Um superweeds.  The only case that come anywhere close is the RR hogweed in the US and there is a good reason why with too many farmers using only Roundup as weed control.  Resistance in weeds is a universal problem and GM crops are not immune to it.  Proper farm management would take care of this problem.  Rotation between different weed management systems. 

I challenge you to put forward a single case of harm to health from a GM crop anywhere in the world.  Pure myth.

Have a look at my website for those who want to be able to separate the science of GM crops and food from the psuedo-science that is so po[pular on the web.

Cheers

http://web.viu.ca/wager

Fighting GM should not follow the paradigm of breaking of machines in the industrial evolution. I am not knowledgeable about GM, but either one can vigorously show the problems it causes and hopefully the reasons for the problems or one may demand a more thorough research into side effects of GM. Badmouthing, whether justified or not, should be eliminated as a tool.

Evolution cannot be stopped; GM seems like the future unless an alternative culture of seeds is recommended and it is shown to achieve what GM advertises.

When it comes to GMO, the precautionary principle should apply. We do not need any technology that puts farmers into debt, makes seeds (the foundation of life!) the intellectual property of a few multinational corporations, is reliant on fossil fuels at any step of the process, and has a dubious and wholly inconclusive safety record.

To date, GMO has no better yields than conventional crops, has put lots of third world farmers into debt, has actually increased pesticide usage (Round up, specifically) which has fostered the development of superweeds, has helped prop up unsustainable "get big or get out" land aggregation and industrial farms, has contaminated organically-grown crops leading to loss of livelihood for many farmers.

Study after study by reputable institutions and universities shows that we can farm sustainably for a growing future population without GMOs, pesticides or synthetic fertilizers if we use agroecological technologies and best practices, and reform land-use and farm policies worldwide.

Hunger is not a production problem, it is a land use and distribution problem. We already produce twice what the world needs to eat, but we waste much of it, trade it as commodities to make biofuels (yikes!) and junk food, and yet millions go hungry-- even in the U.S.

The PP, if applied to itself would demand the PP be scrapped.  But of course by avoiding the damage , misery, starvation, and death that occur because people follow the PP, it sounds like a good idea.  Here is a simple example golden rice has been held up in regulatory limbo.  The result 500,000 dead children per year.  Now considering the regulatory road blocks (all in the name of the PP) have added eight to ten years on to the date it can BE GIVEN AWAY FOR FREE to those who suffer from vitamin A defficiency, that adds up to a few Million dead kids when GRII could have prevented the deaths. 

No better yields you say.  I guess those poor dumb farmers in India , China, Brazil, Philippines totalling 10-11 milion who continually increase thier acreage of GM crops each year need to hear from you on the yield drag of GM crops.

Glyphosate replace atrazine, care to compare the two.

Superweeds, um where?  Aside from hogweed being resistant and that is a result of farmers relying on a single weed reduction method to the exclusion of all others, a bad practice. 

The organic loss claim again.  Please once again name a single organic farm that has lost certifcation from adventitious presence of GM crops.  Now GM crops have been around for 12-13 years and organic crops have also increased in acreage in that time so if what you say is true there must be all number of organic farmers who have lost their certification from GM crops.  Name one.  BTW the IFOAM does not have any threshold for GM content and does not advocate testing for GM content at all.

I am sick of hearing hunger is not a production problem.  When a third of the food rots because of pests that is a production problem.  It is very difficult to understand how anyone can be against giving farmers to tools to feed themselves.  GM crops with insect resistance, viral resistance and soon drought tolerance will do just that.

As for your anti corporation, it the cost of the regulations that are never enough for the anti-crowd that keep public funnded research of GM crops in the lab and away from the public.

On the yield issue perhaps you might like to explore the huge loss of maize in europe this year from rootworm.  Now there is a proven effective GM maize that could help those farmers but alas the EU has a defacto moratorium on GM crops, pity.

Maybe you would be interested in the University of Italy research with Bt corn vs conventional corn.  Seems the Bt  corn had 120-140 percent better yields with isogenic non Bt corn under identical conditions and even more important for all pregnant women, had 100 times less fumonisin B1 toxin (blocks folic acid metabolism).  Hmmm

Robert, here we are again. You staunchly pro-GMO, me staunchly against. Shall we go through lists of studies again? I have even more now. It seems recent research is coming down against GMOs more and more, and coming out in favor of agroecological technologies, one of which is organic farming.

Addressing several of your points in one post here:

You cannot solve the problems of monoculture (pests, disease, soil erosion, etc.) with any human-made technology. You can only solve it by getting away from monoculture (duh!)--which means a movement toward enhancing polycultural biodiversity on a nation scale, farm scale and seed scale. We seem to have forgotten the lesson about monocultures from the Irish potato famine, as we repeat it with soybeans and corn.

