It all depends what your definition of genetic modification is.
No it doesn’t.
It’s a completely disingenuous argument and a false equivalency. We know that we are referring to GMO vs selective breeding. These are completely different mechanisms and in the latter case we understand the consequences and implications because humans have been doing it for millennia. In the former case we have not been doing it very long at all and do not yet fully understand the consequences and implications. I’m not saying that makes it inherently wrong, but it is a vast area of unknown ramifications. And given human’s already long history of fucking with nature and finding out my money is on those ramifications being less than ideal.
It is selecting genes through breeding or doing the same thing in a laboratory.
It is a completely different mechanism. The best way to simply describe this is perhaps to say that in selective breeding you are allowing random mutations to happen naturally - IOW allowing the plant to naturally “adapt” to it’s environment. This is crucially different in that you are not going in and saying “oh these genes are the ones we want let’s only bring those out” but rather “these are the characteristics I want, let’s select the organisms that display those”.
To put it another way: in selective breeding you are selecting for a collection of characteristics. A great example is saving seed from a crop you have grown. Those seeds will always do better in your specific environment than commercially purchased seeds of the exact same cultivar. Why? Because there are small random mutations across a number of genes that are better adapted to your specific environment to produce the characteristics you want. Those genes are often not actually understood nor is the effect of different combinations of genes. By working backward from exhibited characteristics you are working from known successful combinations.
Golden rice could have saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives by now.
Serious question. If hundreds of lives were at stake, why were other mechanisms… such as just giving kids vitamin A, not apparently employed? Regardless of the merits of the opposition to this rice, why not pursue this on multiple fronts?
As the article points out, it’s not just a question of safety.
“Farmers who brought this case with us – along with local scientists – currently grow different varieties of rice, including high-value seeds they have worked with for generations and have control over. They’re rightly concerned that if their organic or heirloom varieties get mixed up with patented, genetically engineered rice, that could sabotage their certifications, reducing their market appeal and ultimately threatening their livelihoods.”
The article said they felt it could endanger their livelihood by crossing with cultivars they’d spent decades developing and which were uniquely valuable economically.
It really doesn’t though. If you point is… um… what exactly? That somehow the end result is the same? LOL. Only if you squint real hard and pretend to misunderstand words.
“Plant domestication by the earliest farmers 10,000 years ago is an example of genetic modification.”
Technically, yes. That’s true. Through DIFFERENT mechanisms.
But what do you expect when it’s brought to you by Cargill, Bayer, Syngenta, Nutrien, BASF… among others.
The insect glue, produced from edible oils, was inspired by plants such as sundews that use the strategy to capture their prey. A key advantage of physical pesticides over toxic pesticides is that pests are highly unlikely to evolve resistance, as this would require them to develop much larger and stronger bodies, while bigger...
Edit: Apparently this isn’t so obvious to people. Ok, let me explain:
No pesticide can be precisely targeted. You will always capture or kill more insects that are beneficial than are not. In the article it mentions that the sticky spray doesn’t capture bigger insects like bees. That’s certainly progress over other types of physical traps, but not all insects are very big. Key beneficials like lady bugs, green lacewings, various spiders, pirate bugs, etc are very small. They will be trapped by this spray. If it traps a thrip, it will trap those bugs (and the study abstract says this - “small anthropods”). This isn’t mentioned in the article but I can speak to this from personal experience farming. I’ve tried various options and the results are always the same - you may get rid of some thrips (and boy do I have thrips) but you also wipe out the insects that will eat the thrips and you end up in a kind of arms race. The more beneficials you kill the more pesticides you need.
Um. No kidding. Did you read the article? (Edit: that I linked to)
This year again, we released green lacewing larva in the Public Garden, the Boston Common, and Commonwealth Avenue Mall. As generalist predators, the tiny larvae (Chrysoperla rufilabris) provide a vital service by eating aphids, small caterpillars, beetles, thrips, mites, whiteflies, mealybugs, and even insect eggs.
Edit: My point, which seems to be completely lost on most people here is that no physical means of trapping insects is going to only target the problem insects. You will always capture more of the insects you didn’t mean to harm. Source: me, having tried sticky traps and various oils in commercial farming settings.
