Monsanto Executive Wins World Food Prize

sfcrazy writes "A top Monsanto executive has won the prestigious World Food Prize. Secretary of State John Kerry announced the award where Robert T. Fraley, the executive vice president and CTO of Monsanto, won the prize along with two other scientists from Belgium and the US. The award was given for devising a method to insert genes from another organism into plant cells, which could produce new genetic lines with highly favorable traits."

Comments

Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cells instead of sell maybe?

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is Monsanto. "Sell" isn't exactly wrong.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

Samzenpus, delete this story and resubmit it. Your idiocy has ruined this one.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

They also forgot the (D) after John Kerry

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

Samzenpus, delete this story and resubmit it. Your idiocy has ruined this one.

If you smoked as much pot as that guy you would have missed it too.

Re:Proofreading?

[c0d3g33k]

I'd have to agree. There were only three sentences in the summary. The error wasn't exactly hard to spot, given that the sentence in question was both grammatically and factually incorrect.

Re:Proofreading?

[ackthpt]

It is Monsanto. "Sell" isn't exactly wrong.

True dat.

The award was given for devising a method to insert genes from another organism into plant sell, which could produce new genetic lines with highly favorable traits.

What's missing is the next bit, which should be something like this: "And then ream everyone in court who tries to keep some seed and use it to replant. Also, investigate, harass, litigate and otherwise bully Monsanto even suspects of using some of their "Genetic Property". Also, lobby for legislation which requires food aid from the US to be GMO crops and any seed giving to developing nations through US aid to be their property, so they can come knockin' later when that country's farmers prosper a bit and the native seed banks are all but extinct."

Well done them.

Re:Proofreading?

[plopez]

The wonders of spell check. Anyone care to debate "Pubic Policy"?

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

Monsanto doesn't "sell" any more then Microsoft does. They lease out their "IP". They are working on "embracing and extending" the world food supply. Currently the natural plants and the bees feel a bit like Word Perfect. Farmers downwind are getting introduced to SCO like tactics, only the courts and congress are backing Monsanto.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmm bacon corn.

Re:Proofreading?

[GumphMaster]

No, that is a DRM measure and correcting it would constitute a DMCA violation ;)

Re: Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's no longer an elected official, and his position is technically nonpartisan.

Re:Proofreading?

[DragonTHC]

so let me get this straight, a guy was given a food prize for making food less food-like?

Re:Proofreading?

[DragonTHC]

it's more like Dr. Frankenstein winning the Nobel prize in medicine.

Re:Proofreading?

[ChromeAeonium]

And then ream everyone in court who tries to keep some seed and use it to replant.

There's always the option of not buying them and going with open pollinated seed. If you get sued for violating a contract you signed, then that is on you. And before you bring up the inevitable claim of suing for cross pollination, wrong.

lobby for legislation which requires food aid from the US to be GMO crops

That's new on me. Point me to that specific legislation, because that sounds an awful lot like a load of made up bullshit that someone pulled out of the usual place. Yeah, for some crops like corn and soy, most of the aid is genetically engineered, because most of the crop is genetically engineered. This isn't a conspiracy; it's just how supply chains work.

Re:Proofreading?

[Zaphod-AVA]

The day someone returns life to a dead organism, they have damn well earned a Nobel prize.

Re:Proofreading?

[Samantha Wright]

No, the summary is complete; no one gets awards for that. Watch your scope creep!

Re:Proofreading?

[ChromeAeonium]

I think it would be more like giving a health prize to a pharmaceutical company for vaccine manufacturing. Sure, despite the public controversy concerning whether or not they cause autism, it would be true that the company has produced good things that have combated disease, although giving it to a corporate suit is still kind of bullshit. That's how I feel about it. Even if their seeds are helping people (for example, this just popped up in the news), giving the prize to executives doesn't seem right. Perhaps individual scientists or teams, but corporate executives? I don't like it.

As a side not, the Frankenstein thing is pretty silly. No one calls it Frankenstein when someone picks out a somatic mutant of a fruit tree and grafts it to another tree, no one calls it Frankenstein when you chemically double the chromosomes of a plant either to cross it with a non-doubled one to get a triploid or to produce a plant with homozygous alleles from a pollen cell, no one calls it Frankenstein when you cross two plants that can't produce viable offspring and then remove the embryo before it dies to culture it into a hybrid that could never exist in nature, no one calls it Frankenstein when you blast a culture of cells with radiation or apply mutagenic chemicals to create all sorts of random mutations, and no one calls it Frankenstein when you select random mutation after random mutation in the form of artificial selection, a process that has caused such great genetic shifts as to create corn from teosinte and broccoli, kale, kohlrabi, cabbage,and cauliflower (all the same species by the way) from wild mustard. Yet now this is Frankenstein? I mean, I suppose you could go the appeal to nature route and argue that everything else is just manipulating natural forces in a beneficial way, but of course, one could point to horizontal gene transfer and say the same of genetic engineering, not that the argument means much anyway.

Re:Proofreading?

[ChromeAeonium]

There is no such thing as bacon corn but there is such a thing as a lard nut that supposedly has a pork like taste. Maybe when human society finally gets its shit together with respect to agricultural biodiversity and starts developing and widely cultivating more of the usable species out there you might get a chance to try one.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that, but you can't even imagine how high I am right now.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

No problem, in the meantime they will just patent the pig.

