Grafting was one of the big advances in antique breeding. Without it, no modern apples. Grapes would be extinct by now. How is that OK, but GMOs are the devil incarnate?
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(fun fact - the popcorn in this gif may or may not be genetically modified)
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We have until the year 2100 to figure out how to feed 11 billion people using the same amount of much less land area than we have today.
Climate change is going to severely reduce the quantity of good agricultural land.
The US Midwest rain belt is moving north to water the anaerobic mud of the defrosting Canadian tundra. You can’t just shift the crops with the rain; you need the soil as well.
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NIcely done.
After three years of working in an interdisciplinary group on genetic engineering and society, and after more than 50 hours of interviews with agricultural genetic engineers, their critics, and regulators, I’m convinced the real issue is named here at 5:00. Much of the criticism of GMOs is really criticism of modern agriculture and its methods. GMOs might be a great tool, but it will be hard for many people to accept them so long as they undergird concentration of power and profit in the hands of large corporations.
The risk we run by banning GMOs is not that we will hurt corporations. They’re already moving on to other approaches. Instead, it is that we will ban nonprofit and university researchers from exploring less remunerative, but more socially valuable uses like Golden Rice, drought-tolerant sweet potatoes, blight-resistant American chestnut trees, and disease-resistant cassava, to name four excellent initiatives that have little or no corporate backing.
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There is inherent wrongness with GMOS both because of genetic drift
Do we expect genetic drift to be a bigger issue in GMO crops than any other monoculture?
Edit to add: I’m not really even sure why genetic drift is a problem. I’m not aware of any technology that can stop evolution. I’m just interested in the question from a theoretical point of view - are the effective population sizes of monoculture GMOs different than those of monoculture conventional crops? I think the answer is no, but I could be wrong.
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Spoken like a true gentleman.
When people get bent out of shape about genetic drift with GMOs they’re typically talking about GMO crops drifting into or cross breeding into non-gmo crops. It can cause an issue given that these seeds are patent protected. The seed manufacturer can now claim the person with contaminated field is violating their IP and take them to court. But that’s an issue with any patented/ip protect variety, its not unique to GMOs. It can also lead to an issue with say certified organic crops getting ‘contaminated’ in this way by non-organic crops. And there by no-longer being certified organic. But again that’s a problem with any crop that doesn’t meet the certification you’re trying to maintain. There are occasional worries of GMO’s signature gene jumping species, and scaremongering about sinister genes run amok. But I’m not aware of any cases where that’s actually happened. And it doesn’t seem terribly plausible to me.
So again its one of those things that’s neither unique to GMOs, nor inherent to/about GMOs.
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Ah, so this is a colloquial use of “genetic drift”, not the scientific use. Thanks for clearing that up!
Pretty much. It takes this one aspect of genetic drift, and its limited circumstantial effects, as the whole thing. What they’re concerned about is cross breeding. Rather than the totally distribution of GM traits within a given population. Cross breeding is an issue. But real genetic drift probably not, since its apparently somewhat random. Its just as likely over large spans of time to reduce the number of GM traits in your given population as it is to increase them.
Which is why I get a little confused each time I run across it. Cause true genetic drift would be as much of a problem for those trying to maintain GM fields as those trying to maintain non-GM fields. And the whole thing is a bit stalled out by that whole “we plant fresh seeds from carefully bred seed strains” thing.
You don’t think it’s at least suspect that somehow 45 million or more people died from famine in 3 years?
There isn’t a single famine over the same time span in history that comes close to the accepted western Great Leap theses. Further, simply stating “cuz Communism” is wildly reductive. China has been more susceptible to famine throughout it’s entire history, averaging almost one per province per year for almost 2 millennia. They have not suffered any major famine since that time, however, so one might also see the other side of the coin- the industrialization and modernization which began during the Great Leap has proven capable of breaking the long chain of systemic famine. Did that industrialization process adversely affect famine? I think so, Mao admitted it as well- however industrialization is painful everywhere it’s occurred. Who counted the bodies of the recently freed slaves and immigrants who built the short lines in West Virginia so coal could power the IR here, who died and were left to rot along the line?
The Who Killed the Most game 
makes losers of us all; no spin. We can tit for tat all day from Stalin’s gulags to Pinochet’s helicopter rides, from Pol Pot to Cecil Rhodes, and get nowhere with no answers for anything.
And FWIW, those commie Vietnamese were the ones to remove Khmer Rouge from power.
I would say Big Ag’s plans are not the way we want to deal with climate change.
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Right, you’ve hit exactly my confusion. It doesn’t strike me that GMOs would be the issue for genetic drift, but that monoculture would be (low effective population size). But also that it’s probably all beside the point as farmers generally aren’t letting the evolutionary process play out in their fields. They’re planting specific seeds for a specific harvest. I do think that the loss of favorable alleles from populations due to stochastic factors is a big risk as climate change destabilizes our expected weather patterns. But mostly in wild populations, not ones where the precise gene pool is being managed using the latest, greatest biotech tools and seeds are being archived to prevent losing good genes.
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Spot on.
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… Organic only applies to the way they are grown, not what type of seed the crops are.
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Are you sure about that? Admittedly didn’t look it up, but I had thought the last draft of USDA regs still kept GMO sourced food off the organic label.
USDA organic certification requires crops to be grown from certified organic seed. USDA organic standards for meat require the animals to have only been fed certified organic feed (which must be grown from organic seed).
Government .pdf:
I’m unsure about Canada. But I’m reasonably sure the EU’s regs are the same.
Previous to formal certifications for the label. Organic technically only refered to farming methods. But in practice most hardcore organic movement folks. And most associations/groups pushing organic also insisted on organic seed.
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Huh. USDA certification does prohibit crops created with GMO techniques, but would allow things like the Lenape Potato.
www.ams.usda.gov/publications/content/can-gmos-be-used-organic-products
Bullshit.
Not a particularly convincing argument.
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The lenape potato was developed entirely conventionally. It’s pretty much a text book crossbreed/hybrid. If you raise it organically. Then get them seeds. Grow another batch. It could get certified. That’s sort of the exact thing the organic standard is supposed to be about. But growing (or rather selling it for food) is barred by a different set of regs cause it’s unsafe to eat. It’s used as breeding stock. And there’s a number of commercial potato varieties that are descended from it that are entirely safe. That’s what makes it such a great example in these discussions. It’s the least scary most “natural” thing you can get. But it’ll kill ya.
The only standard that excludes hybrids and commercial cross breeds is heirloom/landrace. And that’s not a legal standard, but a loose definition. There are a bunch of old commercial cross breeds and hybrids that are loosely considered heirloom despite not meeting the strict definition. Like pre 70’s hybrid hogs. The old traditional, fatty American commercial hogs from before “the other white meat” campaign. They’re treated like heirloom/land race pigs. But they’re technically not. Guy near me raises them. Some of best tasting pork I’ve ever had. Old head BBQ guys swear by them.
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I find the actual crops less problimatic than the companies trying to legislate that they can make time bomb seeds that lock farmers into constantly buying from them.
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