No pesticide that physically traps insects is specific to one kind. It’s not really possible. It may not capture bees, but it will capture other smaller insects than thrips that do no harm. For example green lacewing larva.
It’s literally in the post. Not even in the article, it’s in the synopsis. Why didn’t you read that before commenting?
Can you be more precise? When you say “it” is “literally in the post” what exactly is “it”? Serious question because yes I read the article.
I would surmise that you are referring to the line “while bigger beneficial insects, like bees, are not trapped by the drops”.
The problem here is the word “bigger”. So great, it doesn’t trap bees, that’s something of a step forward. But it will trap other non-targeted smaller insects.
They are if the stickiness is tuned so that larger, predatory insects are easily able to escape the glue.
Most beneficials that go after thrips are not that much bigger than them. The study doesn’t seem to mention this (tho I’m still looking for the full text).
We can’t just stop spraying the toxic stuff without an alternative because global food systems could collapse.
Food security isn’t an issue of production but rather distribution and specifically equitable distribution; 2. It’s estimated that 40% of all food produced in America is wasted;
So given #2, what is the reduction in yield that would result from not “spraying toxic stuff” and is it more or less than 40%? The answer is very like no, not even close and further, this is that a “collapse” of food systems or a collapse of corporate profits?
I’ve mentioned some in posts here but among the smaller ones I’d include ladybugs, green lacewings, spiders, minute pirate bugs, spined soldier bugs, braconid wasps, trichogrammatid wasps, etc. Trichogrammatid wasps for example are only about 1mm in size! But they perform a vital function.
How do you stop consumers from wasting food from the production side?
I’m glad you asked. More diversified and de-centralized production that shortens the food chain. That actually solves more problems than it may appear, key among them consumer understanding of what “good” is when it comes to produce, which pulls demand. A lot of produce is wasted simply because it’s not the right size or blemished in some way - sorting to meet consumer demand for perfect produce is that very first layer of waste. And because consumers don’t really know what fresh is they assume that 2-4 week old corn you buy wrapped in plastic is just perfectly fine. Yet, because it’s 2-4 weeks old it isn’t going to last much longer. Long food chains also mean increased handling which means increased risk of contamination which means increased washing and treatment, leading to degradation and waste. Bagged salad is a great example of that. When I sold salad at the farmer’s market it was picked that morning or the night before and easily lasted 2-3 weeks refrigerated.
When you shorten the food chain more “imperfect” produce gets used, it’s in the hands of consumers sooner and thus lasts longer and, crucially, is more nutritious both because it doesn’t need to be optimized for shelf life and because it’s fresher. (if you search for something like “loss of nutrition in produce over time” you’ll get lots of resources on this - tl;dr this got studied a ton during WWII and it’s very much a thing.
There’s a ton more detail I could add here - it’s a complex subject. But the bottom line is a lot of waste happens because of decentralization and our own, as consumers, distance from production.
We can have less efficient agriculture that doesn’t require indiscriminate killing of species.
Thank you!
One of the big lies of modern industrialized agriculture is that we have a production problem. We don’t! We have a “profit problem” in the sense that industrialized food producers demand ever greater profits which means they have to continually find ways to get people to eat more “value”, in volume and/or value-added processes.
In reality we have a distribution problem that is caused by industrialization and centralization. The real solution is decentralization and diversification.
Fundamentally you misinterpreted what I said. I’m not being disingenuous about why we use pesticides, I’m simply saying we are doing it wrong and should not use any. The whole premise of “we must use pesticides or we’ll starve” is, to put it simply, a fallacy. Because we are no longer producing food so we don’t starve but so that huge corporations can profit more.
The big problems with the “well this is slightly better than the alternative” are: First, the alternatives don’t necessarily kill all insects - they can be highly targeted too. Secondly, killing any beneficials is treading backwards. The more beneficials you kill the more you need things to kill the pests. In other words, it’s pushing “solutions” in completely the wrong direction. And industrial ag pursues this with such fervor it’s accelerating the process to the point where we may have no functional insect populations left. This is an existential threat.
