I don’t consider listing seed as non-GMO a scare tactic, nor people being stupid for asking if produce at a farmers’ market is non-GMO. It shows that people are concerned what they eat. The average person is not aware of which things are and which things are not GMO yet. Not everyone spends hours each day on the Internet reading up on all the latest happenings in that realm.
I’m eating a soup right now containing “bone broth”, bartered elk, greens, red peppers, etc from my garden but conventionally grown white beans and a wide range of grains.
Organic doesn’t make it for me at all. I don’t generally need synthetics to grow vegetables and prefer not using them when avoidance is practical, but I’m happy to let midwestern grain and legume growers use synthetic weed killers if it’s the only way they can deal with bindweed. That stuff is impossible to deal with organically and is causing a lot of organic growers in the midwest to switch back to conventional.
The idea that synthetic chemicals should be exclusively banished from the most important human activity on the planet just because they’ve been misused strikes me as extremely naive. I am really annoyed by the silliness of the proposition, but hey, that’s just my train of logic. I’m glad everyone doesn’t think like me.
I respectfully disagree. I think if people were meaningfully concerned, they’d figure out how to ask meaningful questions. If people are asking these questions, then they must also be basing their purchasing decisions on the meaningless answers they get (much like Eric A. describes his gardening forum.) And those hundred meaningless questions they do ask are likely to distract them from the one or two meaningful questions they could have asked. And if people have the time to ask every farmers’ market vendor they consider buying from if his green beans are GMO, then they have to time to figure out the three of four produce items (not including green beans) that could possibly be GMO. We’re talking about a list one can count on two hands, most of which has nothing to do with produce, and which has grown at less than one new item per year. I surely can’t see putting any kind of positive spin on the mindsets Eric A. describes, things that sound all too realistic and true.
I do, North. 14 years of testing and not one bad thing ever discovered…
Let’s substitute water for GMO’s. Kinda unfair because water in many situations is deadly. As for tap water, it is as safe as GMO’s so far. If tap water was used In the processing of foods, should it not be labeled as such? Many people will not drink tap water. How was the food washed etc?
Its just frustrating to see how easily manipulated the average person is. 99% of the customers I have met dont understand the GMO issue with any depth. Heck I didnt fully understand it until I started growing for profit. And I believe that is the heart of the problem. It cant fully be grasped until a person has some real world experience in the field. Its a issue that appears simple on the surface but isnt, and thus lends itself to people with agendas using it to their advantage.
I guess I shouldnt complain too much. I get a premium for our produce because of we are able to label it “organic” and “gmo free”. The truth of the matter is that our climate is dry enough that we simply have low pest pressure on most crops. Our two worst pests are corn ear worms and squash bugs. On fruit we dont have any of the fungal rots that alot of you guys have. PC and fruit flys dont exist here. In certain parts of town there are borers but we dont have them yet at this location. Birds are a big issue on ripening fruit but nets solve that. So we are no spray because its easy to be.
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Drew, I think you’re really missing the point there. The point isn’t the danger of GMO’s (which is another question you’ve absurdly over-simplified – can you give me “one bad thing” that has actually happened with the use of urine for human fertilizer in the “developed” world in the same era as GMO’s? …which is to say in the era of modern scientific understanding to inform its use? Or weeder geese in any era? If all you can do is give me scientifically informed speculation about what could happen in the real world, GMO opponents can surely do the same. And meanwhile there are plenty of clear-as-day current problems and developing threats deeply tied to GMO’s beyond risks of the GMO’s themselves to consumers.) The point here is seed companies are trying to scare people off of other sources of seed that aren’t GMO either. One can be totally opposed to GMO’s for whatever reasons, but that’s still no reason to avoid any source of peppers or carrots or watermelons or lettuce, etc., etc.
If you go to the CDC you can find hundreds of examples. Keep it up, my profession always need work. I worked in Lansing and most infected people were farmers. Not so much from urine, from bird waste. Urine is pretty safe, one should treat it with caution though. My only point. Most people who can and preserve food don’t get sick, but you should know and follow safety protocols. If you wish to throw protocol to the wind that is your prerogative. I was just trying to educate people, it appears to be a trend not to learn anything these days. The world is full of know it alls.
