Monsanto: GMOs, Butterflies, and Bees! OH MY!

[notyou2]

When the dollar is valued above everything else, there is bound to be problems. Greed kills.

[TA1LGUNN3R]

The most thoughtful criticism I have seen of GMOs comes from economist Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan.

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf

This paper is worth a read, even though I disagree with many of its conclusions. The argument is that when you're concerned about the chance that something can go wrong, we should distinguish between fat-tailed and thin-tailed probability distributions. A fat-tailed distribution is one where a particular event can dominate the distribution of outcomes and alter the system, whereas a thin-tailed distribution is one where no individual event is likely to fundamentally change the nature of the system. For example, evolution by natural selection has thin tails because even if something catastrophic happens to a group in a particular location, the geographic isolation of that group (for example; could also be some other isolating factor, like inability to transmit diseases across species) will limit the spread of the catastrophe. A nuclear missile launch has fat tails because there's a very likely chance it could trigger a global catastrophe. He argues that if we consider a system with a fat-tailed distribution that could result in complete devastation of the system (for example, total extinction of life on earth) then we should not engage in that action no matter how small the chance of the devastation is, because we value the devastation as infinitely bad. (And a finite number times infinity is still infinity.)

Taleb applies this to GMOs by arguing that the hybridization we have been performing until now has thin tails: if any one farmer tries a hybrid and it has dangerous side effects, that farmer will go out of business and the method won't spread past his farm. In contrast, he argues that the problem with GMOs is that we're essentially performing a global experiment, where wide swaths of the planet are being switched to the same crops in a very short period of time. If there is any chance at all of this going wrong, it will then go wrong on a very large scale and do something terrible like lead to mass starvation.

I think there are some obvious flaws with their argument, but I don't want to bias the discussion before people have a chance to consider the idea.

That's not unreasonable. A look at something like the banana industry is a pretty good example of using monocultures for global markets. I have no problem with criticisms of GMOs that are based on logic, as any system will require modifications over time.

-TG

[_sabotage_]

The most thoughtful criticism I have seen of GMOs comes from economist Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan.

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf

This paper is worth a read, even though I disagree with many of its conclusions. The argument is that when you're concerned about the chance that something can go wrong, we should distinguish between fat-tailed and thin-tailed probability distributions. A fat-tailed distribution is one where a particular event can dominate the distribution of outcomes and alter the system, whereas a thin-tailed distribution is one where no individual event is likely to fundamentally change the nature of the system. For example, evolution by natural selection has thin tails because even if something catastrophic happens to a group in a particular location, the geographic isolation of that group (for example; could also be some other isolating factor, like inability to transmit diseases across species) will limit the spread of the catastrophe. A nuclear missile launch has fat tails because there's a very likely chance it could trigger a global catastrophe. He argues that if we consider a system with a fat-tailed distribution that could result in complete devastation of the system (for example, total extinction of life on earth) then we should not engage in that action no matter how small the chance of the devastation is, because we value the devastation as infinitely bad. (And a finite number times infinity is still infinity.)

Taleb applies this to GMOs by arguing that the hybridization we have been performing until now has thin tails: if any one farmer tries a hybrid and it has dangerous side effects, that farmer will go out of business and the method won't spread past his farm. In contrast, he argues that the problem with GMOs is that we're essentially performing a global experiment, where wide swaths of the planet are being switched to the same crops in a very short period of time. If there is any chance at all of this going wrong, it will then go wrong on a very large scale and do something terrible like lead to mass starvation.

I think there are some obvious flaws with their argument, but I don't want to bias the discussion before people have a chance to consider the idea.

That's not unreasonable. A look at something like the banana industry is a pretty good example of using monocultures for global markets. I have no problem with criticisms of GMOs that are based on logic, as any system will require modifications over time.

-TG

The agricultural spectrum runs from industrialized to organic. The concepts are very different. Industrialized agriculture neutralizes the land, plants seeds that can grow in the neutralized base, feeds and protects the plants with chemicals, all done with massive, subsidized equipment according to a government plan.

Such farmers can't feed themselves off their produce. Academia, industry and government policy is geared to helping them. When organics actually get a legislative boost, they often find what was intended to benefit them got co-opted by the large competitors.

An organic farmer tries to build up the land. They use intelligent rotation, incorporate natural feed stalk, medicinal and symbiotic plants, which also attract natural pollinators and organic resources.

After the industrialized farmer has harvested, the chemicals remain present, which is bad since it means it is unfit but for GMOs afterwards, or worse, have leached into the water. The land has been sterilized. An organic farmers land should be relatively unchanged after harvest.

Technology hasn't been developed for the small scale organic farmer, but some successful developments have been:

Greatly increasing organic banana output over industrialized banana production by orienting the banana trees in a natural formation. This leaves gaps for producing feed plants and medicinal plants. Greater output, no inputs and more diversity.

Solar greenhouses. Several have recently been developed or modified for zero input year round food production. One was done by a group of kids who got 20k off kick starter to set it up.

Conclusion, unless you want to test the period we can continually dump poison onto the land and be healthy, support small scale technological improvements, better policies, equal incentives and less red tape.

[Metsfanmax]

This just in: 82% of Americans want mandatory labelling of genetically modified foods.

Also, 80% of Americans want mandatory labelling of foods containing DNA.

[Dukasaur]

[hotfire]

industrialized organic lettuce contains 57 calories of fossil fuel for every calorie of food energy...a 4% decrease from conventional industrial lettuce....mostly from transportation and sorting...but it does reduce pesticide and petro fertilizer inputs into fields, at least.
moral of the story...grow your own lettuce