You seem to miss my point that 6+billion people will require the use of conventional ag practices, biotech ag, organic, agroforestry and other types of agriculture.  Unless you have some magic to make several billion people disappear we are stuck with "How can we best feed the world population with the least environmental impact?"  I have said several times biotech options are but some of the answers.  They are neither a panacea nor an evil creation to be feared.

Yes I am an actual scientist.  Did you go to my website at my university?

Did you read the statements I posted from experts around the world?  Are they are fooled by the big corporations as well?  Or just maybe there is something positive to this biotech ag stuff.

I am specific about pointing out pseudo-science when I see it. Certainly not all criticisms are of that ilk but a great many so-called examples of the dangers of GM crops and food are pseudo-science that have fooled many people.

Why do you feel only your side of this debate has the moral high ground of "protecting the environment"?  I have demonstrated several cases where the biotech option is the least harmful to the environment.  I would be happy to share many more for those interested.

Cheers

Rob
http://web.viu.ca/wager

You don't frustrate me, you don't intimidate me, and I write here on a personal basis, not in my official capacity.  Everyone deserves respect; I continously offer it to you, despite your "snarky" attitude.

I have asked you before to justify your dismisal of your readers opinions by showing your credentials, and now I will make it easy for you to show us why we should all listen to you.

Please write a blog entry entitled, "Who Natasha Chart Thinks She Is."  Include: your educational background (degree(s)), peer-researched publications, work/practical experience, and any other testimony that can lend credibility to your claims to be an expert de-bunking the main stream.

I wonder if you are really the right person to lead this discussion if all you do is yell at people to shut up.  Reminds me of someone else:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrNl6-j9x5w

Aaron, I've written about my background and extensively about my opinions. If you have some specific beef, lay it out.

But thank you for proving the point Ezra was making. Thank you for asking me, and now in so many words, who the hell I think I am to dare suggest that pesticides are harmful. Defenders of the status quo like yourself don't think that members of the lay public have a right to disagree with their opinions, and I think that's rubbish.

I also don't have any peer-researched publications to my name, but I doubt you do, either. The proper term is 'peer-reviewed,' btw, because if your peers are doing your research for you, they should be listed as co-authors of your papers. And no, I don't have any of those, either. But as they say, science that can't be explained to your grandmother isn't science that's well understood.

I have an honors AA in biology from a community college whose graduates have long been accepted into the UofWashington's medical programs, with a year each of major's bio, chem, o-chem and calculus, and a BA with concentrations in ecological agriculture and policy, as well as lab work in soil science and ecological monitoring techniques, if you're so terribly interested. I've been a voracious reader of science publications and news stories since I was a teenager, and in my copious spare time, I do a lot of nonfiction reading about world affairs, agricultural policy and natural history. I also communicate regularly with people in different sectors of progressive political and food activism, making a point to learn from their experiences and examples.

In short, I'm a reasonably well-informed citizen who makes it my business to learn more about where my food is coming from, how it's grown and what's being put on it.

But that's sort of beside the point.

Story after story has come out about the dangers of many common agricultural chemicals. Public health in the US is actually declining. And you just want to keep saying, 'Well, everything we're doing is necessary, and though we haven't investigated the matter thoroughly, we're sure everything is perfectly safe. Also, these crazy activists want to starve everyone.' That's a stance you want me to take seriously? Ha.

I've laid out the case for the environmental and human health dangers of the products and methods you're so enamored of many times. No, it isn't based on my own research, which means that I'm shamefully, shockingly, promoting and relying on the scientific/analytic expertise of other people from time to time. As I understand it though, and mind you, this is just from reading other people's peer-reviewed research, it's common practice in even the scientific community to refer to and interpret the work done by others.

Though I believe that citizens in general need to stop being afraid to wade into subjects whose scope and entrenched interests are intimidating. We vote on these issues all the time, whether we know it or not. Our tax dollars go to promoting different strains of policy whether we've taken the time to understand them or not. They are penetrable to the interested mind, and when they aren't, as in the hedge fund/derivatives debacle, someone's usually perpetrating a scam of some sort.

I have a right to have an opinion even if I disagree with your bosses because they are my equals in the voting booth and, ostensibly, before the law. I have a duty as a citizen, in my opinion, to inform myself on the issues my representatives take up to the best of my ability. Those are my most valued credentials.

If they don't mean anything to you, then stop reading what I have to say, I haven't presented myself as someone I'm not.