GMO represents a loss of diversity, particularly when the main companies producing them hold a monopoly on all seeds, and often patent them, requiring licenses, fees, and other ridiculous agreements that protect their economic stranglehold the world's food supply. No one should "own" seeds: it's inherently unsustainable.

GM rice has not been shown to have enough Vitamin A to make a substantial difference to human health. And there are many other, cheaper, self-reliant, healthier ways to improve the nutrition of a population--starting with increasing the biodiversity on smallholder farms, and giving more people the power to farm in ways that don't cost them a ton of money by repurchasing seeds year after year.

Bt cotton has proved a dismal failure in many parts of India. Furthermore, BT GMO has been shown to significantly increase the rate at which pests become resistant to BT, just as prophylactic use of antibiotics has created antibiotic resistant germs in CAFO livestock operations. Furthermore BT cotton has been shown to require MORE water than conventional varieties. India is running out of water.

While some GM yields may be higher in 3rd world countries, the yields from organic and agroecological practices are consistently higher everywhere they are used. Meanwhile, in the developed worlds, GM has reduced yields, and by year 3, organic surpasses conventional and GMO for most crops, especially during drought.

International trade regulations combined with aggressive marketing by the U.S. and IMF are what are driving the adoption of GMO. Few countries have a choice if they want to trade with the U.S. or receive IMF funds. Meanwhile, smallholders worldwide are protesting in the streets.

It is only in the developed world where highly industrial farming practices are driven by chemicals and machines that GMOs make "sense." Organic farmers and permaculture farmers have no need for these crops, and their yields consistently outperform conventional and GMO most of the time, with the added benefit of no needed chemicals or seed licenses, plus carbon sequestration, healthy soil, better nutrition and more...

I never said anyone lost their organic certification, but tons of organic and nonGMO farmers have lost livelihood due to lawsuits by Monsanto or to loss of market because of pollen contamination. As long as farmers can be held liable for "stealing" the technology through pollen drift which is no fault of their own, we have a MAJOR injustice.

The food waste I'm talking about is not the loss in the field, it's the loss after harvest. The megatons of food we throw out alone could feed the world. But the distribution problem I'm talking about is based in national policies worldwide that favor corporate biotech and agribiz over smallholders and local self-reliance, that favor fence to fence production of cheap, inedible commodity crops like BT corn (which is only fit for making corn syrup and ethanol), policies that over the course of the last 50 years have driven millions of farmers worldwide into debt and millions more off the land against their will and into city slums.

Heck, without subsidies, U.S. corn farmers couldn't afford to grow the stuff because they are paid significantly less than it costs to produce. This is U.S. policy by design to favor Cargill, et. al. But this happens worldwide.

And if that weren't enough, we use up and pollute the soil and water of other countries for trade in commodities too. People all over the world go without indoor plumbing and adequate nutrition so Americans can have meat, ethanol, coffee, chocolate and bananas. These are the distribution problems, not production. GMO is part of this problem.

We currently produce twice the calories (3900 per capita) that the world needs. If we changed what we grew, used the best agro-ecological methods to grow it, and localized our food system, we could conceivably double our population without needing any additional land to feed us all, according to David Pimentel, reknowned Cornell agricultural scientist.

The answer to food security lies with small-scale, ecologically rational, sustainable agriculture that focuses on local food systems.

It is clear you and I will never agree as with this latest list there are major errors.  if people are so against GMO's then why is Indian cotton nearly 80% Bt in six years.  Why has India become the worlds number one cotton producer without using more land?

GRII is to be given away and will not need to be purchased each year.  It has approximately 30-50% of the RDA so easily effective against the ravages of VAD. 

China is a year or so away from commercializing GM corn and rice.  That country alone has over one thousand field tested M events ready to go.  Monopolies come and go and public sponsored research in GMO's is happening in over 70 countries.

No matter how many times you claim it organic food can not feed the world.  To quote Dr. Borlaug who won the Nobel Prize for agriculture, It can only feed four billion, I don't see two billion volunteers to dissappear.  It yields about 70% of conventional ag, period.

Organic does have a place in global ag but it most certainly is not the besanswer to the 7-9 billion people to come.

Ah yes if we would just change the world economics, land title, power structure, build roads everywhere, build refrigeration plants to store the food and prevent rot, make clear water available everywhere etc.  All nice ideas but Don't hold your breath.  The world will change but not by going back one hundred years in agriculture.  That is a recipe for social disaster and political upheaval unseen in the history of man.

May I ask you your opinion of the activists who ripped up GM potato trial plots in the UK.  the GM potatoes had , gasp, potatoe genes for blight resistance from wild potatoes engineered into them.  Please explain this if you can.