If maybe you don't trust Greenpeace, not that many would blame you, just do a simple search for "Monsanto pork" sans quotes and you will get plenty of other links, maybe even some related to congress. After all, the US government has been in bed with Monsanto and covered up for them causing large numbers of deaths since before most of us was born. Things started heating up on them with PCBs, then Agent Orange issues so they took a derivative of their Agent Orange research (Round-Up) and after researching a bit into the field of GMO, they dumped most of their chemical plants or closed them.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

s/no one calls it Frankenstein/ChromeAeonium doesn't call it Frankenstein/gi

Re:Proofreading?

[stenvar]

Also, lobby for legislation which requires food aid from the US to be GMO crops and any seed giving to developing nations through US aid to be their property, so they can come knockin' later when that country's farmers prosper a bit and the native seed banks are all but extinct."

The lobbying isn't much of a problem. Kids ask their parents for ponies by the millions every Christmas. The real problem is that our corrupt legislators grant these wishes, mostly because it's not their own money that they are giving away. You can't stop greedy industry from asking for feeding at the governmental trough; the only people who can stop the feeding is the legislators who actually hand out the money.

The solution is simple: vote for people who staunchly oppose agricultural subsidies, food aid, international "aid", and overzealous EPA monitoring. If they turn out to have completely lied about their positions once they get into office, vote them out of office and select the next candidate. That's the only way to "change the system". Whining and complaining about "big bad corporations and their lobbyists" as people do isn't going to accomplish anything other than diffuse responsibility away from the people who actually are at fault: our legislators and the voters who put them in Congress.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anarchduke]

Any good American demands it be well trimmed and maintained. Anyone else is a faithless muslim athiest commie fascist anarchist.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

Next up, the Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded to a politician who then proceeds to bomb another country and increase troops to one they're already bombing... ... oh, wait, we've done that...

Ok, maybe there's a World Health Organization prize that can be awarded for the invention of a new and improved method of birth & population control - consisting of genetically altered plants that slowly cause an increase in cancers and disease causing earlier death. Or maybe the invention of a more infectious SARS-like virus, maybe we could call it MERS or something... ... or, maybe we've already done that too?? Hmm...

Re:Proofreading?

[Noughmad]

Writing Mon$anto would have been to obvious, with NSA spying and all. The editors now have to find subtler ways of saying big corporate corporations are greedy.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it would be more like giving a health prize to a pharmaceutical company for vaccine manufacturing. Sure, despite the public controversy concerning whether or not they cause autism, it would be true that the company has produced good things that have combated disease, although giving it to a corporate suit is still kind of bullshit. That's how I feel about it. Even if their seeds are helping people (for example, this just popped up in the news), giving the prize to executives doesn't seem right. Perhaps individual scientists or teams, but corporate executives? I don't like it.

Then Oppenheimer should have gotten the Nobel Prize for the cancer removing properties of the nuclear bomb.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, talking of typos, I thought it was spelt "somezenpus".

Re:Proofreading?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

There's always the option of not buying them and going with open pollinated seed.

Tell that to the farmers living in Iraq.

Re:Proofreading?

[gallondr00nk]

Monsanto's litigation tactics remind me of the RIAA and its ilk. Both try desperately to stop easily duplication of their "IP", but in Monsanto's case they're fighting against the four and a half billion year old tactics of nature.

They can sue as many farmers as they like, their precious seeds will propagate out of their control eventually.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's always the option of not buying them and going with open pollinated seed. If you get sued for violating a contract you signed, then that is on you.

Who says I signed a contract? I bought seed from my local supplier that happened to be second-gen Roundup Ready.

Re:Proofreading?

[turp182]

Such policy only really applies to the time around Valentine's Day:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/20000-tons-of-pubic-hair-trimmed-in-preparation-fo,2909/

That's right, 20,000 tons...

Re:Proofreading?

[sFurbo]

If maybe you don't trust Greenpeace,

And who could blame you, when they start the article with a sort-of lie and an outright lie

In the crop department, Monsanto is well on their way to dictating what consumers will eat, what farmers will grow, and how much Monsanto will get paid for seeds. In some cases those seeds are designed not to reproduce sowable offspring. In others, a flock of lawyers stand ready to swoop down on farmers who illegally, or even unknowingly, end up with Monsanto's private property growing in their fields.

No, Monsanto is not developing terminator genes, they bought a company that had developed it for its other IP, and no, the Schmeiser case was about as long as you can get from "a farmer unknowingly [ending] up" with anything.

Really, if there are that many other sources, than why link to the one that does maximal damage to your credibility?

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

The day that happens you better have your guns ready.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

vote for people who staunchly oppose agricultural subsidies, food aid, international "aid", and overzealous EPA monitoring

Right, because monitoring for air and water pollution - protecting the natural Commons - is totally the same as funding amoral corporate agribusiness.

I'm guessing you are a Brown Energy Libertarian, in favor of individual freedom when it comes to polluting shared resources, and totally authoritarian when it comes to spending tax dollars on nuclear boondoggles that taxpayers clearly do not want. Do I get a prize? Did I guess right? You have a couple of the tells.

Re:Proofreading?

[beep54]

And in other news, both Stalin and Hitler were posthumously jointly awarded the World Population Control Award.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

The day someone returns life to a dead organism, they have damn well earned a Nobel prize.