The pathogens I listed are found in urine, and one should be careful. Once urine is used in the field, chances of infection are near zero. Many infections we have no idea of origin? Rodent urine is extremely dangerous, and one should be cautious cleaning up rodent infested areas. I only ever said it was possible to get these infections via urine. You can get many infections from water too, but please do not stop using it. being aware of your environment is a good thing IMHO, but you have the right to disagree I guess.
I think you missed my point completely I tried to keep it simple, but it appears I failed.
I was responding to a specific response, yet you generalized the response. It seems you have a failure to communicate not only with me, but olpea, and Alan too. You assign bizarre meanings to our responses that make no sense, and time and again you keep doing it.
My statement had nothing to do with solving the world’s problems, sorry to disappoint. The response was not directed at you either. What’s extremely ironic to me, is right above my response you say the same thing I was saying, in your own pseudo-itellectual style.
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Drew, I don’t want to go too far off on tangents to this thread. My point was simply that you go to extremes of caution based on speculative risks for which you can’t find “one bad thing” that actually happened in any kind of remotely comparable real world case when it comes to some things – I don’t know what you’re referencing with the CDC, but I’m sure it’s just a basis for supporting your speculation about risks of things that didn’t actually happen, not from the activities we’re discussing the risks of – and then you suggest that any restraint with regards to GMO’s is totally different. You’re employing very inconsistent standards/burdens of proof.
That’s kind of what we’ve been discussing here, isn’t it: the line between scare tactics and education? Again, I see double standards.
You effectively said it’s wrong to lead people to be scared of GMO’s. Reasonable, well informed, intelligent people can and do debate the risks of GMO’s that exist. But there are lots of GMO’s that don’t exist and lots of places where you won’t find them, and my much more basic point was that it’s wrong to lead people to be scared of GMO’s that don’t even exist. Reasonable people shouldn’t have to engage in the lamentable discussions that Eric A. has described with customers and on his forum, i.e. worries about GMO’s that don’t even exist (yet). Yours and mine were clearly two very different sorts of statements, answering two very distinct questions.
Could someone please post a definition for GMO as discussed here.
As I read the comments I seem to get the feeling that different posters gave differing definitions (or it could just be me or my own less than solidly settled definition ).
Thanx
Mike
Mike, here’s something that may interest you:
http://www.nongmoproject.org/learn-more/what-is-gmo/
There’s some useful information at the site, although I’m not at all in favor of the label that that group is all about.
One thing I’ve noticed is that most of the folks I know with an academic background in science almost unanimously consider the potential of GMO’s as being extremely promising and not prohibitively dangerous.
As I’ve often said, mother nature is spewing out mutant life forms at a high rate and the threat of these uncontrolled experiments represent a much, much greater danger than human gene splicing in my uneducated opinion.
Shall we talk about AIDS and Ebola for a minute.
There are way too many people on the planet incubating and spreading diseases as well as altering the weather and requiring ever increasing quantities of food. Pests and diseases are being spread at ever increasing speed, weather patterns may be becoming less and less cooperative to agriculture. .
The idea of not using every tool in the scientific quiver to help insure human survival is not one I have a lot of patience for. When push comes to shove all of us will do and take whatever we need to survive.
What we should be doing IMO is to try to influence our government to regulate this technology in a manner of greatest benefit to all of us- with a long view. Roundup Ready corn doesn’t fall in that category.
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No one has mentioned the rise in weeds that are resistant to Roundup. These are becoming a problem and some people blame the increased use of Roundup for the problem. Some farmers have moved from Roundup Ready corn and beans to Liberty Link corn and beans to get control of the problem weeds. Liberty Link uses a different chemical called glufosinate to spray over the top of the crop. Glufosinate kills some weeds that Roundup misses. One brand of glufosinate called Rekon is suggested for weed control in orchards by the extension folks in my area because of the latent damage sometimes caused by a lot of Roundup. Unfortunately, Recon cost about 5X what generic Roundup costs and the application rate is the same
Wow…what a thread. Too much reading here.