Norman Borlaug unknowingly contributed to the global warming, water shortages and fossil fuel dependence problems we currently face with his extremely needy hybrid seeds. The Green Revolution did not solve hunger, and while it did feed many, it also drove millions of peasants into debt, off the land and into slums. He is no saint, and no perfect genius.

Many, many experts, know that organic can feed the world in combination with agroecological best practices. The Rodale Institute has just come out with new evidence this month in fact. We can roll out the studies again, but even the IAASTD, a body of several hundred scientists worldwide feels agroecologically managed small holdings is the key to future food security.

If GMO proponents could assure 100% that they would cause no problem to human, plant or animal health (they can't), that it wouldn't disrupt natural systems and geneology of wild plants (they can't), that it wouldn't contribute to the development of resistant weeds or pests (they do), that dangerous random mutations resulting from the GMO process would never happen (they do), that they actually produce greater yields than even the best conventional systems in the developed world (they don't), and that they would be free for farmers to save and replant season after season forever (they aren't), then people might be more accepting of GMO.

Until then, sorry. Precautionary principle should apply. Local self-reliance, agroecology, and subsistence farmers trump biotech patents and dubious technology for sustainability every time.

Once again the IAASTD failed because the outcome was predetermined by the organizers.  see Why the IAASTD Failed on google.  I know first hand the few scientists who tried to argue in favour of GMO's were forced out of the executive summary.  Say have you read the entire document.  Interesting read and not close to the executive summary report.

"If GMO proponents could assure 100%..."  Stop right there.  There is no such thing as risk free anything and demanding it is why the world will not take your 'ban GMO's position' seriously.

I have said many times EVERY single scientific organization that has looked at the safety of GM crops and food have ALL come to the SAME safe conclusion.  Believe whatever you like but that will not make it fact.

Funny how we differ. I am fine with organic use where it is the best answer but the organic activists are all about banning what they don't like. Hmmm

Actually, some things are 100% safe: open-pollinated seeds, for example. I can say with 100% certainty that their usage will not cause harm to humans, wildlife, other plants, or ecosystems. I can say with certainty that they will not cost subsistence farmers a dime and can actually encourage local self-reliance and cultivation of biodiversity and regional adaptation. I can say with absolute sureness that their use will not encourage the development of resistant weeds and pests. Shall I go on?

I'm sorry, if every single scientific organization that has looked at the safety of GM crops has come to the same safe conclusion, then why are there SO MANY scientists and scientific organizations that urge caution and further study? Why have so many scientist worldwide shown that GMO just doesn't meet promised expectations to make it worth the risk? Your assertion is patently false. The people against GMO are not baseless Luddites with zero scientific evidence, though you seem to think we are.

And I have not advocated banning. Only a moratorium until unbiased, publicly-funded entities can adequately study them from all angles over the long term, without facing immediate reprisal (or even threats and loss of work) for finding answers the biotech industry doesn't like. Why is this such a problem for you?

Yes, we differ, but allowing GMO vs allowing organic is not a 1 for 1 comparison, Robert. If GMOs were proven as safe and effective as open pollinated seeds or even hybrids, it might be. But if organic was as risky to the ecosystem and as expensive to subsistence farmers as GMO is, you might feel as I do. Hmmm.

A better comparison would be between wind energy and nuclear energy. One is quick to build and affordable from cradle to grave, the other is extremely expensive and time consuming to build. One has no pollution and virtually no risk to life, the other requires a highly toxic material to produce and creates an even more toxic waste product that we don't know how to properly dispose of. Nuclear is also vulnerable to natural disaster and terrorism in a way wind power is not. Wind turbines can be built by anyone from basic materials, nuclear obviously cannot. Wind power is decentralized and has redundancy, making it more sustainable and communities more energy self-reliant; nuclear is centralized, making it and us significantly more vulnerable.

Consequently, I am staunchly against nuclear energy, just as I am GMO, for analogous reasons.

Better not ask a bat or a bird what they think about wind farms, you won't like their answer.  Do you know what solanine is and why plant breeder have had to do their magic to remove it from a "safe open pollinating plant"?  There is nothing natural about agriculture, it is a man made activity.  There are risks to people, plants and critters from all forms or agriculture as we grow plants that we have changed the DNA to suit our needs not those of nature. 

Would you like the reference of the UN-OECD Concensus document on the safety of plants expressing the Bt proteins?  The statement by the IUSO (National Academies from around the world are members of this organization)that there is no evidence of harm from any gm crop.  I could supply you with many more but the point has been made.  Every scientific organization that has studied the safety of GM crops and food have ALL come to the same safe conclusion.  There is no such thing as risk free anything but to quote the European Commission which studied this very question for 15 years, "food from GM crops are as safe or safer than food from conventionally bred plants"

You do understand hybrids must be purchased each and every year don't you?  Sounds exactly like that of GM seeds.  In both cases the farmer knows going in that he/she will have to purchase new seed each year yet strangely they have loved both types of seeds the world over.

