
Argentina May Have Figured Out How to Get GMOs Right - fisherjeff
http://www.wired.com/2015/10/argentina-may-have-figured-out-how-to-get-gmos-right/
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cperciva
_Many people believe GMOs are dangerous to human health, environmentally
destructive, and a tool for multinational corporations like Monsanto to
control the global food supply._

Many people believe that vaccines cause autism, too.

The answer is better education, not pandering to the crowds.

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bigethan
The issue in the US is that GMO === Monsanto. And Monsanto is very clearly a
company that does not care about the long term implications of its science
(you think they'd sit on data like Exxon did with climate change data? I do,
100%). I fear Monsanto, so in the US I fear GMO. Remove hard core capitalism
from our food supply science and I'll be less scared of it.

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dragonwriter
Fearing GMOs because you don't like Monsanto'spractices is like fearing
computers in the 1990s because you don't like Microsoft's practices.

Not to mention, Monsanto is the biggest GMO -- or, really, seed, regardless of
GMO status -- company everywhere, they aren't restricted to the US.

And there are plenty of non-Monsanto US companies doing GM and non-GM crop
work, including companies working on the same kind of environmental tolerance
traits that the Argentine firm, Bioceres, was discussed in the article as
working on (one of those US companies, Arcadia Biosciences, actually has a
joint venture, Verdeca, with Bioceres.)

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bigethan
> Fearing GMOs because you don't like Monsanto's practices is like fearing
> computers in the 1990s because you don't like Microsoft's practices.

I disagree. I can live without a computer. I can't live without food.

I'm aware that there are other companies doing GMO work in the US, and that
Monsanto is a global cancer. But the US is their place of greatest power and
influence.

How many members of the EPA & FDA are former employees of Arcadia and
Bioceres, and how much lobbyist money have they put into those pockets? You
think Monsanto will let anyone try to succeed in "their" space without a
brutal fight?

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andrenth
> How many members of the EPA & FDA are former employees of Arcadia and
> Bioceres, and how much lobbyist money have they put into those pockets?

So the problem isn't "hardcore capitalism", it's a state so big that lobbying
it is more effective/easier than competing in the market.

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omegaworks
Have all South American countries been forced into patent agreements with the
United States? Is patent enforcement in Argentina taken to the same absurd
extremes as it is here?

That's the real issue with GMOs. Monsanto has not been kind to farmers that
happen to plant near GM crops and get their genes through pollination rather
then by licensing seeds.

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molmalo
> Is patent enforcement in Argentina taken to the same absurd extremes as it
> is here?

It depends on the sector of the economy and if there's enough money on the
table. Monsanto often sues farmers who do what you say.

But in other sectors of the economy, some people could say there's almost no
patent enforcement (same for trademark). That's one of the most frequent
requests|demands our politicians receive from the US Embassy.

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mc32
I think the key in these GMOs is that the M is to address inorganic
environmental challenges --so that they produce more under challenging
conditions rather than addressing organic environmental challenges (like pests
--which require dousing artificial chemicals --to which many people are
allergic).

In the end, though, ironically, GMOs have the potential of being more
environmentally friendly than the alternatively produced (traditional)
hybrids. It's too bad they got a bad rap from the Monsanto shenanigans.

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mcv
_Today, he says, the costs of doing field trials of GM crops [...] are
prohibitive for almost anyone who’s not Monsanto or Syngenta. “The big
multinationals can do these studies, but the public institutions or national
businesses in developing countries can’t,” Herrera-Estrella says. That leaves
some of the most useful GM applications—and the ones that’d help poor farmers,
like disease resistance and drought tolerance—in limbo. They aren’t profitable
enough for multinationals; they’re too expensive for everyone else._

I've never been a big proponent of GMOs, and if we're going to allow them at
all, I'd like to see really thorough field trials to demonstrate their impact
on the ecosystem, but this quote makes a really good point. If tests are too
expensive, only the biggest companies with the most profit-driven crops can
get approval, and that's the exact opposite of what I want. I'd rather see
golden rice and this sunflower-soy, than Bt, Roundup-Ready and Terminator
crops.

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Gys
GMO = genetically modified crops

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kolinko
organisms, not crops. There are gmo animals and bacteria as well.