Why? Immortality would bring our culture to a stillstand. Why pass on knowledge if you'll stay around and if there is nobody young enough to take it where you left off? At any rate, this happens quite a bit with bacteria. "Metabolism shut down" is pretty much the same as "dead".

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can sue as many farmers as they like, their precious seeds will propagate out of their control eventually.

And therein lies the problems. Monsanto call sue all the farmers they want, they have sued many, gained money, destroyed the farmers generations held seed stocks or simply carted them away, even gained the farmland. Thanks to Congress the US farmers can't sue Monsanto. Some scientist was quoted years ago saying that if there was some unaffected corn it was likely in a pottery jar deep within some Mayan pyramid. Have no idea how valid that statement is, but there has been time for things to get worse and it is planted further abroad, sometimes by order of the governments Monsanto help fund.

Re:Proofreading?

[Zaphod-AVA]

Because we could explore space.

Re:Proofreading?

[Hatta]

If you get sued for violating a contract you signed, then that is on you. And before you bring up the inevitable claim of suing for cross pollination, wrong.

From your NPR story:

As an experiment, he'd actually sprayed Roundup on about three acres of the field that was closest to a neighbor's Roundup Ready canola. Many plants survived the spraying, showing that they contained Monsanto's resistance gene â" and when Schmeiser's hired hand harvested the field, months later, he kept seed from that part of the field and used it for planting the next year.

This convinced the judge that Schmeiser intentionally planted Roundup Ready canola.

That sounds exactly like what you said doesn't happen. Grow crops. Pick the ones with the best traits and replant them. Get sued.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sort of. The argument back is that they're not being sued for their fields being infected with cross-pollinated Monsanto IP, it's that they're willfully violating the intellectual property of Monsanto by USING the cross-pollinated plants in their field. Not that they violated a contract, because they never signed any such thing. But Monsanto owns the genes in those seeds, and if you apply round-up to round-up ready seeds that you didn't purchase from a certified Monsanto approved dealer, then you've violated their intellectual property.

Not that it's been decided if you can own genes. At least, specifically, these round-up ready genes.

It's like someone leaving music files lying about in CDs or flashdrives or online. You can have them, and use the flash-drives for other purposes, but if that .mp3 file ever gets put through a music player and gets turned into sound, you've violated IP rights since they own the music.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because monitoring for air and water pollution - protecting the natural Commons - is totally the same as funding amoral corporate agribusiness.

Did I say that? No. You're putting up a strawman.

I'm guessing you are a Brown Energy Libertarian, in favor of individual freedom when it comes to polluting shared resources, and totally authoritarian when it comes to spending tax dollars on nuclear boondoggles that taxpayers clearly do not want. Do I get a prize? Did I guess right? You have a couple of the tells.

Typical liberal moron: you are reducing everything to caricatures. It's not worth debating with you. Just understand: you are the source of the problem.

Re:Proofreading?

[vandamme]

Or Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Oh wait.

Re:Proofreading?

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me strange but, throwing mutagenic chemicals on anything is close enough to "Frankenstein" for my food. Yes, inserting genes from bacteria into plant genomes may as well be "Franken Food".

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just what is a "plant sell"?

Re:Huh?

[briancox2]

They are trying to say that Monsanto is injecting more plant SALES by making the food artificial. I'm sure.

Re:Huh?

[Virtucon]

My wife goes to those, she brings home a lot of tomato plants and flowers and plants them in the yard. ;-)

Re:Huh?

[ILongForDarkness]

What injecting more plant scales?

Re:Huh?

[GarethIwanFairclough]

What is "plant seal"? Are there navy seals embedded in all plants grown from monsanto seeds? Actually, that would be rather cool..

i can haz editor

[Anonymous Coward]

plant cell

Fraley is a scientist, not just a C-level

[Anonymous Coward]

The linked article is biased as hell, could you find no other source for this news?

(Also-- "plant sell"? Please.)

Re:Fraley is a scientist, not just a C-level

[the eric conspiracy]

Here's one that's a little less slanted:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/monsanto-executive-is-among-world-food-prize-winners.html

Also, Robert Fraley holds a National Medal of Technology, awarded by Clinton in 1999.

Re:Fraley is a scientist, not just a C-level

[Anonymous Coward]

Try reading the article first fucktard.

wording

[Anonymous Coward]

plant cell so you can sell ?

Mmm

[Greyfox]

Would you like a tasty serving of irony with your patented GM beans?

Re:Mmm

[PurplePhase]

Would you like a tasty serving of irony with your patented GM beans?

Disclaimer: only the irony is free!

Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

Last week, Monsanto's leak of genetically modified wheat polluted countless acres of US wheat leading to countries around the world banning the import of all US wheat. Today, Monsanto wins the World Food Prize!

Good job Monsanto. Thank goodness no media outlets carried that story. Oh. Except Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/us-wheat-korea-idUSBRE94U0KW20130531

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[the eric conspiracy]

Countless acres: One site in Oregon
Around the world: 2 countries in Asia

What is it about GMO that drives people to this sort of hysteria?

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[arth1]

What is it about GMO that drives people to this sort of hysteria?

That the consequences are irreversible. You can't put the genie back in the bottle again.

It also ups the ante in the arms race of evolution, which isn't universally seen as a good thing.

