 1996-2011. Ian Plewis, National Crime Records Bureau and V. Patel et al. Suicide mortality in India: a nationally representative survey in Lancet 2012, 379:2343-51 2005 is when Bt Cotton was introduced in India. Since then, it's also grown from less than 50% to 80% of U.S. cotton. It was introduced in 1996, and there has been steadily decreasing rates of farmer suicides in India since. Who loving cares what convoluted logic you can come up with for why it could be true - IT ISN'T. If anything, GM cotton is correlated with decreasing Indian farmer suicides. Tom Clancy is Dead fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 06:46
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Etalommi posted:Who loving cares what convoluted logic you can come up with for why it could be true - IT ISN'T. If anything, GM cotton is correlated with decreasing Indian farmer suicides. Apparently all the GMO zealots for like, 2 pages. I suggested that market prices might wash out any GMO/suicide correlation. But because it might possibly be something negative about one GMO (to be clear: that they might lower all grower wages, which I postulated), in a particular historical circumstance, with heavy contributing factors, then it must be wrong. This thread is like, crop protection Pravda. Mofabio fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 07:02
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Indian farmers have to take out loans for inputs: fertilizer, tools, seeds, and other goods. Should we blame those who sell fertilizer? Or tools? Or seeds? Or address the predatory lending and lack of farmer's insurance?
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Jan 5, 2016 07:08
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Mofabio posted:Apparently all the GMO zealots for like, 2 pages. I suggested that market prices might wash out any GMO/suicide correlation. But because it might possibly be something negative about one GMO (to be clear: that they might lower all grower wages, which I postulated), in a particular historical circumstance, with heavy contributing factors, then it must be wrong. This thread is like, crop protection Pravda. You are a Mofabio posted:loving idiot. I did learn from you when you went into something that you clearly know well, the historical situation of agriculture in India and it's interaction with imperial Britain. The castles in the sky you are building right now are not as useful. You seem to be saying that people who do things the old way lose out to people who do those things in some more efficient way, thus the new, more efficient way is bad. That is literally the Luddite philosophy. It's not going to convince anyone here of anything, and GMOs are a poor domain to argue it since you are having a hard time showing particular damages. Tom Clancy is Dead fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 07:27
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