We don’t kill bugs because they’re gross, we kill them because they eat our food.
In fact they don’t in the large scheme of things. Or as the joke goes, they only eat a little.
I think this sums up your misinterpretation of what I’m saying and I concede it’s understandable because I was a little obscure in my jest. The “eww gross” line comes from a basic prejudice that people have about insects - that they are always pests and don’t serve an important purpose. And so our approach to pest control has always been one of “insect bad! kill them all!”. Even the fact that if someone finds a bug in their store-bought produce - and I’ve seen this with my own eyes - they are inclined to take it back. That’s the level of ridiculous over-reaction we have when in reality we should be enlisting the help of the insect world.
And I can personally attest this works on a commercial scale.
Looking at the marketing of big ag and big food, it’s not surprising. The first lie of industrialized agriculture was that it was necessary to feed the world and “free people from slavery to the land”. It’s absolutely true that technology has massively improved agriculture and a great deal of that technology is hugely beneficial… but it also created an industry that, in essence, produces too much. It is driven to lower costs, and thus margins for producers while increasing profits for large corporations. The longer the food chain the more hands needing profit, thus spreading out value and increasing the need to add value through processed food, clever packaging and increased consumption.
By decentralizing agriculture we can shorten the chain - reducing excess production, leaving more value for the producers, reducing the impact of monocultures by spreading them out and reducing their size and ultimately bringing better and more equitable distribution of nutrition to consumers.
I know there are great alternatives, but they all have higher labour requirements.
Not necessarily - I’d argue any higher labor requirements are more than offset by the increased value the producer (ie higher margins); 2. So what. Modern capitalism can’t tolerate that - this is very true. Because we have these very long complex food production chains that demand the lowest possible input costs in order to survive. But there is a way out and it doesn’t require re-inventing capitalism: decentralization of production and promotion of smaller more diversified farms. This absolutely can be done and we know because we have been doing it, just not quite enough to offset the corporate forces of centralization. Small farms and farmer’s markets need help and part of that is up to consumers to make the choice. Part of it is regulatory capture by big food corporations who have shaped our food chain to make sure that small farms are at a huge disadvantage.
On #1 - a diversified farm growing “speciality crops” (USDA speak for food we consume directly instead of commodities) will typically have margins >20% and can easily net $25k or more an acre. In commodities, even the highest net for almonds and pistachios might only get you $1.2-1.5k per acre. Many commodities like corn can have a negative margin and only survive through subsidies.
All this matters because farmers have literally been digging their own graves and become little more than share croppers. It’s so hard to be viable direct to consumer there is little choice - a really classic example being chicken production where it’s virtually impossible to be an independent producer because companies like Tyson have made sure all the regulations favor them. So now they’ll loan you the money for facilities you’ll never pay off and you have no choice but to sell to them at whatever price they set.
If Biden can’t win in a landslide, it’s because Joe Biden sucks, not because the youth are entitled, bourgeois, ignorant, lazy, or any of the other insults being thrown around in this comment thread.
I don’t think “kids these days” are entitled, lazy or ignorant but to a degree both these types of things can be true. Biden is unappealing, yes, but everywhere I turn are people arguing that both parties are the same and that Democrats have done nothing for them. In these cases, when pressed it turns out they just don’t actually know one way or the other. It’s a generalized sentiment of “politicians bad” and many are surprised to learn of even a handful of things Dems and Biden have done that they support.
So I guess you could argue that Democrats suck at marketing. But I’d also argue that many of us suck at understanding politics.
A conservative plan for Donald Trump’s potential transition into the presidency calls for dozens of prisoners to be executed, according to HuffPost. An 887-page plan by Project 2025, led by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, says that if elected, Trump should make a concerted effort to execute the remaining 40...
I’ll tell you what. You can sit online all day complaining about the average age of our elected “representatives” or you you can mobilize to do something about it. Be politically active. Vote.
Or even run yourself or encourage others of an acceptable age to you to run.
The reason they are so fucking old is for the exact reason you’d expect: voter participation of those 65+ is about 3x of those 18-29.