Calling objection "hysteria" doesn't make it so. Some protesters are quite enlightened and think long term.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

Like industrial fertilizers, only more so, genetically modified crops will promote indifference to improved cultivation practices and environmental stewardship.. Hey this roundup-resistant corn means I can pollute the water table with herbicides and still have a bumper crop!

Shrinking bio-diversity -- I recently read about farmers in India bringing back traditional salt-tolerant, but lower-yield rice varieties, due to increasing salt content in the soil caused in part by climate change and rising sea levels. In 50 years maybe farmers somewhere will need a drought resistant/salt tolerant variety of heirloom wheat but can't find viable seeds because everyone's using commercial product bred for high yield in a different climate. Diversity is good.

The very real possibility that the food supply will be dominated by patented genomes owned by a very small number of large corporate interests.

The high likelihood of unintended, unforeseen and possibly harmful consequences. Monsanto's goal of maximizing profits is not entirely in line with safe sustainable agriculture. Did I say roundup-resistant crops?

Consider what modern agriculture did to the tomato.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[the eric conspiracy]

I'm not calling objection hysteria. I'm calling statements like "untold acres" when one plot was found hysteria.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[mcmonkey]

I'm not calling objection hysteria. I'm calling statements like "untold acres" when one plot was found hysteria.

They're not telling us how many acres of this stuff is out there. Sounds like "untold acres" to me.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't put the *gene* back in the bottle again.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[the eric conspiracy]

Um no, they found one plot and told us about it.

http://news.yahoo.com/usda-modified-wheat-appears-isolated-205944372.html

No other cases have been found.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[ShanghaiBill]

Countless acres: One site in Oregon

Out of the 200 million acres of wheat planted in North America, it was so conveniently only found exactly where the anti-GMO activists looked for it, but subsequently no where else. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would say that the anti-GMO activists found it so easily, because they planted it.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[ChromeAeonium]

It also ups the ante in the arms race of evolution, which isn't universally seen as a good thing.

It certainty is a bad thing, which is why millions of people protested conventional breeding when late blight overcame the conventionally bred resistances in tomato and when hessian flies overcame conventionally bred resistance in wheat. Oh wait, that never happened because it would be absolutely idiotic, yet somehow, when genetic engineering is involved, the same basic facts of population genetics are suddenly terrible and proof that the technique itself is bad. Perhaps it is because the vast vast majority of the opposition to genetic engineering is coming from those with no background in agricultural or plant science and thus due to their complete lack of context it seems reasonable to them.

Calling objection "hysteria" doesn't make it so. Some protesters are quite enlightened and think long term.

And most of the protesters are the agricultural equivalents to the anti-vaccine movement. And when you are doing little in the way of scientifically justifying your concerns, instead preferring to use bunk science, fearmongering, and outright vandalism on non-corporate projects and farmer's fields, you shouldn't be surprised when you get characterized poorly. Hell, there is no small opposition to even things like Golden Rice (biofortified with -carotene) and the Arctic apple (which does not oxidize when cut). I'm sure there is a perfectly good reason as to why that is, if not unscientific hysteria, because this stuff isn't looking good.

Just about everything carries risk (again for context, even conventional breeding conventional breeding carries risk), just about everything has some negatives that come with the positives, there are actual issues, and not every genetically engineered organisms will necessarily turn out to be a good thing. But to paint the anti-GMO movement as a whole as anything even remotely reasonable would be like saying young earth creationists simply have a dispute with the minor details of a few phylogenies.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Some protesters are quite enlightened and think long term.

I've yet to see any legitimate arguments against GMO. Please enlighten.

Re: Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's clear enough you raise a good point when two links from slashdot you see that 200,000 farmers committed suicide because of Monsanto. Can people really believe that?

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Mashiki]

That the consequences are irreversible. You can't put the genie back in the bottle again.

You know people said the same thing about Norman Borlaug when he started messing with double rotations, plant genetics, and started the green revolution. Go back and read the magazine articles, news paper stories and watch the TV spots on it. And note how well that worked out, anyone else want to disagree he's one of the greatest humans of the 20th century? Didn't think so.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[six025]

Perhaps it is because the vast vast majority of the opposition to genetic engineering is coming from those with no background in agricultural or plant science and thus due to their complete lack of context it seems reasonable to them.

The real problem is "close source food chain" vs. "open source food chain". That is why GM food - Monsanto style - is bad. Really bad. Unfortunately the anti-GM movement has taken a different path of protesting against the science, rather than this very basic fact.

A closed source food chain is a major problem for everyone, except those who hold the patents.

Peace,
Andy.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[ChromeAeonium]

A closed source food chain is a major problem for everyone, except those who hold the patents.

Opposition to the patent aspect is certainty a lot more reasonable than trying to dismiss science, but it isn't such a simple issue when you consider the benefits to other groups, like farmers and consumers, from the creation of new varieties that are funded by patent royalties. Take the Honeycrisp apple for example. Do you like it? Most people do. It was, until the recent expiration, a patented variety (it is not GMO by the way; non-GE plants can also be patented). Despite this, growers liked it because they made more money on it (well, actually they kind of had a love-hate relationship with it because it is a finicky apple to grow but you get my point) and consumers liked it because it tasted good. The breeders got a return on the royalty fees from the nurseries that propagated the Honeycrisp apple trees, and with that made from that patent went on to create my favorite apple variety. Take patents out of the picture and the breeders who developed my favorite variety would simply not have had the money do so, and then more than the patent holder loses.

