How much more fertilizer and water input is needed to realize these results? As these two resources become scarce, we should start thinking about yield per unit input rather than simply yield per acre.
Is this new crop safe for humans and animals to eat? How do we know?
From the description, proportionally more fertilizer (and water) is required, because one of the effects of the genetic change is an increased rate of extraction for the nitrogen compounds from the soil.
The increased rate of nitrogen extraction, together with the higher rates of photosynthesis (which needs water to provide the hydrogen for reducing carbon dioxide, nitrates and sulfates) and of carbon dioxide reduction lead to a higher productivity.
Unlike for some of the other genetically-modified crops, from the description there does not seem to be any reason to worry about eating such a rice, as the genetic modification does not seem to have any qualitative effects, but only quantitative effects, resulting in higher rates for the same chemical processes as in non-modified rice, obtained by multiplying the reaction sites.
I'm no biologist or chemist, but generally plant growth is a huge chain of chemical processes, and if you make some subset of these faster, can it lead, for example, to accumulation of byproducts that are normally used up nearly completely? Or to unexpected regulation of some other reactions, including possibly expressing something bad that's usually only made in the cells we don't eat, up to the anti-herbivore toxins?
Such things cannot be completely excluded, but they should also be easy to detect. I assume that for any such new cultivar many detailed chemical analyses will be done before deciding that all went well.
Such side effects can also happen when using more traditional methods, i.e. selection of improved cultivars from plants that have suffered spontaneous random mutations or random mutations caused by mutagenic agents.
On the other hand, when you insert a foreign gene in the plant genome, e.g. with the purpose of making it pest-resistant, the results are far more unpredictable then in cases like this, where an already existing gene has been duplicated, in order to increase its activity.
As food, rice is mainly an excellent and easy to transport and store source of energy, with up to 80% of its weight being starch, more than in most other cereals.
All the other nutrients are present in a quantity so small that their contribution is negligible. Rice can cover all of the energy needs of a human, but it must be accompanied by other food for enough proteins, vitamins and minerals.
It isn’t. And that’s why people who argue that GMO food is bad for you just don’t get it. It’s not the food that’s bad, it’s the business practices. The GMO food itself is perfectly fine to eat. In fact, humans have been genetically modifying food for centuries, we’ve just gotten much faster at it.
GM crops that produce BT toxin are supposed to be safe for humans due to the acid in our stomachs breaking down the BT toxin. But, I wasn't able to find any studies that investigated the safety of BT toxin in contact with mucus membranes in the mouth etc. before being processed by the stomach. It seems, at least, possible that this could lead to an increased risk of throat and mouth cancers. GM BT corn, egg plant (aubergine), and potatoes are common.
Herbicide resistant GM crops used to get slathered with more herbicides than non-GM crops, so you probably were getting less exposure to these herbicides with non-GM conventional crops vs. GM conventional crops (I guess you could argue this falls into business practices, but it is the point of these GM crops). But, Ag schools, at least in the US, have been promoting using herbicides like glyphosate and Reglone to desiccate crops immediately prior to harvest[1] to avoid having to mow the crops to get a low uniform crop moisture content for harvesting equipment. So, conventional non-GM grains, oil seeds and legumes may also have high herbicide residues. Of course, buying organic avoids both sources of herbicides.
Your "meh" is similar to disregarding contemporary environmental PFAS contamination because of historic lead contamination from tetraethyllead. "There exist bad things already" does not automatically make the additional potentially bad thing harmless.
BT is sprayed on some food crops, but with GM food crops, it is contained within every cell of the plant, and cannot be washed off. You are consuming BT toxin, if you eat GM BT crops (the US EPA requires BT crops to be registered as pesticides). Putting poison in contact with mucus membranes seems, at the very least, 'possible' to have negative long-term health consequences.
Non GM conventional crops can use systemic pesticides (the irrigation water contains the poison and/or the seed is pre-treated. This also incorporates the pesticide within plant tissues so it cannot be washed off). These systemic pesticides are usually neonicotinoids. Presence of systemic neonicotinoid use in conventional agriculture does not negate concerns about GM BT crops.
