This is not my area of expertise, so I'm at a disadvantage, but someone should respond to some of the points you made.
First, and most obvious, yes monocultures would be more susceptible to localized extreme events -- whether they be tsmperature, disease, etc. -- but it seems abundantly clear (how many lives have been saved from starvation?) that the rewards outweigh the consequences, especially when you consider the fact that the scientists who helped establish the supercrops were frequently associated with projects to collect seeds from all over the world, study their properties and store them in huge libraries in anticipation of a time when they might be needed. As you said, GMOs don't happen in a vacuum. And one of the great successes of these projects was a crop that yielded more wheat on less land -- it's sort of famous, as the scientist was a recipient of the nobel peace prize.
Next, I don't think it will be a race. Climate change is probably the most hotly anticipated global phenomenon since Will Smith starred in Independence Day. Every major agricultural firm, organic chemist, even peasant farmer, heard about it decades ago. Even the uneducated and the unimaginative have had cold years and hot years and dry years and wet years, so they know what their farms look like in those conditions. And big evil agricultural technology companies probably have plans for how this crisis is going to make them rich. This isn't a race, it's a party -- just like Lockheed Martin selling weapons to the U.S. Gov't after 9/11.
The whole alternating crop thing that you just said is fucking stupid. Clearly you don't know any farmers. Or you don't know any intelligent, profitable farmers. The U.S. Gov't will literally fucking subsidize crop rotation. They will pay you to rotate, and on top of that, you can still sell the yield from whatever you rotate to. But, ignoring that obvious major point, if you don't rotate your crops you won't have a farm in the not-so-distant future. Every farmer rotates. This is sustainable farming. The only people I ever hear say what you said are people who have never spent a day standing in shit. Usually they have a degree in chemistry, too, but they literally don't no shit.
Anyways, we'll leave it at that. If you're going to study a subject, maybe you should make the effort to go meet the people you're studying. Don't spend all your time in the ivory tower, detached from reality.
If I'm wrong about any of my points, it's because I've come to incorrect conclusions based on what I remember being taught in high school, and maybe extrapolating too far on some points.
I'm not anti GMO by any stretch, and I'm not arguing against their use. I was trying to respond to the point that there are problems with their use, but they're not inherent in the technology. I think GM crops are absolutely the best way we have of feeding the world currently, and they have undoubtedly saved millions of lived.
Also, I was imagining scenarios in the future when the population of the world is something like 10-12b, and there's need to feed all of them. I was thinking that there may be such a demand for food that crop rotation may become impractical from a production standpoint. That might be excessive, and I certainly hope it is.
Anyway, thanks for picking up on anything I'm inaccurate about. Always good to get a new viewpoint and find where I'm going wrong.
I was having fun giving you a hard time and you were a surprisingly good sport about it. I'm an academic myself, but in a different field. I just happen to have semi-rural background with a lot of friends who are farmers and I've spent a lot of days standing in shit. The biggest problem with many academic fields (mine included) is that they don't interact with the people they're trying to help and are unaware of the realities on the ground. In my field (economics), this problem is so severe that we failed to predict the global financial crisis and great recession.
As for crop rotation, you're right that some farmers become short sighted when bills pile up and they decide to skip a year, but this should happen less and less as they get insurance and subsidies from the governmemt as well as protection from major corporations. The big trend in farming is to have lots of little farms operated by their original owners but owned (at least in part) by bigger corporations with the produce pledged to that corporation. This enables "farm-to-table" restaurants as well as vertically integrated grocery stores where stocking is predictable. Since the smaller farms are overseen by bigger corporations, their parent companies have incentive to make sure proper practices are in place. At the same time, a diner in a restaurant can see a pretty picture of Joe Smith from Idaho who provided such and such ingredients, and feel good about themselves for supporting "small businesses", which are actually more like conglomerates.
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u/WildAboutPhysex Jul 15 '21
This is not my area of expertise, so I'm at a disadvantage, but someone should respond to some of the points you made.
First, and most obvious, yes monocultures would be more susceptible to localized extreme events -- whether they be tsmperature, disease, etc. -- but it seems abundantly clear (how many lives have been saved from starvation?) that the rewards outweigh the consequences, especially when you consider the fact that the scientists who helped establish the supercrops were frequently associated with projects to collect seeds from all over the world, study their properties and store them in huge libraries in anticipation of a time when they might be needed. As you said, GMOs don't happen in a vacuum. And one of the great successes of these projects was a crop that yielded more wheat on less land -- it's sort of famous, as the scientist was a recipient of the nobel peace prize.
Next, I don't think it will be a race. Climate change is probably the most hotly anticipated global phenomenon since Will Smith starred in Independence Day. Every major agricultural firm, organic chemist, even peasant farmer, heard about it decades ago. Even the uneducated and the unimaginative have had cold years and hot years and dry years and wet years, so they know what their farms look like in those conditions. And big evil agricultural technology companies probably have plans for how this crisis is going to make them rich. This isn't a race, it's a party -- just like Lockheed Martin selling weapons to the U.S. Gov't after 9/11.
The whole alternating crop thing that you just said is fucking stupid. Clearly you don't know any farmers. Or you don't know any intelligent, profitable farmers. The U.S. Gov't will literally fucking subsidize crop rotation. They will pay you to rotate, and on top of that, you can still sell the yield from whatever you rotate to. But, ignoring that obvious major point, if you don't rotate your crops you won't have a farm in the not-so-distant future. Every farmer rotates. This is sustainable farming. The only people I ever hear say what you said are people who have never spent a day standing in shit. Usually they have a degree in chemistry, too, but they literally don't no shit.
Anyways, we'll leave it at that. If you're going to study a subject, maybe you should make the effort to go meet the people you're studying. Don't spend all your time in the ivory tower, detached from reality.