It is kind of the same thing here. Without the patents, like it or not it would not I do not see how it would be possible to invest so much money into something that you could not recover the R&D costs/deregulation costs on.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you only post multiple long responses in rapid succession when responding to GMO articles exclusively?

Your post history shows a multitude of brief responses without unnecessary depth. When it comes to GMO articles, you are a staunch defender and seem to repeat many of the same claims other GMO supporters make, almost word for word. You go to great length in a non-confrontational way to attack anyone with a different opinion than your own. It's gentlemanly, certainly, but it's also sharply one-sided. This is the *only* topic on Slashdot that you repeatedly put great effort into constructing elaborate responses to.

Are you a paid shill? Or do you have some personal stake in GMO like your job relates to it?

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents have worked well for some fruits, like the Ruby Red grapefruit (patented 1933) and pluots/apriums (1978, although pluots didn't really take off commercially beyond niche markets until very recently, when the patents expired). They're not the only means of financing development, however, especially since there weren't any plant patents in the US until 1930, yet there was certainly hybridization and innovation before 1930. The most important varieties of tangelo were never patented, and, if you've ever tasted a Minneola, you'd recognize them as the clearest evidence of man's ability to trump God's creations.

There are plenty of people who try to breed new plants Because They Can, just to see what they get as a result. Most "research" prior to the twentieth century was of that variety, especially in the New World (there were earlier plant patents in the Old World, although not nearly as common as they've become in the past century).

Since the 70's there have also been PVP's (Plant Variety Protection certificates) that work like patents in some respects, except that they allow farmers to save seed for future crops and to sell to neighbors, which accommodates the traditions of American farming culture that Monsanto's patent lawsuits threaten. That doesn't quite apply to apples or oranges, being tress and all, nor is it quite "open-source," but it's a better solution for the grains and veggies than Monsanto's iron grip.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[darkHanzz]

... yet somehow, when genetic engineering is involved, the same basic facts of population genetics are suddenly terrible and proof that the technique itself is bad

A noticeable difference is that by cross-breeding the changes are slow (minor per generation), whereas by GM they can be huge (glowing mice). When some scientist has a bad morning, and releases his latest frankenstein into the wild, we could be majorly **-ed. So natural selection acts as a fail-safe against one mistake.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[stenvar]

The real problem is "close source food chain" vs. "open source food chain". That is why GM food - Monsanto style - is bad. Really bad. Unfortunately the anti-GM movement has taken a different path of protesting against the science, rather than this very basic fact.

Patents last about 20 years. Monsanto's patents on the first generation of GM food are expiring next year. That means that everybody will be able to use those seeds freely, and if they are any good, benefit from them (each farmer can decide that for themselves). It also means that Monsanto has had to innovate to come up with the next generation of GMO seeds, which have significantly improved yields. Those too will be in the public domain probably 15 years from now. And the cycle repeats.

When it comes to biotech and drugs, the patent system is largely doing what it is supposed to: creating innovations that then fall into the public domain after a while. And the situation is not comparable to closed source because patents expire after 20 years. For software, it's nominally about a century for corporate copyrights, but in practice, that can be extended almost indefinitely; also, the innovation cycle for software is shorter, making the problem even worse. So your analogy doesn't hold.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

or at least no other cases have been reported.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a nice trick, but I see what you did there.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

It also ups the ante in the arms race of evolution, which isn't universally seen as a good thing.

It certainty is a bad thing, which is why millions of people protested conventional breeding when late blight overcame the conventionally bred resistances in tomato and when hessian flies overcame conventionally bred resistance in wheat. Oh wait, that never happened because it would be absolutely idiotic, yet somehow, when genetic engineering is involved, the same basic facts of population genetics are suddenly terrible and proof that the technique itself is bad. Perhaps it is because the vast vast majority of the opposition to genetic engineering is coming from those with no background in agricultural or plant science and thus due to their complete lack of context it seems reasonable to them.

The point with conventional breeding is that the respective original plants are already in the wild. Since they had a lot of time to crossbreed, one is pretty sure that the results are not competitive in free nature since otherwise they'd be ubiquitous by now. Indeed, most breeds are known not to be competitive in that they require quite a bit of chemistry and catering in order to compete successfully against weeds, plagues and insects.

And they respond to it. It's somewhat funny that there are some old forms of wheat ("Dinkel") which are basically only available organically grown. The reason for that is that the comparatively low yield can't be significantly improved using chemical fertilization and protection so it's not worth trying.

But I digress. The same (being tested for millennia in the field to not be a competitor in the wild) can't be said by combining genes via non-natural mechanisms. Bringing them into this world may be a move about as smart as bringing rabbits and then dogs to Australia. And it's not reassuring that apparently Monsanto is not even able to contain seeds never used in production.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Cyberax]

So STOP EATING YOUR CORN AND BREAD NOWWWWW!!!!

Seriously, wheat and corn are so genetically fucked up by humans that you should stop eating them if you are afraid of a couple of new genes in GM products. And these genetic changes are not harmless. For example, wheat lost a lot of its protein content and fat compared to the wild precursor. It also gained a couple of allergens (probably from cross-pollination by another close species).

