Singletrack Forum » User Favorites: porterclough

Singletrack Forum » User Favorites: porterclough porterclough en-US Wed, 30 May 2012 01:06:05 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 <![CDATA[Search]]> q http://singletrackworld.com/forum/search.php Lifer on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255969 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:25:55 +0000 Lifer 1255969@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5jpVbEL0jc">You feed beefburgers to swans!</a> ooOOoo on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255882 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:01:53 +0000 ooOOoo 1255882@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ You think about how much oil we use to make our food now - any GM crop designed with that assumption could fit in very differently once that source of energy and fertilizer is gone. Not sustainable. I appreciate that I haven't felt hunger like people in certain parts of the world. I don't believe that GM is the only way out of those problems. Maybe to the agri-tech firms it is, but then if your only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. I'm much more concerned about the effect on ecosystems and the countless species that aren't human beings. Genetic engineers don't work weekends or evenings but nature is happening 24/7. porterclough you sound like the typical short-term thinking, science is new & great & shiny we-must-use-it person. What you forget is we already have food. If the rest of the world want to do it then fine but I fully support keeping this island GM free. If after 100-200 years we find we fully understand it and it's effects then fine, use it then. votchy on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255733 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 08:32:11 +0000 votchy 1255733@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ Nay for me, education and contraception to prevent the population growth that the planet (seemingly) cannot support. TandemJeremy on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255661 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:51:26 +0000 TandemJeremy 1255661@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ PorteRclough - BUT IT DOESN'T INCREASE YIELDS! So it won't prevent hunger. Edit - roundup ready genes getting into native plants / weeds will decrease yeilds. porterclough on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255657 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:47:24 +0000 porterclough 1255657@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ MMR repeat anyone? I don't know about anyone else but I'm tired of people taking views on these matters based on nothing more than what sounds trendy (oo, big business is bad, science is bad, let's be effing space cadets). It's easy if you aren't hungry. Sorry this nonsense makes me angry. TandemJeremy on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255653 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:42:44 +0000 TandemJeremy 1255653@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ porteclough If I thought it safe and though it would do anything to reduce hunger then fine - however all the evidence is that it is not safe with gene escape and crossover and that it does not increase yields - more very controlled research perhaps but it simply is not needed nor safe at the moment porterclough on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255646 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:39:51 +0000 porterclough 1255646@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ Here's what Norman Borlaug said about some of the misinformed trendy objectors to the green revolution of the 50s and 60s: <blockquote>some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels...If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things"</blockquote> Plus ca change... TandemJeremy on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255641 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:33:35 +0000 TandemJeremy 1255641@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ hungrymonkey - have you found any instances of yields increasing? My understanding ( from a very lay point of view) is that they have not. You say yield increases are expected - the evidence so far is that this simply is not true. We have plenty of food - infact a surplyus at teh moment - its just n the wrong places. More food could easily be grown - a move away from meat is one and other luxury crops. You have bought into the hype from agribusiness Genes have already crossed from gm crops into weeds. All the worlds soya is no contaminated by GM - this was done deliberately by monsanto to so they could sell there GM soya on the grounds all soya was GM. less GM is being grown now than was in the US - partly because it has not lived up to the hype and party because there is no market for it Its purely about profit - nothing to do with decreasing hunger. Lifer on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255636 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:24:01 +0000 Lifer 1255636@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ We could free up untold acres for food production by moving away from cotton and back to hemp. IMO the ownership is the biggest problem, all very well saying the public should own it but I think the same about land! Also what effect on the land do high yield GM crops have? porterclough on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255635 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:23:57 +0000 porterclough 1255635@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ Yay Let's feed the planet instead of being irritating gits. hungry monkey on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255628 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:14:40 +0000 hungry monkey 1255628@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ btw, as i'v also said, the yield increases are expected in areas where the potential yield of regular crops are not met, through soil salinity, drought, pest or fertilizer issues. GM CAN increase yields in these areas. hungry monkey on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255624 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:10:31 +0000 hungry monkey 1255624@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ TJ, did you read the caveat? yes, profit is involved, its inevitable... if, though, they are created for the public good - the patents are owned by the people, then they can be created in a suitable and fair way. as i said above, critics fall into one of 3 categories - moral objectors, ethical objectors and misinformed objectors. unfortunately the very strong anti-lobby has had huge media coverage. a LOT of GM is nothing more sinister than attempting to improve resilience of crops, and improve the nutritional value of the crops. throughout my dissertation research i have interviewed numerous people from across the entire food supply chain in the UK - from farm laborers to those involved in policy and R&D. one said a total NO to GM