My point was that GM, as it exists today, makes conventional agriculture's issues of pesticide exposure and low genetic diversity in our staple food crops worse, not that conventional agriculture doesn't already have issues.
>In fact, humans have been genetically modifying food for centuries, we’ve just gotten much faster at it.
No we didn't, we have been conducting artificial selection for centuries, farmers just pick among the best varieties available to them. By your logic the act of buying GMO seeds is what modifies their genes rather than their production process.
How is that different from use of hybrid seeds, which have been available since forever and don't breed true?
The solution to dependence is to have multiple suppliers. One can always use an older variety of seed. If the complaint is that the benefits are going to the company that made the seeds rather than the farmer, then how is that different from any other patented technology? The farmer is never going to be worse off, since he can always just use older varieties if the cost > his benefit.
Perhaps your actual argument is that this will reduce food prices, driving out producers who don't keep up with the latest advances. But again, how is that different from any other improvement in agricultural technology? Is this just more European objection to the steamroller of US industrial agriculture?
You are aware you're spouting bullshit there, right?
First of all, copyright isn't the applicable IP; patents are.
Second, no farmer has ever been sued for accidental contamination with patented GMOs. There have been cases where farmers deliberately tried to concentrate trace contamination, but the courts properly recognized the deliberate nature of that.
These urban legend arguments are one of the reasons I view the entire anti-GMO movement with a very jaundiced eye.
> Second, no farmer has ever been sued for accidental contamination with patented GMOs. There have been cases where farmers deliberately tried to concentrate trace contamination, but the courts properly recognized the deliberate nature of that.
Yes, deliberate use of the patented gene/interaction. That's still suing small farmers, doing farmer stuff, for IP infringement.
The farmer deliberately attempted to concentrate the gene. The only reason he would do this is to try to violate the patent. This was not an innocent action. Your argument here is like blaming a homeowner for catching a burgler.
No, in the case I'm thinking of he was doing something that wasn't normal at all. He was taking a field of mostly Roundup vulnerable soybeans and spraying it, killing off most of the plants, concentrating the ones that happened to have picked up the patented gene. There is no interpretation of what he was doing that wasn't clear and intentional violation of patent law. And thus he lost in court.
If farmers are trying to isolate a specific thing in their crops, they will kill the other plants, yes!
Artificial selection is a normal farming activity. At the very least it's thousands of years old, that part isn't what the patent is about.
Look, let's get back to the original post maybe? "Suing small farmers for copyright infringement isn't very nice." It was a different kind of IP infringement, otherwise nothing is factually wrong about this statement. We have some conflict about how patents should work in a situation like this, but that's not really the point here.
Look, you need to realize that in this case, the farmer lost in court. He was judged to have deliberately violated the patent. He wasn't innocent. His actions only made sense as an attempt to pirate the patented genes that he knew were there. He tried to argue that because the genes showed up in his crops he was entitled to concentrate them by this selection process and use them. In this, he lost.
Yes, let's get back to that original nonsense post. You are objecting to a patent holder defending their rights under the patent, taking deliberate and knowing violators of the patent to court. That position is bullshit. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Note that no farmers have even been sued for accidental and involuntary contamination of their crops. Nor will they be, since they'd have an excellent defense there in the absence of any intention on their parts to violate the patent. The courts are not stupid on this sort of thing.
If I think a law is flawed, then proof of violation is not going to change my mind!
> You are objecting to a patent holder defending their rights under the patent, taking deliberate and knowing violators of the patent to court.
For this very specific type of violation.
I personally think certain kinds of copyright related to distribution are garbage and should not exist at all. I think it's bad if a company sues over them, even if the party being sued is very guilty.
> That position is bullshit.
Criticizing a law is not bullshit.
Criticizing a lawsuit over a violation you think isn't worth it, even if the violation is extremely blatant, is not bullshit either.
I'm not even saying the initial comment is on the correct side, just that it's a reasonable position.
Generally people carve out potato blemishes, and blight spots, and rotten parts, and smelly parts and butchers will carve out cancerous growths. It's a standard practice, something that humans do, partly do to our sense of disgust. Our senses are not always correct, but most of the time it's a good survival adaptation to avoid rotten food and getting sick.