I do agree with you on one point it is not an either/or alternative, both will be needed in the futrure.

"The people against GMO are not baseless Luddites with zero scientific evidence, though you seem to think we are."

Not even close.  However the scientific evidence of direct comparisions between gm crops and their isogenic non GM parental crops is very favourable to the GM crops.  When improper or false comparisons are put forward as evidence I will challenge them each and every time.  Please have a lok at my website to read the opinions of world experts if you doubt this.

http://web.viu.ca/wager

cheers

Sigh. Please don't treat me like I'm ignorant. I have been working in sustainable agriculture and organic farming in various ways for most of my professional life.

Slowing down the speed by changing the gear ratio in wind turnbines protects the birds and bats from harm--an easy fix that doesn't disprove my point. However, a nuclear accident would devastate all life for possibly hundreds of miles for milennia.

I am very familiar with solanine, which is why I'm grateful my Peruvian ancestors did their homework in selecting and breeding thousands of potato varieties, so I don't have to take the risk. Again, my point still stands. Open pollinated seeds pose no threat to humanity today.

Of course hybrids much be repurchased every year; I was not advocating their use--only indicating that their safety has been proven over many decades of human usage.

I actually think many hybrids are environmentally  greedy plants that the developing world cannot afford and that take the power away from the farmer to select for traits than benefit their microclimate and bioregion. There is a reason Peruvians have so many potato varieties.

Hybrids are losing favor, even among those who can afford them, simply because many of them require a lot of synthetic fertilizer and water. In a peak-oil, peak-phosphorus, peak-water, global warming world, we can no longer afford such seeds. There has been a resurgence of interest in open-pollinated, heirloom or traditional plant varieties for this reason.

Hybrid usage during the green revolution is what led to massive debt and displacement for farmers in places like India. In fact, hybrids were introduced to Indian subsistence farmers in a bait and switch so despicable it makes me shake.

Agribiz seed corps gave the "new miracle seeds" away for free for the first three years, then, once saved stores of open-pollinated varieties were no longer viable, they started charging the farmers. Millions were bankrupted, thousands committed suicide. Land was aggregated in large part by multinational debt peonage farming operations and corrupt local governments, which laid the groundwork for the introduction of GMOs today. Subsistence farmers and people who care about them make up a large percentage of those who protest GMOs for this reason. They know their history.

I trust biotech and agribiz companies (especially ones that have a long track record of environmental devastation, monopoly, strong-arming, falsification, and lying, like Monsanto) about as far as I can spit. (See The World According to Monsanto)

It is no surprise that the crops they keep rolling out all require licenses and the use of other proprietary chemicals to work. It's about profit not people or planet. Food--as a fundamental human need like air and water--should be about people and planet, not profit.

Monocultural industrial farmings' days are numbered: we can't afford the greenhouse gas emissions (30% of all GHG emissions worldwide from this system of farming), we can't afford the oil, the water, the pollution, the erosion, the machinery, the trade in inedible commodities and biofuels, etc. it uses. We have been living on a system that takes more out in resources than it gives back to us in food. Inherently unsustainable and we are paying the price in human and planetary health.

But in a localized, polycultural, smallholder system using the best agroecological science we have, we don't see any of these problems, and gain several environmental and health benefits, including better human nutrition, better resilience and resistance to drought, pests and disease, higher yields when looking at total food output, carbon sequestration, tilth building, and restoration of even desertified, salinated lands. And all of this is available today and doesn't cost the farmer a dime. There is simply no need or room for GMOs in this paradigm.

More info:

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2191

http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2504

To quote Verlyn Klinkenborg who expresses my opposition to GMO far more eloquently than I can:

For the past dozen years, I’ve been writing editorials opposing the introduction of genetically modified crops. When I began, genetically modified corn and soybeans were still just getting a foothold in American fields. Now, of course, hundreds of millions of acres here and abroad have been planted to these new varieties, which are usually engineered to withstand the application of pesticides — pesticides usually made by the same companies that engineer the seeds. Even wheat and rice producers, latecomers to the genetically modified table, are feeling the pressure to convert.

There has been a frenzy in the grain markets in the past couple of years — a new volatility in futures and in prices on the ground — that seems to favor genetically modified crops. It makes sense. The cost of conventionally-grown grain goes up and up because there is less and less of it. This leaves the world open to the nearly unchecked proliferation of genetically modified varieties.