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Deluvianvortex]

conversely, why do you post as an AC, but chide others on post histories?

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[pla]

Um no, they found one plot and told us about it.

Not much of a literalist, eh?

If they haven't told us about it, then it remains "untold". That might mean zero, it might mean a few other fields, it might mean 90% of fields. But no matter which, we have UN-TOLD acres.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole "Green Revolution" is based on the use of fossil fuels. It caused the population to explode to currently 7, in the ner future 9 or even 11 billion, completely dependent on a limited fossil resource which is running out. I really would not call him "one of the greatest humans"... the suffering of millions of people when oil price hits $300 a barrel and the world food price index shoots up will be on his shoulders.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

But do those protesters have alternative solutions to feeding the world?

The only somewhat practical one I've heard is we all go vegan, or at least stop eating most meat (high input meat)

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[turp182]

I would be interesting if Monsanto was also working on insects/plants that can defeat their products as they come off of patent protection...

Of course nature is doing this already (for patent protected products), Roundup resistant weeds are spreading very quickly it appears (25% expansion in 2011, 51% in 2012, per the link):
http://farmindustrynews.com/herbicides/glyphosate-resistant-weed-problem-extends-more-species-more-farms

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it about GMO that drives people to this sort of hysteria?

If you really want to watch your karma tank some time, try defending Monsanto and GM crops around here, even once. Like pointing out how GM crops have drastically improved crop yields and actually helped a lot of starving people in the world. Or how the farmer that got sued by Monsanto was knowingly buying black market seeds that he KNEW were Monsanto's strain--not because he was some innocent babe in the woods who just got accidentally cross-pollinated, but because he was just too fucking cheap to pay for the legal seeds.

Posting AC for obvious reasons.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[TWiTfan]

It also ups the ante in the arms race of evolution, which isn't universally seen as a good thing.

Newsflash: Farmers and breeders have been "upping the ante of evolution" for thousands of years. Human interference in evolution has given us a LOT of beneficial improvements to plants and animals alike over the centuries (not to mention making my cute poodle possible).

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider what modern agriculture did to the tomato.

Made it cheap enough for anyone to buy regularly and ubiquitous enough to purchase pretty much anywhere on Earth at any time of the year? Oh noes!

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[TheGratefulNet]

agreed; its not that I care so much about 'modifying' the genes and creating frankenfood (lol); but that its closed and locked-out and THAT is what is harmful.

lawsuits, stopping farmers from having a choice, forcing their hands to keep re-buying seeds from monsanto (or get sued) - THAT is the evil that most of us really care about.

you can be a profiteering bastard all you want but NOT when it comes to food and basic sustenance for the world. at some point, greed and unbound capitalism MUST be limited!

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[johanw]

Maybe 2 extra countries in Asia didn't want any US corn anymore, but a lot of countries, like the whole EU, already didn't want it even before this.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[johanw]

Maybe patents expire after 20 years, but doesn't Monsanto press contracts on farmers that essentially forbid them to grow their own seeds? And such contracts seem to be even enforcable, legaly or by threat of costly legal cases.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[johanw]

And removed any taste from it to such a level where many people were no longer interested in buying them.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[chrish]

I'm more concerned about companies ending up with monopolies on the world's wheat/corn/etc. supplies. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is set in a near-future world where "competition" between companies like Monsanto (in the form of genetically engineered diseases targeting your competitor's crops) has completely pooched the environment.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[fldsofglry]

Whoops, meant to mod up, but accidentally hit redundant. Trying to undo moderation.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

"It also ups the ante in the arms race of evolution, which isn't universally seen as a good thing."

Does that mean 'Day of the Triffods' is reclassified as Non-Fiction?

"Calling objection "hysteria" doesn't make it so. Some protesters are quite enlightened and think long term."

Sure it does. Simply denying 'hysteria' doesn't change anything. I guarantee you, there'd be a lot more hysteria were it not for GM crops. Starvation, not just for Africa anymore. Your cup of latte? No cup anymore, resources had to be diverted. New car, nu uh. Not without a second mortgage. Mortgage? Nope. Land seized for old-fashioned crops that require more space to grow. E-85? Joking, right? No room.

Next time protestors protest, they should be thankful they are able to protest in a park or on the street instead of another mandatory field. They should be happy they are fed and protesting peacefully instead of a hungry war-torn state. And that you can sit comfortably at a state of the art computer system, made possible in part by GM.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

There were no shortage of Anti-Monsanto campaigns, but companies can change names quickly enough when its necessary to shed a bad PR image.

In practice, its worth realizing that "No GM" is a tactic, not a principle. Where the alternative was Monsanto's plan to make all non-roundupReady corn economically extinct (its business plan was to eliminate all non-GM corn before its roundup patent expired, thus making farmers dependent on its corn & roundup deal), "Stop GM" was a simpler slogan and campaign to win. NOW we should be having the nuanced debate over which GM technologies are acceptable, and which are not.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it about GMO that drives people to this sort of hysteria?

Probably the facts:
  - GMO crops are very expensive and require a company to provide seeds year in and year out
  - GMO crops have caused the poor famers to be driven out of buisness (in India, there are THOUSANDS of SUICIDES related to the introduction of GMO crops)
  - GMO crops are single variant and more likely to have isues with pests and disease than multiple variants
  - GMO crops consistently require more and more fertilizer
- GMO crops contain about 25% the nutrient that their non GMO cousins provide
  - GMO crops can be laced with fertilizer WITHIN the product

Gee, ummm, what's NOT to like. It's a MONEY MAKER!!!!