Those are the kinds of concerns that some reasonable people have, so perhaps fair points, but I think the biggest flaw in that reasoning is the vicious cycle and lack of historical perspective. If we’ve altered the weather and made it potentially less cooperative to agriculture, how did that happen? Did we not get to this point by embracing and becoming dependent on “every tool in the scientific quiver,” only to realize huge negative consequences much later? Are the consequences of reckless and short-sighted use of technology to be remedied by reckless and short-sighted use of new and more powerful technologies?
Likewise, how is it that “pests and diseases are being spread at ever increasing speed”? Is it not by increasing global trade, spurred largely by the ever increasing scale of production (global trade and industrialization replacing local economies)? Is the solution then to embrace technologies that will enable to us to replace huge farms with “huger” farms, so that agriculture can become even more specialized and globalized? Surely you can see a vicious cycle here.
Nice idea perhaps, but why would any reasonable person expect that? Shouldn’t we expect more of the same (which is to say short-term corporate profits leading the technology with the risks and side effects payable by someone else)? Is that the kind of agriculture, the kind of economy, and the kind of world you want?
CF, it is our incredible abilities as a species to manipulate nature that has led to our over-success. You would most likely not be alive now to bitch were it not for our scientific prowess that has allowed us to play nature to our extreme advantage.
It is your logic that seems completely flawed to me (or maybe it is just a very narrow focus) because we can’t turn back the technology and erase the billions of people that are the product of its success. We have the tiger by the tail and can’t abandon the technology that has us in this precarious but possibly promising position.
If you actually look at the big picture of life on this little planet you’d see that mother nature is not a sentimental mother and she seems to actually orchestrate the demise of her children- she certainly despises the monopoly that humans have created for themselves and will happily topple us from our arrogant perch if we let our guard down and fail to utilize every instrument in our power to survive.
I’m not a crank who believes he knows the end of the world is near- I obviously don’t know the when of that equation. But I do believe that “unnatural” scientific manipulations are our best bet to delay that almost inevitable end. Out huge numbers increase our ingenuity exponentially so we best run with that. Think quick and try to keep outsmarting the beautiful bitch.
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Don’t you think we should exercise restrain in our use (or at least the acceleration of our use) of fossil fuels, though (particularly because of your beliefs about global warming)? If we should show restraint with some “tools in the quiver,” why do you think it’s so important that we not even consider any intentional restraint with others?
I’m all for restraint and a level of caution in terms of introducing GMO’s and in the applications of all potentially dangerous technologies. But we are at risk and live with risks. That’s life.
You guys can say what you want, but I, for one, am sticking with the “gluten free” grits I get from whole Foods.
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I can’t say I’m against all GMOs, because like @alan I think they hold promise, when used for the betterment of humanity rather than for corporate greed (such as high vitamin A rice that would prevent blindness in many needy countries if planted instead of regular rice). I think foods should be labeled if people want them labeled, though! Further, one of the kinds of genetic manipulation that bothers me the most (although it happens over a longer time scale) is something that is almost totally accepted in this society: the intentional breeding of pets for features people like–to be tiny, or huge, or pug-nosed, or feisty. In these cases the breeding is often done without enough concern for the comfort of the animal. Thus we have cats with such flat faces that their tear ducts don’t work, and collies with such long snouts that they can’t drink water from a bowl, very tiny nervous miniature dogs, and on, and on. I know this is a controversial topic, but ALL genetic manipulation, whether by selective breeding or gene splicing, should be done with the highest ethics and utmost care. Evolution happens slowly and for complex reasons. If we rush the process to create new beings or plants, we should be careful to make them more adaptive, rather than less, and think of the effects on the larger environment as well. Okay, stepping down from soapbox. Thanks for listening.
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Good post Lizzy, and I don’t mind you or anyone else on the soap box when making intelligent and thoughtful posts. In fact, I enjoy reading them.