After a dozen years, I still oppose genetically modified crops. This may sound like sheer truculence on my part — a Luddite reluctance to accept the future. It is certainly dispiriting. Like many people, I feel, as I did a decade ago, that genetically modified crops were introduced with bland assurances of safety based on studies from small test plots, a far different thing from the uncontrolled global experiment we now find ourselves in the midst of.

Scientists are still discovering the extent to which genetic fragments from these new crops can drift into other organisms. There is no evidence yet of catastrophic drift, where a genetic shard from a new crop cripples other organisms. But there is plenty of evidence to show that genetically modified fragments are turning up in places they’re not wanted. The worry is not just how widespread the altered versions of familiar crops, like corn and soybeans, are becoming. It’s also that many more conventional crops are being modified and that many more landscapes and ecosystems, yet untouched, will be planted with genetically modified varieties.

These crops close the circle on the farmer’s knowledge, finally eliminating, after 10,000 years, the farmer’s role in the genetics of agriculture. Genetically modified crops are rigorously licensed forms of intellectual property. Every seed is a binding contract with stiff penalties attached. This represents the final transfer of the collective farming wisdom of the human race into corporate hands. Only the minutest fraction of the DNA in a genetically modified crop has been modified. The rest is the result of the infinite elaboration of working farmers choosing their own seeds, season after season, over all those thousands of years.

But the trouble with genetically modified crops isn’t merely the fact that they’re genetically modified. It’s that they embody so completely the troubling logic of modern agriculture. They demonstrate the tendency of commercial seeds to drive out traditional, locally adapted varieties, a pattern that has been intensifying since the introduction of hybrid corn in the 1930s. They exemplify the consistent bias toward expensive high-tech solutions, when, in much of the world, simple low-tech solutions still make much better, and much more affordable sense. They foster the spread of commodity crops, grown for cash, in place of subsistence crops.

Genetically modified crops create the illusion of more and better choices when, in fact, they represent a narrowing of genetic ownership and a model of genetic diversity that is unattainable outside the laboratory. Because of that, they may well turn out to decrease food security, especially as new non-food varieties — crops genetically modified to produce pharmaceuticals, for instance — go into production. The risk is enhanced by the licensing restrictions on genetically modified seeds that prevent independent research on their environmental impact.

In effect, the GM seed industry is able to stifle research, even by agricultural scientists who are sympathetic to the technology. [HELLO!]

Above all, genetically modified crops give the illusion of revolutionizing farming without actually changing much of anything. Farmers who plant them do spend less time — and less fuel — in the field, which is a good thing. But trying to pack a revolution into a seed won’t do when the entire system needs revolutionizing. Industrial agriculture is antithetical to diversity of every kind — biological, social, cultural, political. To understand its real effects on diversity you have only to look at Brazilian soybeans, a commodity crop, growing where there was once Amazonian forest.

There is no disputing the enormous productivity of industrial agriculture, as long as you measure productivity solely in terms of the relationship between yield and labor and pay no attention to the health of the land or the well being of the people who live there. But in pursuing the unrelenting logic of an industrial version of agriculture we have left a world of alternatives unexplored.

The human species is still running ahead of the Malthusian prediction that we will outgrow our ability to feed ourselves. But this is a deeply troubling time for agriculture, as even a quick scan of the headlines reveals. Soaring food prices in the poorest parts of the world, soaring profits in the richest, ongoing — and wholly unnecessary — subsidies, growing competition between food and non-food crops, the list goes on and on.

To Americans, the continued resistance to genetically modified crops in other parts of the world may look Quixotic, a refusal to accept a done deal. But it is more than resistance to a type of seed. It is also resistance to a model of agriculture whose failings are all too plain.

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2191

I have a question for you Dawn.  Why is it that you appear to think one size fits all wrt agbiotech or organic ag.  There are millions of different local situations which each has a unique "best solution"  Sometimes it will be a biotech variety, sometimes organic  and sometimes both or neither.  Many biotech crops are not for the developing world but for highly mechanized large scale ag.  Some like Bt crops or PRSP papayas are ideal for local subsistance farmers in the developing world.  The world is shades of grey.

I've already answered this question a few times, Robert.

And it's not one size fits all. "Organic", "permaculture" and "agroecological" farming practices are simply umbrella terms for a HUGE variety of modern and traditional practices that can be applied in a wide spectrum of land, soil and social conditions.

Organic farming is NOT planting a seed, adding some manure and water, pulling some weeds and praying for good harvest. It is actually one subset of a very intricate and highly developed set of low-, no- or positive-impact farming technologies.