I think it's fair to say eating one plant is not comparable with eating a different plant. Why is eating one pattern of DNA (rice) less dangerous than another (Castor beans, where ricin comes from)? I think that's pretty self-explanatory. They code for different proteins.
I think the answer is more that we have no reason to believe that these modifications introduced harmful proteins, and we tested it on animals and humans, and they were fine.
The problem I have with GMOs generally speaking is the business model of patenting, selling sterile seeds that put farmers on mandatory subscription model - and that frequently the only genetic modification is to make the crop resistant to pesticides and herbicides so you can soak the fields, sterilize them and kill everything else. Or all 3 at once, like RoundUp Ready corn and soy.
>The problem I have with GMOs generally speaking is the business model of patenting, selling sterile seeds that put farmers on mandatory subscription model
What you said also applies to hybrid varieties, yet they don't receive nearly as much pushback. Furthermore, what's wrong with a subscription model? GMO seeds costs money to develop and that has to be recouped somehow. The alternative is paying some sort of upfront fixed cost, which is probably even worse on a farmer's finances and gives large scale operations even more of an advantage (they have easy access to capital).
> Furthermore, what's wrong with a subscription model? GMO seeds costs money to develop and that has to be recouped somehow. The alternative is paying some sort of upfront fixed cost, which is probably even worse on a farmer's finances and gives large scale operations even more of an advantage (they have easy access to capital).
A subscription isn’t in and of itself a bad thing, but the expectation is a little strange given that the plants themselves spread and grow in places that cannot be regulated by the developers. Thus someone could subscribe once then cancel but still grow the crop. Further, people who didn’t subscribe could end up having some of the crop spread onto their land then could unintentionally grow it without permission. This has sometimes led to attempts to either force people to pay for services they didn’t agree to or to destroy something growing on their own land through no fault of their own. In those cases, non-customers are actively penalized for their non-participation rather being left alone or being incentivized to try product through positive means.
>but the expectation is a little strange given that the plants themselves spread and grow in places that cannot be regulated by the developers. Thus someone could subscribe once then cancel but still grow the crop.
1. As mentioned before, what isn't applicable to hybrid crops. If you try to collect the seeds of hybrid crops and try to plant them, you'll get the seeds of the parents, which aren't going to have the attributes you're looking for.
2. I take it that you're also against copyrights? After all, you can theoretically buy a blu-ray once, and copy it infinitely.
>Further, people who didn’t subscribe could end up having some of the crop spread onto their land then could unintentionally grow it without permission. This has sometimes led to attempts to either force people to pay for services they didn’t agree to or to destroy something growing on their own land through no fault of their own. In those cases, non-customers are actively penalized for their non-participation rather being left alone or being incentivized to try product through positive means.
Source for this? It's been often alleged that monsanto engages in this behavior, but according to wikipedia[1] they've only gone after farmers that were intentionally trying to reverse engineer/breed their seeds.
If I kept getting sent single frames of a bluray whether I want them or not, but I was forbidden from putting those frames together into the full movie, I'd be pretty annoyed about that use of copyright too.
>Furthermore, what's wrong with a subscription model? GMO seeds costs money to develop and that has to be recouped somehow.
Developing countries must import seeds which forces them to export something to maintain balanced trade. Most developed nations are fighting currency wars against each other and developing countries which means they can at best export natural resources like oil, gold, raw copper or diamonds.
This seems like a self-correcting problem. If you can't export stuff then foreign currency/GMO seeds would get more and more expensive, until the increased productivity of GMO seeds isn't worth it anymore at which point you switch back to conventional seeds. Considering that you can't eat "natural resources like oil, gold, raw copper or diamonds", having the option to turn those things into more food (ie. by exporting them and using the money to buy GMO Seeds) seems like a net positive.
How much more fertilizer and water input is needed to realize these results? As these two resources become scarce, we should start thinking about yield per unit input rather than simply yield per acre.
Is this new crop safe for humans and animals to eat? How do we know?