But think about what you said. They pursue the voters that vote for them. When most of your voters are older then yeah, you cater to them. But I also think you grossly underestimate how much they DO actually do for younger voters.
Because there’s now no viable option for president that will be held accountable for anything by their own party.
Sometimes it may seem this way but it really isn’t. We get some of what we want. The equation is simple: Get some of what you want under a dem administration or most of what you don’t want under a republican administration.
Our system is such that nobody gets 100% of what they want 100% of the time. So what you aim for is to get a party in with a platform that at least allows some of what you want to happen. By throwing up your hands and saying “well the dems are just as bad” and thus not voting you are essentially making it impossible for any of what you want to happen. If Trump wins you can kiss a supreme court majority goodbye. If Trump wins you can look forward to gutting any effort to promote renewables and hold the oil industry accountable. You can look forward to no woman being safe with her medical choices. The list here is enormous.
Meanwhile Biden has accomplished a lot. I don’t like many of his policies, but I’m not blind to the good his administration has done. I think you are, so let me remind you of just a few:
OTC birth control pills & EOs on reproductive rights
Huge gains in renewable power
Loosening cannabis restrictions
Student loan forgiveness
Big support for domestic semiconductor production
Boosting cancer research
Huge support for unions and unionization (this is a really big deal!)
Take any one of these things and imagine the opposite. That’s what will happen under any republican administration.
You may not like Biden and I totally get that, but NEVER EVER think your vote doesn’t matter just because you don’t get exactly what you want. We got a decent amount and we CAN get more. Get Biden elected and then (a) be politically active for local and state elections; (b) protest: it works.
If that was true, after Obama flipped a bunch of red states, the party would have moved to younger more progressive candidates.
Huh? That completely doesn’t follow.
Maybe I wasn’t clear. Let me try again: When you know that only a tiny fraction of 18-30 year olds are going to even vote, you don’t bother putting forth policies that appeal to them. Instead, you put forth policies that appeal to the largest percentage of voters you can hope to get. So Obama and Hillary both balanced a more progressive agenda against the need to attract voters. They knew for example, that universal healthcare was popular among younger voters but not popular with boomers and even a large chunk of Gen X. So which did you think they went with?
It’s not rocket surgery, it’s basic math.
Meanwhile the DNC has consistently made changes that limit the chances of a popular candidate
This is true. But are you gonnna just throw up your hands or are you going to do something about it? Do you think not voting or not voting for Biden will make it more or less likely you will get a Dem candidate that appeals to you down the road? There’s a decent possibility you will get NO Dem candidate at all.
I have to be honest. I think you are ignoring the power you have. That WE have. It was absolutely not Bernie that helped Biden do anything. It was Biden recognizing that folks like us want a more progressive agenda and using Bernie to help make the case that he was in fact leaning in that direction. He has to acknowledge some of the progressive agenda to win younger votes but at the same time he has to appeal to the far larger chunk of folks who will, you know, actually vote.
I also think you are expressing a point of view that is rather troubling to me. That you think you will get everything you want instantly out of our political system. Change is incremental and slow. It is built one piece at a time on a foundation of Democratic party wins that allow us to appoint judges and enact legislation that maybe doesn’t get where we want to go in the first pass, but allows it to happen the next time. Younger folks have trouble conceptualizing this, and it’s understandable - your time scale is smaller.
So if you want to see change you need to: 1. Vote EVERY TIME; 2. Protest and push for progressive policies; 3. Support younger candidates; 4. Acknowledge this is a long game.
I gotta admit you come across as rather entitled or at least rather immature. You are demanding the system cater exactly to your specific needs and refuse to participate if it doesn’t.
I wasn’t trying to make it personal, but I do find the kind of attitude you display to be somewhat entitled. And it also displays an admirably idealistic but not very realistic view of the political system that we are stuck with.