Here (again) is why I support many shades of gray in farming, with the notable exception of GMOs:

Scientists are still discovering the extent to which genetic fragments from these new crops can drift into other organisms. There is no evidence yet of catastrophic drift, where a genetic shard from a new crop cripples other organisms. But there is plenty of evidence to show that genetically modified fragments are turning up in places they’re not wanted. The worry is not just how widespread the altered versions of familiar crops, like corn and soybeans, are becoming. It’s also that many more conventional crops are being modified and that many more landscapes and ecosystems, yet untouched, will be planted with genetically modified varieties.

These crops close the circle on the farmer’s knowledge, finally eliminating, after 10,000 years, the farmer’s role in the genetics of agriculture. Genetically modified crops are rigorously licensed forms of intellectual property. Every seed is a binding contract with stiff penalties attached. This represents the final transfer of the collective farming wisdom of the human race into corporate hands. Only the minutest fraction of the DNA in a genetically modified crop has been modified. The rest is the result of the infinite elaboration of working farmers choosing their own seeds, season after season, over all those thousands of years.

But the trouble with genetically modified crops isn’t merely the fact that they’re genetically modified. It’s that they embody so completely the troubling logic of modern agriculture. They demonstrate the tendency of commercial seeds to drive out traditional, locally adapted varieties, a pattern that has been intensifying since the introduction of hybrid corn in the 1930s. They exemplify the consistent bias toward expensive high-tech solutions, when, in much of the world, simple low-tech solutions still make much better, and much more affordable sense. They foster the spread of commodity crops, grown for cash, in place of subsistence crops.

Genetically modified crops create the illusion of more and better choices when, in fact, they represent a narrowing of genetic ownership and a model of genetic diversity that is unattainable outside the laboratory. Because of that, they may well turn out to decrease food security, especially as new non-food varieties — crops genetically modified to produce pharmaceuticals, for instance — go into production. The risk is enhanced by the licensing restrictions on genetically modified seeds that prevent independent research on their environmental impact.

In effect, the GM seed industry is able to stifle research, even by agricultural scientists who are sympathetic to the technology.

Even if GMOs were 99.9% safe (and they aren't even close), there are still major problems with them, as I indicated in bold text above.

Is it your opinion a few hundred GM crops will eliminate a hundred thousand conventionally bred crops.  How? Even if there is gene flow from a GM crop to another crop without selective pressure to maintain that gene in the other crop it will be lost rather quickly.  That is how nature works, use it or lose it.

Horizontal gene flow has been happening since there were genes, nothing new here.

Some are licensed some are free, public funded crops.  As long as the regulations (unscientific) are maintained at rediculous levels and inversely related to the actual risk then the huge costs of GM crop commercialization will severely hamper public funded GM crops.

Fortunately there are still active public funed research going on in over 70 countries.  The tide of public vs private is turning.

How is technology in a seed (say Bt or GRII) given away expensive?

Ah the latest supposed threat from the corporations.  The reality is there is a great deal of independant third party research on GM crops.  May I suggest you go to my website and look at the references for the ESFA GM Feeding Report.  Say when Greenpeace sponsored their pseudo-research did they ask for permission?  Now of course the research was very poor research and no conclusions could be drawn from it but still they did not ask for permission to carry it out.  When the University in Italy did the Bt maize experiments I told you about (Bt maize gave 120-140 percent better yields and over 100 times less fumonisin B1 than isogenic lines), do you think they asked permission first?

When the concensus document from the UN-OECD reports there has never been any evidence of harm to any mammal from a Bt proteins, do you think they just geuss at that conclusion?

Truth is there is a very large body of data on the safety of GM crops.  This claim of no independant research is the latest attempt to disregard a huge body of evidence of safety of GM crops. 

And finally, as of today there has not been a single case of harm from consuming GM crops documented anywhere in the world (over two trillion meals).   Perhaps if you look at it this way it might help.  Lets say for the sake of argument there was a one in a million chance of harm from eating food from a GM crop.  Then that would mean there would be over two million cases of harm todate.  Yet there is not a single case every recorded. That is pretty darn good track record, wouldn't you say?

You've missed the point of almost everything I said!

Aside from the abysmal failures of BT cotton in India and BT corn in South Africa, not to mention the many studies that show GM crops have, on average, absolutely no better yield than conventional, and often have lower yields,

and aside from the studies that show reason for concern and need for more study about ingesting GMOs, let me distill my points again...

- genetically modified fragments are turning up in places they’re not wanted. There are costs for this contamination.

- These crops close the circle on the farmer’s knowledge, finally eliminating, after 10,000 years, the farmer’s role in the genetics of agriculture. This represents the final transfer of the collective farming wisdom of the human race into corporate or institutional hands.

- They demonstrate the tendency of commercial seeds to drive out traditional, locally adapted varieties, a pattern that has been intensifying since the introduction of hybrid corn in the 1930s. For example, over 85% of all corn and soy grown in the U.S. is GMO now. GMO corn is both displacing and contaminating nonGMO corn varieties at an alarming rate. Have we learned nothing from the potato famine?

