
Soylent: Proudly Made with GMOs - johncoogan
http://blog.soylent.com/post/148000076992/proudly-made-with-gmos
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dahart
I think my main objection to GMO right now is that it's as much or more about
control as it is about either increased production or safety. Private
companies are patenting existing living things with minor modifications. They
are actively preventing seeding plants from being able to reproduce. Call me
skeptical, but I doubt that having the food supply under private control is
going to solve the world's hunger problems.

I'm also entirely unconvinced by the argument that cross-breeding and genetic
engineering are the same and thus pose the same level of safety risk. If that
were true, we wouldn't need genetic engineering, we could stick to grafting.

~~~
khattam
>I doubt that having the food supply under private control

Food supply is already under private control. If GMO takes off, it will
actually be under government control... which is what you should fear.

~~~
dahart
Yes, food supply is largely under private control in the sense that I buy food
from private companies, but I was making a different point than that. I should
have elaborated. Patent protection of GMO products is eliminating competition,
and making it illegal to grow similar foods. Furthermore, use of their product
over time might eliminate non-GMO varieties. This kind of control can lead to
private companies monopolizing the food supply, and being the only legal
source of some foods. These companies are actively seeing that future.

Regarding the government, I'm not sure I follow - why should I fear the
government, and how is the food supply going to end up under government
control? Currently, it's largely private companies that are patenting GMO
products, is it not? It is definitely private companies, and not the
government, that are developing and selling GMO seeds that produce non-seeding
plants. The government is not currently attempting to monopolize markets of
GMO products, or food in general.

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Kalium
So, your concerns would be alleviated entirely by a compulsory licensing
scheme?

Incidentally, are you aware that 100% completely non-GMO plants are subject to
an IP regimen called plant breeder's rights and have been for decades?

~~~
dahart
> So, your concerns would be alleviated entirely by a compulsory licensing
> scheme?

I doubt it, but this question also sounds like a way for me to trap myself, so
I'm going to avoid it. ;)

My primary concern here in this thread was I felt like Soylent's article was
misleadingly one-sided, and conspicuously left out possibly the most important
issue wrt GMO food, an issue that might directly contradict the stated claims
of going after world hunger. Limited production capacity is not the primary
reason world hunger exists, so increased production capacity shouldn't be
expected to fix it, right?

> are you aware that 100% completely non-GMO plants are subject to an IP
> regimen called plant breeder's rights...

Maybe I painted the wrong picture. I'm totally in favor of reasonable business
protections for investments in research. But, you'd agree the patent system is
at least somewhat broken and is currently being at least somewhat abused? I do
think private entities are testing and pushing the boundaries of what is
acceptable with GMO - and if that were my business, that might be what I'd be
doing to. There's a long and wonderful history of private enterprise trying to
maximize it's own gains, I've even read that maximizing gains is it's primary
function. Which is precisely why I'll hesitate before shooting down any and
all critics of GMO techniques. They might benefit me as a consumer, but that's
not their primary purpose at the moment.

On the whole, I think it's great if big-agra is developing more robust higher
yield crops that everybody benefits from. If it ends up being cheaper for
everyone, and they don't start rent-seeking, then two thumbs up. Time will
tell. I don't expect modifying seeding plants so they can no longer reproduce
to solve world hunger in any way, shape, or form. But as long as they don't
hose the future food supply or the population's health, then yeah, it is their
prerogative to protect their IP.

~~~
Kalium
> I doubt it, but this question also sounds like a way for me to trap myself,
> so I'm going to avoid it. ;)

Your professed concerns are over control. A compulsory licensing scheme strips
away the ability for a rightsholder to choose who to license to or what price
to license at. As a result, it would be impossible for the situation you fear
- " private companies monopolizing the food supply" \- to come to pass.

It seems like a neat solution to your worries. I'm asking if an actual policy
that actually been used for other forms of actual IP would help.

It's a trap in the sense that offering a hammer to someone who needs to drive
a nail is a trap.

> Limited production capacity is not the primary reason world hunger exists,
> so increased production capacity shouldn't be expected to fix it, right?

In total aggregate, production capacity is not the primary reason. Similarly,
the world does not lack for water in total aggregate. Does that mean there is
no such thing as a drought?

You're of course completely, totally, 100% right. It's not primarily a
production problem. It's primarily a logistics problem. It just happens to be
a logistics problem that can be addressed by addressing the production
problem.

The funny thing about terminator genes is that they've never actually been
used. No sane commercial farmer keeps their seeds anyway - it's much more
reliable and profitable to just buy more.

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wahern
1) Improving yields is exactly what you don't want to do if you want to
bolster local agriculture. We've learned this lesson multiple times over the
past 50 years, from Africa to Asia. If you want to address famines, you're
either going to do so by fixing the logistics problem _OR_ you need to inflate
prices through trade barriers to induce large-scale, economically viable
domestic farming. Improving yields only shifts more agriculture to nations
like the U.S., Europe, Brazil, and China, because by reducing labor
requirements and shifting to technology and logistics those nations have a
comparative advantage over every other country.

2) There are plenty of insane farmers. Just sayin'. And that's not a bad
thing, per se. See #1. The core problem is that too much centralization can
lead to unstable outcomes; it pays to subsidize some amount of economic
diversity.

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dkersten
_" As a society, we struggle to satisfy the global demand for food."_

My vegan friends claim that this is only true because we waste so much
food/water to feed livestock for meat.

Even if thats not true, humans waste a lot of food. Hell, my local supermarket
throws out enough food each day to feed me for a month. (Ok ok not really true
because it wouldn't last a month, but quantity-wise...)

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adamkruszewski
And there is the whole 'bio-fuel' movement where basically people grow 'bio-
fuel' in places where there was food growing earlier cause they get subsidies
for doing so. How to account for such 'lost' food sources?

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nibs
We should produce halophytes on saline and dessert land and use it for
biofuel, feedstock and food. Ex.:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salicornia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salicornia)

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rasmusei
The article does make a few good points, but I also think it uses a couple of
unforgivable rhetorical devices. Most obvious are the out-of-context mentions
of various "huge numbers", e.g. as follows:

"By reducing the need to till farmland, GR soy and corn have prevented 41
billion pounds of carbon dioxide from being released in the atmosphere between
1996 and 2013."

This amount of CO2 savings sounds great without comparison, but it amounts to
about 0.003% of the total GHG emissions in the same period. (Assuming
emissions of ~40 Gt CO2e/year 1993-2013 [1].)

[1]
[http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/figure-s...](http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/figure-
spm-1.html)

Edit: typo

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stcredzero
Alan Watts: Prickles and Goo.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXi_ldNRNtM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXi_ldNRNtM)

It's true that the "Prickles" have caused problems. However, a tremendous
amount of good has come of science and technology. Skepticism is necessary to
counteract humanity's collective hubris. Morality and philosophy have their
uses for this as well. However, it's high time that we asked for some
epistemic rigor from the "Gooey" side. Otherwise, our society is going to
drown in unarguable nonsense.

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macandcheese
Many people simply don’t believe the use of GMOs is _morally_ acceptable -
whether or not they they are safe to grow or ingest is besides the point.

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atemerev
Why? Being able to produce more food cheaper looks quite moral and desirable
to me.