Re: Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe, like myself, he is annoyed by all the OMG GMOs are evil nonsense. The anti-GE crowd is no more informed and every bit as superstitious as the anti vaccine crowd.

Every GMO is different and should be judged on its own merits.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Monsanto doesn't press contracts on anyone. Farmers agree to those contracts for the right to sew those seeds. Don't like it? Don't buy it. Do what farmers have been doing for centuries. Evidently farmers think the GMO crops are worth it.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

While i'm not a fan of Monsanto's pricing methodology, I do believe in some control over the usage of these foods. I am not a plant scientist (or any scientist for that matter), but I have read several articles discussing running one field with these GM crops and another without to ensure that the total population of pests does not universally gain the traits to overcome the GM crop's resistance, as well as other things. I think there's a proper way to use these crops, but I think that way is better driven by regulation and not by the market (and normally i'm a pro-market, anti-regulation guy, if that means anything). Currently the only control method is the patents companies like Monsanto have, which is imperfect and mostly benefits Monsanto, but it's better than no control. It would be better if the patents were run out and the usage of these foods was regulated which includes giving the FDA some teeth and backbone to enforce it.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't there food allergies to worry about? I thought a lot of these grains were developed for live stock and humans cannot eat them.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[stenvar]

I would be interesting if Monsanto was also working on insects/plants that can defeat their products as they come off of patent protection...

If they did, it would be a criminal act and they would face enough liability to go out of business. It would also be against their own business interests because they are competitive even in a generic market, and their follow-on products also depend on glyphosate.

Of course nature is doing this already (for patent protected products), Roundup resistant weeds are spreading very quickly it appears

Well, that happens to a lot of new crops and pesticides. I don't see how that is an argument against Monsanto or GMO. Twenty years of having the option of using herbicide-resistant crops is still better than none at all.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[stenvar]

Farmers choose to buy and plant Monsanto because they get the same or higher yields with less work; nobody forces them to do that. Furthermore, when they buy Monsanto's seed, they aren't "forbidden" to grow their own seed. Rather, patent law forbids them to do anything at all with Monsanto's seeds, but Monsanto gives them a license to do one thing (plant the seeds) but not do another thing (grow new seeds).

As far as I can tell, Monsanto is exactly doing what plant variety patents are intended to let them do: they develop new varieties, make 20 years of profits from them, and then the new varieties fall into the public domain. There isn't even anything GMO specific to that.

http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/roundup-ready-patent-expiration.aspx

Also, let's not forget that these crops are mostly planted by big agribusinesses, and they aren't going to be tricked or pushed by Monsanto. If you want to get upset about something, get upset about the perverse amount of subsidies we give to the agribusinesses.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[arth1]

Yes, evolution (including breeding) is incremental. It doesn't make big leaps. This gives nature time to weed out fatal flaws.
New strains don't rapidly outcompete the existing ones and then turn out to have a fatal flaw that only manifests in special conditions. When we say "rapid" in evolutionary context, we mean dozens or hundreds of generations.

With gene replacement, all bets are off. When replacing a gene, did we also remove the proteins that code for resistance to ashes? Or bugs that only come around every fifty years? How about dormant viruses that pop up every century - is the protection the same?
Even in the cases where we have a full genome, we don't know even a fraction of what the combination of resulting proteins actually do. One day, we will know more, but right now, we're basically fumbling in the dark, much like the alchemists of yore mixed and heated things to see what happened, having no clue whatsoever. We're not just fumbling, we're bumbling.
Which is all well and good - for learning. But not for unleashing on the world. Yes, lead pipes and asbestos insulation were great inventions too, and you would be ridiculed if you spoke for showing caution.

The problem is that we don't understand what we're doing, and I think we need more understanding first. Today, it's "Hey, this flounder gene appears to protect against freezing, and probably a few more things we don't know. Let's splice it into a tomato, replacing something we also don't know what does, and see whether it carries over. Then market forces will quickly replace the existing crops of tomatoes with our strain. What could possibly go wrong?"

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[arth1]

But do those protesters have alternative solutions to feeding the world?

Prophylactics, education, and turning groups that prohibit either into useful fertilizers would be a good start.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[arth1]

It certainty is a bad thing, which is why millions of people protested conventional breeding when late blight overcame the conventionally bred resistances in tomato and when hessian flies overcame conventionally bred resistance in wheat. Oh wait, that never happened because it would be absolutely idiotic, yet somehow, when genetic engineering is involved, the same basic facts of population genetics are suddenly terrible and proof that the technique itself is bad. Perhaps it is because the vast vast majority of the opposition to genetic engineering is coming from those with no background in agricultural or plant science and thus due to their complete lack of context it seems reasonable to them.

You, on the other hand, show yourself to be completely ignorant of how evolution works, gradually, selecting for successful genes over large amounts of generations. Our breeding isn't doing anything that nature isn't already doing - we're pushing the scale of selection, but we're not the only selector.