- They exemplify the consistent bias toward expensive high-tech solutions, when, in much of the world, simple low-tech solutions still make much better, and much more affordable sense. Expensive means it costs someone a lot of money. Low-tech means you can do it yourself in your own home with minimal resources, like propagating open-pollinated seeds. 

- Genetically modified crops create the illusion of more and better choices when, in fact, they represent a narrowing of genetic ownership and a model of genetic diversity that is unattainable outside the laboratory. No one should own or profit from DNA, genes or seeds. They are as fundamental to human life as air and water.

GMOs are antithetical to local self-reliance (sustainability requires self-reliance).

And they are increasingly involved in the same social and agricultural problems that hybrids created in the last century, only worse because now we are all part of a global experiment in using cross-species life forms that could never occur in nature and that we have no way of controlling if say, 100 years down the road, something goes horribly wrong.

GMOs are only a decade old. It took several decades before we knew that smoking caused cancer, and even then, it took several decades more to "prove" it to the point where we could get regulation in this country--which the industry fought tooth and nail. By then millions had died needlessly. DDT, PCBs--all examples of the same thing. Could GMOs be the next iteration of our hubris and greed gone wrong?

Again, the precautionary principle should apply.

Bt cotton is a huge success in India witness that 75-80% of all cotton in now Bt from zero seven years ago.  No matter what you might think the Indian famer can't get enough of this technology.  There are over fifty Bt varieties now grown in India and more on the way from the public-private partnership.  The same success is in South Africa with the same adoption rates.  I have read those stories of failure but they are simply not true.

I have tried to steer you to accuarte, peer-reviewed science and concensus opinion of world experts but you seem to choose other sources.  Believe whatever you like but it will not make it the real science of GM crops and food.  If you want to read the real science please have a look at

http://web.viu.ca/wager

I suspect there is little more for us to discuss.

As I said before if one applied the PP to itself the PP would be immediately scrapped.

Enjoy your life.

"As I said before if one applied the PP to itself the PP would be immediately scrapped."

Here's the definition of the PP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

The PP is a moral and political principle that assumes guilty until proven innocent in cases where there is plausible risk of harm to people or planet. That harm could be social, economic, environmental or physical.

It is also a governing compulsory principle of law in the EU.

Whether or not you would apply it to itself is irrelevant to its merit.

"I have tried to steer you to accuarte, peer-reviewed science and concensus opinion of world experts but you seem to choose other sources..."

Likewise.

Google "crop failure, crop name, country name". The amount of national and foreign press (mainstream and alternative) on the subject is overwhelming. People are pissed.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0904/S00110.htm

http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/node/16012

http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/science/failure-to-yield.html

http://blog.foodandwaterwatch.org/blog/archive/2009/04/23/ge-crops-not-the-bargain-they-were-hoping-for/

http://www.greens.org/s-r/33/33-04.html

http://thebovine.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/gmo-crops-fail-massively-in-south-africa/

http://www.genecampaign.org/Publication/Article/BT%20Cotton/BTCOTTON-Monsanto%20pay.pdf

http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2504

http://www.naturalnews.com/025992_Monsanto_food_GMO.html

If a farmer's ability to grow food or a communities food security is dependent on technologies bestowed (for profit or not) by corporations or large institutions, that is by definition unsustainable.

We've seen the effect of this kind of dependency through hybrid seeds, which--for all their benefits--had severe social, economic and environmental costs that should serve as cautionary tale when we consider whether GMOs are safe for us on physical, social, environmental, and economic levels.

Even if you could prove beyond all shadow of a doubt that GMOs were safe to eat, their pollen wouldn't drift and contaminate, they didn't foster resistence in pests, they increased yields consistently without needing additional water or fertilizer, and you gave them away for free forever, they still wouldn't be sustainable in a world that needs more community self-reliance, more grassroots economic empowerment, and more self-sustaining farms than ever before.

But there is a more esoteric argument against GMOs too:

I like permaculture, agroecology and farming precisely because they are hands-on sciences with a bit of art. The laboratory is the land and the community that lives from it. Cultivating a functioning, self-sustaining and prolific ecosystem on my plot of land, in part through the plants I have selected over time to grow best in my conditions, is a highly scientific and artistic pursuit, and the challenge of a lifetime.

GMOs reduce me from a scientist to a technician, from an artist to someone coloring a paint-by-number, from a proprietor to a laborer--which devalues the profession and discourages the transmission across generations of a farming wisdom that is deep, broad, flexible and adaptive. This increasingly unstable climate requires more farmers who are wise, inspired by what they do, and debt-free, not a bunch of extremely underpaid technicians following directions on a package.

