Yeah, greed is good.
Any talk of GMOs brings up a novel that I just read, The Windup Girl.
It features a future where the Calorie Companies (basically our big Agri-Cos) have taken GMOs to where they have engineered insects/diseases that will attack any non-GMO crops, so that everybody is dependent on their non-propagating seeds.
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Because farmers are being sued out of existence due to cross-pollination, seed thatâs sold illegally (represented as something else entirely) and the closed nature of the development of these organisms. Our island is a laboratory - the crops here (as far as I know) arenât actually sold - theyâre simply tested and developed. And weâre not allowed to know what chemicals theyâre putting into the ground? This is the danger of patents and money behind agriculture.
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The argument that Monsanto owns 90% of the market gets regurgitated frequently. Monsanto accounts for 90% of the US soy market. There is an enormous difference between controlling 90% of the US soy market and 90% of the global seed market. Monsanto takes the top spot for control of the global proprietary seed market at about 25% followed by DuPont and Syngenta. And that isnât even counting the nonproprietary seed market.
The proprietary nature of gm seed is of great concern to some people. Those people must be blissfully unaware that hybrid seeds account for the majority of the proprietary seed market and have nothing to do with biotech labs. Farmers in the US have been using proprietary seed for generations without the calamitous harms being mongered by anti-GMO activists.
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Please provide evidence of farmers being sued out of existence due to accidental genetic drift. I ask because a recent suit brought by organic farmers making just such a claim was thrown out of court due to a complete lack of evidence. Note the important qualifier âaccidentalâ, which means Schmeiser doesnât count.
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Plant gene splice anyone can do at home with a sharp knife? Please tell me you arenât referring to grafting. Because the dna of the scion and the rootstock donât interact, and grafting can be very problematic if the scion is infected (see citrus greening disease)
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Are you really defending oligopoly versus monopoly?
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oligopoly doesnât describe it. The top ten producers of proprietary seed only account for 70% of the global proprietary seed market. Then there is still the whole open seed market to account for. So that doesnât pass th four firm concentration test.
If people want to stick it to Monsanto, they should push for the reduction of the barriers to entry in the GM market. As itstands now, the only entities that can afford to navigate the onerous regulatory and legal morass that constrains the GM market are giant multinationals like Monsanto. Also, permitting GMOs in Europe would presumably benefit Syngenta to the detriment of Monsanto.
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There are a lot of problems with the GM crop arena that have little to do with GMOâs themselves: the encouragement of unsustainable âsolutionsâ to the problems we face with agriculture such as continued planting of monocultures, increased use of pesticides and oligopolistic, industrial farming. The real solutions to the problems of agriculture lie in working with nature, not against it by planting diverse and constantly evolving food plants, using beneficial organisms to defeat harmful ones and expanding the base of small farmers to increase variety, increase knowledge and encourage a healthier populace generally.
Discussing GMOâs without discussing the industrial agricultural system that dominates GMO production is negligent at best, dishonest at worst. Thatâs my problem with being agnostic to the technology: it canât really be separated from other harmful practices and industry domination by a few extremely powerful, predatory, dishonest corporations.
Thatâs not to say dishonesty on the other side is excusable. What bothers me is that the opposition feels it really needs to use dishonest scaremongering tactics when it doesnât. It is hysterical and irrational, just like climate denial. But as others have pointed out, there arenât massive, multi-trillion dollar industries behind organic farming, unlike climate denial and GMO production.
And please donât throw starving people in the faces of the organic farming movement. People are starving largely because of the same multinational corporate dominated industrial agricultural system that funds climate denial and GMO crops. Those multinationals, like Monsanto (yes), but also Dow, United Fruit, Archer Daniels Midland and a few other oligopolistic corporate behemoths also support and profit from the casino speculative takeover of the futures commodities exchanges that distort food prices and cause mass hunger.
So by all means lets rein in the fear-mongering liars in the organic/green movement. But to pretend that there isnât a hydra-headed corporate conspiracy to utterly dominate the global food production system with the goal of ever-increasing profit, rather than to feed people, is to deny reality in even more egregious ways. And to pretend that there is some real equivalency in terms of morality, power, dishonesty and influence between the hysterics on the left and the corporatist, fascist right wing powers is ridiculous.
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comparison Harmon makes between the anti-GMO crowd on the political left and the climate change denialists on the political right. In both cases, you get anti-science, conspiracy-laden rhetoricYou really think that's a fair, valid assessment? Sounds like insulting rhetoric to me.
Are you aware of the differences between the scale and type of consensus there is on climate change compared to the scale and type of consensus there is on the safety and efficacy of all genetically modified food in all its forms?
From the scale and type of consensus there is on climate change, itâs foolhardy to deny it. Itâs vast, transparent and comes from many, quality, independent sources.
On the other hand, the big problem some of us on the âleftâ (or whatever you want to label us) have with the GMO issue is the lack of transparency in regards to research.
GM plants, as plants, are safe
I think itâs much more scientific to say GMOs are probably not dangerous (overall).
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X02004882
PDF: Canât find free version anymore, sorry.
Can you at least admit there needs to be more transparent research on GMOs in general? Or, are you completely satisfied with all the opaque, corporate âresearchâ for some reason?
