See it depends on what your filtering. Most proposals of that sort deal with carbon. And with carbon that’s exactly what you want. Pretty much any method besides sequestering that carbon in the soil or ocean sediments leads to its return to the atmosphere. And that’s exactly how nature deals with the stuff.
Though a crop that better takes up and stores carbon would potentially make more efficient/productive bio fuel. Maybe even pushing that process carbon negative.
Other ideas I’ve seen in that vein are like bacteria or algae that clean up oil spills. They effectively digest the oil into something harmless. Which is then sequestered over time in sediments. So that tend to be a key portion of how these are thought up.
Whole Foods made more money than Monsanto last year. By the logic of profits == power, Whole Foods is then more powerful than Monsanto, and therefore in control of regulators.
GMOs are not inherently bad. The oldest GMO product on the market is the FlavrSavr tomato, which deleted a gene that activated enzymes which cause breakdown.
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Pistachios are bad, m’kay? They contribute to carbon dioxide production and are also unhealthy, compared to, say, peanuts (which is a legume, but whatever). As far as I can ascertain, there are no GMO pistachios yet. But imagine if we could develop ones that emit less CO2. Under your proposal, they could not be sold because “they cannot be determined safe”
Other cpmmenters have asked anti-GMOs exactly how they’d want safety data generated and how much would be required. To which the irrational anti-GMOs replied never.
Spike Speagal there yammered on about monoculture. Guess what, that is already an existing problem. Bananas, for example, the plantation trees are all clones via the Frankenstein splicing method called grafting. That is unnatural and safety cannot be adequately demonstrated. Oh. Eh? What.
In addition to everything @tinoesroho said about your comment (which I by and large concur with), this is some pretty gross poverty shaming. Spaghetti-Os are shelf stable, Coke is a quick hit of caffeine (and calories) if you don’t have a coffee maker. I don’t particularly have a problem with GMO labeling. If you want to not eat something due to irrational fear, fine. I don’t see why the GMO labels as they exist aren’t sufficient for that purpose.
But there’s pretty wide debate about how much, exactly, labeling GMOs will cost consumers. Labeling is acknowledged not to be free, and unless these labeling bills come with increases to food stamps to offset that cost, it’s a no-go for me. And frankly, this kind of elitism about food, particularly the food poor people are often stuck eating, just highlights what all this anti-GMO business is really about: Consumerism as virtue signalling.
It’s interesting stuff. Properly enriched topsoil will actually sequester carbon in its own. Micro organisms and fungus living there lock it up and the soil will actually “grow” more of itself without enrichment. Weirdly my hill William grandfather did this as well. Chickshit and charcoal to fertilize all the fields. Just no pottery shards, oyster shells for calcium. Never knew if it was something he just figured out or if it was some weird coastal farmer/fisherman knowledge.
This one:
Has tons of incredible info on natural land management. Apparently it’s started something of a small revolution in the way we manage parks and public land.
Are you talking about me?* I never “yammered” and never mentioned monoculture. Again, you’re fighting straw men, and surprise, you’re winning. Good for you. Your mother must be very proud that you moved on from fighting tether balls.
*for those who don’t know, Spike Spiegel is the name
of the character my avatar is based on. From Cowboy Bebop, also referenced in a derogatory way in earlier comments.
He’s Spike, I’m Vicious, and turns out that the monoculture-concerned commenter was somebody else (can’t check, on mobile, crap connection). If you haven’t seen Cowboy Bebop, every episode ends with the words “See you soon, Space Cowboy”. Well worth watching.
I just think it is lovely that so few people here have experienced or witnessed actual hunger, and can even have such a discussion.
It is great to talk about the stupidity of being able to patent seeds or prohibit their being saved. Those are largely business and legal issues.
But improvements in crop yields and drought and insect resistance are barely keeping pace with population growth, if that. The millions of people who are primarily concerned with the immediate goal of getting enough calories so that their kids will not die this week are not part of this conversation. For them, even a small disruption in supply or raise in price can be a matter of life or death.
Widespread famine leads to large scale ecological destruction. People who are hungry enough will absolutely kill and eat the last elephant or pangolin or sloth. And cook it with wood from the last rosewood tree.
If we as industrial western nations do not keep finding ways to produce huge amounts of inexpensive food, there are going to be a bunch of very hungry people. Remember that a hungry man is an angry man.
LOL, TIL that demeaning unhealthy shit like Coke and Spaghetti-Os is “poverty shaming.”
Coke: 1 can = 10 teaspoons of sugar, a substance that seems to be highly toxic in large quantities and is probably responsible for the lion’s share of American obesity and probably contributes to a whole host of other chronic & degenerative ailments. Using Coke as a “quick hit of caffeine and calories” is foolish, whether or not you’re poor.
Spaghetti-Os: Highly processed carbs that convert into sugar, plus 2 tsps of sugar and 600 mg of sodium, with very little actual nutritional value. They may be “shelf stable” but that doesn’t make them a healthy choice. The fact that poor people often choose cheap, unhealthy foods like this is an indictment of our industrial food system, our educational system, and the larger system that keeps people poor and food insecure. And anyway, affluent people make crappy food choices, too.
