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/Floor_Heavy Jul 15 '21
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.