I never asked you to justify your opinion in and of itself; you are, of course, entitled to it, and you seem well read on these issues (kudos).  My "beef" with you is that you are disrespectful to me and other bloggers on this site, and I don't believe that is the spirit of the Change.org organization.

I asked you what justifies your belief that it is acceptable to abuse and berate anyone with an alternative viewpoint to yours.  I don't see any credentials which make you any more of an expert than anyone else on this site to dismiss my opinion as nonsense or lies.

Consider carefully the argument you make about your right to equal opporunnity to express your views and ask yourself how you have upheld that value on this blog.  Change.org (if you read the policy on commenting) "want[s] to promote constructive dialogue and find that people are more respectful when they are not anonymous."

Are you promoting constructive dialogue?

Your pesticide, more pesticide, GMOs, more pesticide stance is as antithetical to the point of this blog as proclaiming support for a 'barefoot and pregnant' view of gender relations on the womens' rights blog. The relevance of stating such a view 'politely' is questionable.

Not all points of view are legitimate, nor am I bound to so believe.

Ooh, good. Find me a list of ag chemicals that have been thoroughly vetted for safety, we'll just promote those, shall we?

Living organisms have not evolved to safely process organochlorines, nor hormone mimics that don't break down, but instead bioaccumulate. We're still eating and circulating in the food chain synthetic chemicals that were banned years ago.

You even admit that we may not know the risks for years, well, why take that crapshoot when there are alternative methods of agricultural production that are every bit as modern in terms of knowledge synthesis but rely on techniques and naturally-sourced compounds whose consequences we have have evolved, or co-evolved, to handle?

The UN says these methods, cover cropping, animal-source fertilizers, composting and soil building, even without industrial ag chemicals, are likely to produce better results for African farmers. Studies in the US have found that agricultural methods that eschew synthetic inputs can produce as much as industrial agriculture, and even outperform it in developing nations where capital and irrigation infrastructure is spotty.

The assertion that we simply can't feed everyone without risking our health is flat wrong, and what we're doing now is running up against hard resource walls that will force a rethink well within my lifetime. So why risk it?

I will suggest glyphosate is prbably the best agricultural chemical ever.  It is non carcinogenic, non mutagenic, non teratogenic, is almost harmless to animansl, fish, birds, insects and BEES (compare that to pyrethrum, roteneno or ryania three organic pesticides).  Glyphosate binds tightly to soil and breaks down into non toxic AMPA.  It does not persist and the patent has run out.

Most important is it replaced atrazine which has a significantly greater EIQ.  Especially if you are an amphibian.

Why do you believe naturally derived copper compounds are safer for the environment than modern synthetic fungicides ?

Why are you against Bt crops which have permitted farmers who grow Bt crops to reduce the said insecticides you dislike by hundreds of millions of pounds?  This eems completely opposite to your stated desire to reduce impact of agriculture.

Well, cyanide is natural, for example. S'why we don't eat apple cores. The point isn't that everything 'natural' is safe, but that we are far more qualified to risk assess things that we've been exposed to for long periods of time.

Our bodies can even detoxify small quantities of cyanide, just as bees can stand some carting about. But we can't detoxify any amount of Agent Orange, or a number of other industrial toxins, just as bees clearly can't tolerate constant, cross-continental travel. The signs of breakdown, of excess strain on living systems, are everywhere around us and the industry would just keep piling on stressors.

But to get metaphorical in terms of risk, there's a big difference between dying a virgin and screwing everything that moves - very few people do either the very safe or the very risky thing.

The crop chemical industry is basically taking the 'screw anything that moves' approach to risk assessment. If it was produced in a WWII-inspired chemical weapons factory, it must be safe! Sure it kills fish, but it's just a side effect, meaningless! It's madness.

The Bush administration even stopped monitoring, the their behest I'm sure, how much pesticide is even sprayed on US crops. The 2009 data is gone forever, apparently.

And to suggest that fish kills are the result of 'benignly' intended actions ... well, maybe that was true before we knew that was the reason. Now we know. The moral calculation therefore slides from the range of unhappy accident to willful negligence.

We aren't innocents unaware of any possible consequence, nor are we incapable of setting out to determine more clearly the parameters of those consequences. And given that there are alternatives that we know to be safer and just as effective, our failure to act on what knowledge we have isn't excused by the ignorance of predecessors or our past, unenlightened selves.