I don’t particularly have a problem with GMO labeling.
How generous.
I don’t see why the GMO labels as they exist aren’t sufficient for that purpose.
Yeah, it is. You can blather on about healthy choices all you want, but you’ve proposed nothing to put healthier choices within anyone’s reach.
I’ve been solo parenting all week and will have to next week. I’ve done a pretty admirable job of getting homemade meals on the table, but Friday we went to Jimmy John’s. If I didn’t have a little disposable income, my kid might have eaten McDonald’s or a can of the generic Spaghetti-Os the store near my house has for 2/$1. It’s pretty easy for me to understand that if I couldn’t afford a car, I probably would not have had the time to catch a bus or walk to my local grocery store when I ran out of onions, garlic and salad greens on Saturday, and might not have been able to make the nice meal I did. If I didn’t have the flexible, stable work schedule I do, tossing something in the oven before daycare pick up might not have been possible. Believe it or not, poor people are often more stuck in inflexible jobs, and sometimes can’t even afford cars, electricity and fresh produce. Access to good, healthy food in this country is not equally guaranteed to all people.
I have no problem seeing how easily my healthy eating could fall apart if I didn’t have the privilege of an education that affords me disposable income and flexible hours. I don’t understand why that’s controversial.
As labels, on packages. Put there by being printed with ink.
Been there. Want some of my “Dad’s night to cook” recipes? Fast, easy and healthy is the theme. You can get onions, garlic, mushrooms and zucchini saute’d and a can of cannelloni beans dumped in, in the 20 minutes it takes white rice to cook!
Health can also be an issue, as well as economy of scale. If you aren’t able to visit the store easily, it gets awkward.
Internet grocery shopping has made that easier, but if you have a limited income, then you either have to take the hit for delivery costs (which can be a big chunk of a weekly budget) or you wait until you have enough to get the free delivery, which means buying things that don’t go off quickly, so frozen rather than fresh veg. And tinned, if you have limited storage space. Things get very awkward very quickly and any disruption to the budget or lifestyle can seriously fuck things up.
Of course, all of this is based on actually having ANY form of access to decent shops or delivery. Not a privilege everyone has. I’m lucky enough to have a craptop, some internet and a couple of big supermarkets that deliver within 15km of here, so I get at least some choice.
That’s not going to be the major stumbling point for the impoverished. Poor people generally have limited access to banking and poor credit. And are far less likely to have a computer or know how to use it. This means online grocery shopping is impossible to greatly complicated. You’re doing your browsing on a smart phone. You don’t have a bank account or credit card. And the online shop probably doesn’t take food stamps. To order anything you’re likely buying pre-paid cash cards at the local convenience store. Which means paying a fee just to get the card. Sometimes paying a fee to use that card. Then a shipping fee. And that’s if an online option delivers in your area. Some one has to be home to accept that delivery, often not an option in homes where everyone is working crazy hours and you can’t take off. That’s a lot of added expense and difficulty for people who can’t accommodate added expense and difficulty.
Online shopping is not an option for most of the people concerned. Which is why you almost never hear it mentioned as a solution to problems of food access.
Interestingly farmers markets and CSAs are actually something of a help in most major cities. Most of them take food stamps now (at least in NY). And city and charity programs work on having a place you can easily pick up rather than having to wait on a delivery. Lots of the CSAs offer discounts or even free boxes. Food donation has actually always been a big thing with smaller regional and polycultural farmers. If you have unsold produce its really just going to spoil if its more than you can eat. So why not donate it, its just lost revenue one way or another. I see a lot more folks in poor city neighborhoods at the farmers market or walking their CSA box home than I used to.
“Non-GMO Project” labels put on voluntarily by companies specifically catering to the health-conscious market does not equal mandatory genetically modified ingredients labeling.
At any rate, I’m not sure why you’ve chosen me as some anti-poor people representative because I ridiculed the notion that Coke and Spaghetti-Os are a healthy choice. I’m well aware that poor people in America are often forced by budget and schedule into shitty eating choices that lead them to higher rates of a whole host of chronic diseases and ailments; my pointing it out doesn’t make cheap, highly processed industrial foods non-shitty.
Food activism can include support for GMO labeling and radical restructuring of our food sources away from the demands of the corporate state, for whom cheapness and convenience are structurally higher values than nutrition. Mandatory labeling is just more fight in a long, complicated battle.
Not something that’s taken off so much here. Well, there’s plenty of Farmer’s Markets. If you want overpriced organically grown veg and a ten dollar loaf of bread, you’re in luck. Food banks, OTOH, are booming. It’s more than all a bit fucked up.
Seems to be a concerted effort to make it work here. But the farmers markets (and farm stands out in the sticks) have always been significantly more affordable than shit like whole foods. Plenty of $10 bread, over priced heirloom radishes and artisinal, holistic, beard waxes. But plenty that’s no more expensive than the regular supermarket (which are admittedly kind of expensive here).