You should take a look at this:
Crop Scientists Say Biotechnology Seed Companies Are Thwarting Research
â ⌠The Times reported that because of draconian intellectual property laws, scientists canât grow GMO crops for research purposes without gaining permission from the corporations that own the germplasmâpermission which is sometimes denied or granted only on condition that the companies can review findings before publication. ⌠â
Monsanto has been drastically ramping up its donations to both parties (especially republican) since 2002.
You should also know this thwarts better research on safety testing as well. And, if not, why wouldnât it?
And, unlike global warming, there isnât a solid consensus:
http://www.ijsaf.org/archive/16/1/lotter1.pdf
[Please note the distinction made between traditional agricultural crops and pharmaceutical crops (and bacterial transgenics) made in the paper.]
Lotterâs paper shows political and corporatist power, not rigorous scientific consensus has pushed GMOs forward. He shows that a lack of regulation of GMOs stems from revolving-door ties between the industry and government (remind you of any other industries?).
When there have been long-term trials by independent researchers, the results have been disturbing. In 2008, the Austrian government peformed a long-term animal feeding experiment which showed evidence of reproductive trouble including reduced birth, weight and fertility.
This Austrian study was mostly avoided by United States media. I wonder why?
Also, IAASTD asked 400 or so scientists from countries all over the world and they concluded:
â ⌠Assessment of biotechnology is lagging behind development; information can be anecdotal and contradictory, and uncertainty on benefits and harms is unavoidable. There is a wide range of perspectives on the environmental, human health and economic risks and benefits of modern biotechnology; many of these risks are as yet unknown. ⌠The application of modern biotechnology outside containment, such as the use of genetically modified (GM) crops, is much more contentious [than biotechnology within containment, e.g., industrial enzymes]. For example, data based on some years and some GM crops indicate highly variable 10 to 33 percent yield gains in some places and yield declines in others. ⌠â
Donât get me wrong, Iâm not saying the GMO food is outright evil and is absolutely proven to be bad in all cases, but it certainly requires more transparent research.
To compare that to global warming deniers is ridiculous, insulting and ignorant.
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There is no rule that anything over four firms means oligopoly doesnât exist. If that is a rule of thumb its ridiculous and unrealistic. I guess youâre going to tell me next that the US media isnât an oligopoly because there are five firms that dominate it. Or that banking isnât in a similar situation because there are eight or so huge banks that control something like 70-80% of all US dollar deposits.
Ten companies controlling 70% of a market can be oligopolistic. The reality is that even 100 companies controlling the bulk of a market can be oligopolistic. The number of firms is much less important than whether and how they work together to control regulation, stock flows, pricing, etc.
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Letâs reign in the hysteria in your post with accurate use of the word oligopoly and an accurate appraisal of the size of the companies involved. Monsanto is not a multi trillion dollar company. It only has a market cap of 60b and total assest of 20b, a far cry from trillions. And hydra headed conspiracy yeah letâs see some evidence of that.
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Syngenta, Monsanto, tomato, tom-ahto. And why do you think the regulations are so onerous in the first place? This is what oligopoly does: dominate markets through control of not just the production and flow of goods but also regulatory structures and other barriers to entry.
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oh well if classic tests donât support your conspiracy theories then the tests are ridiculous. got it. But disregarding that, where is the evidence of collusion, price fixing, etc?
And how big is ADM? And I forget the name but ADMâs chief competitor is also massive. And trillions really refers to the sum of the oligopolistic firms, not necessarily the individual members, although in the climate-denying energy sector trillions is quite accurate.
You need evidence that firms like Monsanto try to dominate markets? Go read any unbiased journalism story from the last 20 years about the business, lobbying, regulatory and competitive tactics and strategies of firms like Monsanto. Are you seriously claiming that these huge firms ARENâT trying to gain as much market share by any means at their disposal? Your comments need to pass the laugh test before I start providing you links.
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I see, so âclassic testsâ is some sort of magical term that shuts down my assertions about the corporate media, multinational banks AND food producers/distributors? If you are seriously going to assert that anything over four firms dominating a market somehow means there canât be collusion, manipulation and market control you need to do more than wave a silly term around.
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a single company trying to dominate a market is not oligopoly. Multiple companies working cooperatively (not competitively) is an oligopoly. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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When modifying plants there are two main techniques used. The biolistic particle delivery system, or gene gun, uses air to shoot a small particle coated with plasmid DNA into the plant with the hope that it will get mixed into the plantâs cells. IIRC the original device was a pellet gun fired at onions. The other main technique is to splice the desired DNA into Agrobacterium tumefaciens and infect the plant with the bacterium, whereupon the bacterium will insert a DNA plasmid into the plantâs cells. This gene transfer from bacteria to plant is natural on the part of the bacterium.
So yeah, you can do one gene transfer technique in your kitchen with a sharp knife, though that wouldnât be a very effective version of it. The other one is quite possibly happening naturally in your back yard right now.
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oh sure, if there are 5 firms that control 90% of a market and they are acting in collusion with one another Iâll grant you that that is an oligopoly. But we are talking about the top 3 firms that donât even control half of the proprietary global seed market let alone the total global seed market.