You and I see the world from different paradigms: You are a microbiologist and reductive science and impersonal data seem to be your orientation on this subject. I am a community organizer, farmer and naturalist, and I am coming from a grassroots, whole-systems orientation on this issue. However, we are the same in that we both spend time researching and advocating for our perspectives on GMOs.

Robert, we will never agree, but my my posts here are not to argue with you and convince you to change your mind. I hope you weren't really trying to change mine! :)

I post because the perspective and information you represent cannot stand unchallenged in a public forum where people have come to learn about a controversial and divisive issue that has enormous impact on our lives.

Nothing personal, however I'm sure we will meet again.

I haven't gone back and read through the Dawn/Robert exchange, but I've seen it before and think I get the gist of what it's about.

There's one thing that Robert is definitely right about, we need multiple kinds of agricultural systems in the world in order to have an effective and sustainable farming sector.

However, the point remains that there is no conclusive evidence on the long-term effects of GM crops and seeds--either positive or negative. (I'll leave out the ethical dilemma of allowing life to be owned by big companies, but for me, that's almost the more significant factor here).

The fact that you both have so many studies to throw around should tell us all than any "evidence" there is out there right now is purely anecdotal. 

Thanks for weighing in Greg. You've highlighted something I've been thinking, which is that at the bottom of this debate are some pretty fundamental existential questions that have nothing to do with the science of it all. To whit: should we allow life to be owned by big companies? And as Dawn mentioned, is self-reliance and ownership a priority in agricultural development? (Or any type of development?) If they're not, what does that say about those who are pushing the development agenda? The issue brings up a lot of questions about the US's fundamental values and how we are promoting them in the world.

I just saw @GMWatch celebrating a Gates Foundation project on cowpeas.  Hath hell frozen over? 

http://www.wageningenuniversity.nl/UK/newsagenda/news/d091030.htm

Anyway, Katherine--tell me this: are you ok with the technology if it isn't corporate?  The academic projects and the foundation projects that specifically aren't IP tied--are they ok? 

A lot of people use this fog of IP to dismiss the topic completely, but when you ask about that specifically they move the goalposts again.  Just like anti-vaxxers do for each study that comes out contrary to their views.

Kristen

There is little doubt the huge subject of GMO's has many issues.  I try to cover the issues.  The issue of safety has been determined whether people believe it or not.

Now to you point about IP.  It is true the present global acreage of GM crops is dominated by private corporations but this will not last.  Over 70 countries have active (public) research programs in GMO's.  China is the farthest along with over 1000 crops having been successfully been field tested and just waiting on the shelf for the go ahead.  Word is this will start in the next year or two.

The biggest inpediment to public research of GMO's is the inversely proportional to risk evelauation regulations that must be met to commercialize any GM crops, public or private.  As long as the cost of commercialization is so high (often 10-20 million per cultivar) the public funded crops will be mostly shut out of commercialization.  Pity.

We have been using Bt for decades and it is very clear the insecticidal proteins produced by these bacteria are not a threat to humans or any mammal for that matter.  (See UN-OECD Concensus document on the safety of plants expressing Bt proteins on my website) yet to commercialize a public funded Bt crop is almost impossible as the costs are huge.  The testing procedures should be dramtically scaled down for these Bt crops as it is very clear they do not represent any significant threat to us or the environment. There is no such thing as impact free agriculture or a free lunch.

So back to why I "harp" on the safety issue.  As long as there are completely unscientific hugely over regulated obsticles to commercialization (all in the name of "BUT WHAT IF") then your dream of non IP GM crops will be held up.

Resistance is always going to be an issue with anything we grow.  It is universal.  Now having said that the refuge strategy of the last decade is being replace with dual Bt protein cultivars.  These new cultivars have two or three different bt proteins and therefore greatly reduce the chances of resistance development in the fields. 

Compliance of farmers with refuge planting has always been an issue around the world.  Yet after 12 years of commercial use there is still no pest resistant to the Bt proteins that were engineered into the crops. 

Now if farmers continue to disregard the need for either refuge or do not switch to multiple Bt protein varieties then it is inevitable that resistance will develop in pest insects some time in the future.

The dilution of Bt protein has always been an issue and as long as pure government oversight allows non-bt seeds to be sold as Bt then this will continue.

In six years India has doubled its cotton production while using less land and far less pesiticde.  A tremendous success story.  Yes there are problems (no such thing as impact free agriculture) but over all this technology has been and will continue to be very good for the farmers , the environment and the planet.

As for the re-emergence of the suicide myth I have previously demonstrated it to be just that a myth.  Suicides are not up and those crop failures that were attributed to GM crops were in fact due to drought. The bt cotton was not engineered for drought tolerance.  That will soon change.