The big ask right now is he stops funding a genocide and encouraging police actions against peaceful protestors
You are not going to get that. As far as I am concerned the entire system is corrupt. The military industrial complex is far far too powerful, as are the neocon capitalist forces that essentially call the shots. Guess what? That doesn’t get changed by sitting out an election. It doesn’t get changed except over the very very long haul. If this were a Romney or somebody we’re facing I might be more inclined to say heck ya, let’s blow up the election… but the consequences of a Trump administration are incredibly dire. We don’t have a choice.
Why pick the unpopular one?
Unpopular with you. Popular with a lot of people. It comes down to who can win the election and since Biden is the only candidate that has won against Trump, that’s a good start. You may like to assume that the Dem party just runs with whomever is up next, but while there may be a kernel of truth to that (witness Hillary vs Bernie) it’s not how they’ve won elections (witness Obama).
Shouldn’t Dem primary voters vote for the candidate that will get the most votes in the general?
That’s exactly what they are getting. And provably so. If the 18-39 demographic actually turned out to vote in the numbers that the 65+ group did, you can bet we’d be looking at a different candidate. But that’s not what has happened, due in no small part to folks such as yourself holding out for the whatever your conception of a preferred candidate is.
Look, I completely agree with you about the candidates on offer. They suck. But if you withhold your vote you are not going to get better candidates… you will get worse because the Dems know you aren’t going to vote so they may as well appeal to a demographic that will.
That’s why you should vote blue no matter who, but support progressive candidates and protest policies you oppose.
You’re still trying to have this conversation about me
I’m sorry if you feel this is aimed at you and is personal. It’s not, but we are debating and you are in a sense representing that demographic.
Specifically you display some traits of a demographic that has not yet learned that you at once have enormous power collectively and very little power individually.
For example you display the tendency of that demographic to think that the entire political system should revolve around them and their particular desires. That somehow our political system is zero sum and that everyone believes or should believe exactly as you do and that if you don’t get 100% of what you want you have failed. You haven’t failed at all! You got some of what you want and others got some of what they want. That’s the success of democracy. And, crucially, that’s your power.
So when you say, to paraphrase, “if only they just had candidates that are popular” you are really saying “candidates my demographic likes”. I’m sorry, that’s not how it works for the simple reason that there are other demographics and other cultural and political beliefs. AND… they vote more.
I think we should end it there although you are welcome to have the last word. But I want to say one last thing: We have made enormous progress and having lived that is a key difference between someone younger and someone older like myself. When I was in my teens I was assaulted and beaten for being queer. Another time I escaped being raped and probably murdered only by sheer luck. For the longest time I couldn’t legally marry. All because of who I am. Now, as a queer and transgender person, I can literally go to at least a few work places and have them respect my pronouns and gender identity. I don’t often fear for my personal safety. I even have our president publicly acknowledging this fact and speaking in support of who I am. And I’m happily married.
This is not everything and there is a lot of work left to do. But HOLY FUCK that is enormous progress in just a few decades.
It’s possible to be right about something (your take on the US complicity in Israel’s genocide") but also be completely wrong about how to stop it and the consequences of your response.
Because if you want the killing to stop sitting out an election or refusing to vote for Biden is not going to work out for you. You will be complicit in the killing of women, transgender people, brown people and more. Because - and I really don’t think I’m being hyperbolic here - those are the consequences of a Trump administration.
Far far worse is the simple fact that our chances of stopping Israel’s genocide go to zero under Trump. You think a Republican administration will stop it if you protest? At least with Biden you know it works and you know you can make a dent.
Why are you lecturing me about this? Stop wasting your breath on me.
You have a peculiar conception of “lecturing”.
But do you want me to stop saying these things because you are immune to reason? You cannot possibly change your mind, no matter the argument or facts presented? No matter that Biden is himself simply does not have the power to unilaterally stop Israel’s actions?
I do have one simple question for you: What about the genocide that will happen under Trump? Do you prefer that? Do you prefer the murder of women, transgender people, gays and brown people over Palestinians?
Because the choice is incredibly binary: Less killing under Biden or more killing under Trump.
At this point you are just making shit up to justify your nonsensical position.
We can’t eliminate the US military industrial complex. We can limit the harm by putting pressure on an administration - and, crucially it is working to some degree. Do you honestly think you are going to be able to affect any change whatsoever if Trump gets elected? REALLY?