a few had reservations - needs to be done properly, needs more research, but not 'never' the majority believe we should be doing it now. what they all said was that conventional agriculture does not have the capacity or ability to double production. TandemJeremy on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255612 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:57:07 +0000 TandemJeremy 1255612@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ No There is no need - its nothing to do with reducing hunger just increasing profits. No GM crop yet has increased yeilds Monsanto have deliberately contaminated the worlds soya, roundup ready crops have released their genes into weeds so they are now herbicide resistant. Its a pandoras box - we must stop it. Terminator genes - if they cross over into other crops then its hello world starvation. <blockquote>GM is essentially picking the best traits from the crops and breeding them together into an even better crop. so its pretty much just like a high-tech lab version of selective breeding (give or take), which is something we've been doing for thousands of years.</blockquote> This is wrong - its about introducing genes from other plants or even from animals into crops - this cnnot be done by slective breeding. No terminator gene is available naturally nor round up ready genes. hungry monkey on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255595 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:44:53 +0000 hungry monkey 1255595@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ i genuinely think we need it. we have a predicted 50% rise in the global population in the next 40 years. the WTO (or is it FAO?) predict that that will require a 100% increase in grain production to feed the new population. partly due to numbers and partly due to an increasingly energy rich (i.e. meaty) diet. conventional agricultural yields are pretty much as high as they are going to get, there is increasing pressure to lower presticide use (for env reasons), ditto water use, peak-phosphate is going to mean we need to reduce fertilizer use, and its not like the amount of land on the earth is increasing. we have the technology to do it, it is ALREADY being done in other places... we can create enough crops, with less fertilizer, pesticides and water, on more marginal lands which are currently not under use... ultimately it is a population problem, however i cannot see us going down a malthusian route whereby masses die off through starvation, when there is the technology there to feed them... flap_jack on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255167 Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:15:47 +0000 flap_jack 1255167@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ We shouldn't be eating grains anyway. Go caveman ! ooOOoo on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255160 Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:14:17 +0000 ooOOoo 1255160@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ I don't go for that argument. The level of control it can give is many times greater than selective breeding, and it can happen many times faster. That's why I think it's too powerful. Is it really a technology developed for a need, or is it just doing clever things because we can? We already control a lot of this planet. hungry monkey on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255137 Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:08:36 +0000 hungry monkey 1255137@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ <blockquote>I love new technology but being blinded by novelty and impatience is childish.</blockquote> crude, modern, GM has been around since the 60s (main variety of (iirc) barley was created by hitting it with vast amounts of radiation to cause mutations in the DNA - the best mutants were picked out, and thats what you now eat... (think its called Golden Barley, but i can't be bothered to go through my notes now <img src="http://singletrackworld.com/forum/my-plugins/bbcode-buttons/default/icon_smile.gif" title=":-)" class="bb_smilies" alt=""/> ) on this note though... GM is essentially picking the best traits from the crops and breeding them together into an even better crop. so its pretty much just like a high-tech lab version of selective breeding (give or take), which is something we've been doing for thousands of years. we're just doing it better, more selectively and more efficiently, in a way that we can (to an extent) guarantee better results. imo hungry monkey on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255124 Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:04:34 +0000 hungry monkey 1255124@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ john beddington - legend... AdamW - biodiversity is already shot. with GM you get different varieties which can do different things. a <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T2C-4N2TS61-1&_user=1026342&_coverDate=09%2F01%2F2007&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050565&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1026342&md5=df02cc56caeafe130a610a24dc3b238c">paper (i hop this works)</a> i was reading today even suggested that GM crops could be 'tailored' to have almost medicinal properties... its probably true that absolute yields can't be increased much, however in those marginal areas, GM does have the potential to increase yields, through pest resistance, saline resistance and drought resistance. if the genetics are owned (and i also disagree with the ownership of genetics anyway) by the public for the public good, the monsanto thing may never need to happen again... things like biocontrol are, i reckon, going to have a massive impact on pesticide use in the future... finally (before i hit the pub), the upcoming peak-phosphate (estimated at approx 2030) is also going to cause huge problems if we are to continue to rely so heavily on NPK fertilizers - another area in which GM gives us that little extra leeway with our global food production. mikewsmith on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255120 Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:03:13 +0000 mikewsmith 1255120@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ morals/ethics/misunderstanding = burn the witch ooOOoo on "wed evening debate - GM foods, yay or nay?" http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wed-evening-debate-gm-foods-yay-or-nay#post-1255107 Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:00:00 +0000 ooOOoo 1255107@http://singletrackworld.com/forum/ We are too selfish, too short-term and too greedy to manage it properly. What effect will it have on the 7th generation after us? Who cares? Genetic engineering will only be as good as the genetic engineers. If you can't control your food without microscopes, computers and genetic level manipulation I think you are robbing farmers of their local control. What's the rush? Why not continue with normal agriculture and keep it as a backup? I love new technology but being blinded by novelty and impatience is childish. Just a few thoughts.