Cool so what me and other people who have had enough genocide and think similarly are going to do is loudly tell Biden (which we are doing) that we want to vote for him, but we can’t unless he stops the genocide of Palestinians
That’s a fair point and I don’t have a great counter to that not least because that pressure is working. In fact my only argument is a bit of a future hypothetical – that there are two consequences of this, namely: (a) it’s causing a lot of younger voters to not want to vote; (b) it’s causing a lot of problems for Biden with some voting blocs because he is not toeing the Zionist ‘party line’. IOW, it could endanger his election prospects.
And that comes down to a difference of opinion: Your red line is Israeli genocide, mine is a Trump administration and all that comes with it. For me anything that makes a Trump administration more likely makes more genocide more likely and about a dozen other things that are going to set us back decades, including more federal and possibly SCOTUS judges and, crucially, more baked-in support for Israel and Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
I appreciate that for you this may be a chance you are willing to take. I have trouble understanding why anyone would feel that way given the systemic issues of undermining US support for Israel that mean we cannot “stop the genocide” anyway. But thank you for having this dialog.
the prototype will have been demonstrated to be successful to the ruling class and that future should scare the shit out of you
This prototype was proven “successful” time and again. This country was founded on genocide and authoritarian, racist control. I don’t fear that it will become that because it has been that and in so many ways is that still. As I see it Democrats may be participants and supporters of that but it’s given the options, there’s no question it’s the better of the two in that it allows some progress. Republicans want full-on fascism because they simply don’t believe in democracy or the compromise necessary to support democratic principles or any kind of shit toward a progressive or socialist future. And I’ll take the thin veneer of that over nothing at all.
I get that you are willing to let it all crumble. I felt that way in 2016 and you know what? It was so much worse than I imagined it could be because I had way too much faith in our “institutions” and the strength of our laws. I despise HRC for her right-wing neocon ways but I think often of how much better things would be if she had been able to take the office that she won.
Shame on us for being afraid to defend our value
It’s not a question of are we defending our values, it’s a question of how. I believe that both participation within our system and active protest against it are critical. If we don’t have the former we don’t have a foundation for the latter. If we break things so much that a Republican administration gets into office, we are taking so many steps backward we may never move forward again in our lifetimes.
Now is the time to wield our power, now is the time to shut this shit down.
I admire the sentiment and support you in that. Our conversation has softened my view and given me insight into the necessity of standing firmly on principle, even in this instance. I don’t fully agree with it but I can definitely respect it.
‘A catastrophe’: Greenpeace blocks planting of ‘lifesaving’ Golden Rice (www.theguardian.com)
Thousands of children could die after court backs campaign group over GM crop in Philippines, scientists warn...
Sticky trick: new glue spray kills plant pests without chemicals (www.theguardian.com)
The insect glue, produced from edible oils, was inspired by plants such as sundews that use the strategy to capture their prey. A key advantage of physical pesticides over toxic pesticides is that pests are highly unlikely to evolve resistance, as this would require them to develop much larger and stronger bodies, while bigger...
US State Dept issues worldwide alert amid threat of violence against LGBTQ+ community (www.reuters.com)
Trump Leads in 5 Key States, as Young and Nonwhite Voters Express Discontent With Biden (www.nytimes.com)
Senator Katie Britt is back at it, pushing a bill to launch a pregnancy tracking federal database (www.salon.com)
Conservative Plan Calls for Dozens of Executions if Trump Wins (www.thedailybeast.com)
A conservative plan for Donald Trump’s potential transition into the presidency calls for dozens of prisoners to be executed, according to HuffPost. An 887-page plan by Project 2025, led by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, says that if elected, Trump should make a concerted effort to execute the remaining 40...
Biden Says Trump Will Not Accept 2024 Result: ‘I Promise You He Won’t’ (www.huffpost.com)
“The guy is not a democrat with a small d,” the president told CNN’s Erin Burnett....
Biden says US won't supply weapons for Israel to attack Rafah, in warning to ally (apnews.com)