When major upheavals occur in nature, it doesn't say "let's create a new kind of animal with scales on the feet so it can survive running over hot lava flows, and nostril hairs that can filter out the ashes." No, it will favor the existing strains that are the least vulnerable. Even if those are sub-optimal. But after a dozen volcano eruptions, hundreds of years apart, chances are that more of the species that survived have genes that make them better deal with that situation.
Genetic replacement doesn't work that way. You tear out one piece and put another in, not understanding everything that either the piece you took out nor the piece you put in does. You know one effect of that change. And gamble on not fumbling something else. And you don't give nature a time to catch up - your strain is spread by market forces, and an ability to rapidly outcompete is prized.

The lack of knowledge we currently have is what's dangerous. Especially when combined with greed. Let's learn more and do it right, instead of this fumbling and grasping for short term profits.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

God, how dumb can people be? This is an open air experiment being conducted on the human race without controls, without consent, and from companies with track records of being consistently wrong about safety. And studies NOT bought and paid for by the industry show cause for alarm. Further, the fix is in with our government, so instead of honest hearings on the issue, we get green lights on for-profit activities that could seriously harm the food supply. You call it hysteria to ask for labeling and prudence? I'd say that your accusation is hysterical.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[arth1]

No, Monsanto doesn't press contracts on anyone. Farmers agree to those contracts for the right to sew those seeds. Don't like it? Don't buy it. Do what farmers have been doing for centuries. Evidently farmers think the GMO crops are worth it.

The problem is that the farmers aren't competing against Monsanto. They're competing against their fellow farmers, and the judge are the buyers. If you "choose" not to use Monsanto seed, you choose not to be able to sell, because your neighbor farm that uses Monsanto gets a higher yield and can sell cheaper. No one will buy your produce at the higher prices, and you won't break even.

This is not a choice. Conventional food farming is dead. You can switch to a different type of farming, like ecological or niche products, but you cannot run a conventional farm profitably in the US anymore without going GM. Your "choice" is hollow, and like saying "you don't have to breathe air if you don't like the smell".

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[squiggleslash]

That the consequences are irreversible. You can't put the genie back in the bottle again.

What's that supposed to mean? That the technology can't be uninvented? Well, duh. The same applies to... well, anything. That a bad gene can't be made to disappear? That's going to depend but it's hard to see why making something resistent to a particular pesticide (and only one at that) is anything unusual in nature anyway or likely to cause problems down the road.

It also ups the ante in the arms race of evolution, which isn't universally seen as a good thing.

No, really, it doesn't. Realistically, selective breeding, or spreading pesticide, has more consequences for evolution than making a particular seed line resistant to one, and only one, pesticide.

Calling objection "hysteria" doesn't make it so. Some protesters are quite enlightened and think long term.

He called it hysteria because only some protesters, as you admit, are remotely enlightened and are legitimately thinking long term. Most are just parroting bizarre prejudices that are a mixture of reading too much Michael Chrichton and hating Monsanto because, well, it was one of the makers of Agent Orange and PCBs and that just proves they're evil because nothing ever changes.

The ones that are enlightened? Probably that tiny minority that are saying "OK, I can see how this mutation isn't a bad thing, but for the love of whatever please don't stick Terminator genes in or if you do, seriously consider how you're going to provide those seeds."

But those aren't the majority. The majority are the people who seem to think that Roundup Ready corn is going to interbreed with frogs causing them to reactivate dinosaur DNA because FAMINE.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[jfengel]

Well... not "disagree", exactly, but I'd consider it up for some debate. Borlaug did indeed save hundreds of millions of lives from starvation, but it created other problems of overcrowding (lack of access to water, increased violence from too many people crammed in together, disease, etc.) In some places it simply shifted the problems of starvation to larger populations. The number of hungry people in the world is expected to hit a record billion people:

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29231
http://www.wfp.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/600x400/photos/600_bis_Total_Hungry_People_2001-2009.jpg

I really don't intend this to diminish the sheer number of lives that Borlaug has saved, and some places have done much better in than others in taking advantage of the opportunity. For the past few decades the problem isn't really about quantity of food, per se, but rather the difficulty of getting it where it's needed despite local instability (including, just today, a murderous attack on UN aid personnel in Somalia).

But I do think that Borlaug's achievement doesn't reach its full capability without population control and decent government, and if we had those things Borlaug's extraordinary accomplishment might be unnecessary.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

They're licenses, not contracts. When the seed is planted, grown, and sold, the license is no longer in effect. They won't be able to do this when the patent expires. They simply make you sign a atatement saying that you know the terms and are laible if you break them.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

Without the patents, like it or not it would not I do not see how it would be possible to invest so much money into something that you could not recover the R&D costs/deregulation costs on.

It's extremely easy to invest money into anything. While you may not understand why someone would want to, that does not actually prevent them from doing it.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Mashiki]

You realize that in the majority of those cases where hunger is an issue, it's due to the government's itself right? He spent the last 15 years of his life trying to get Africa to catch up and get on board. Then again, I trust anything from the UN as about as much as I trust the Obama saying "they aren't spying on you." :)

Really in itself, his best statement is you can't improve government or society on human misery and suffering, in turn you can't change the world on an empty stomach.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[the eric conspiracy]

You are engaging in sophistry. It is not possible to examine every wheat plant in the US so we have to use inductive logic to come to a conclusions as to the extent of the contamination.

The conclusion that the USDA came to was that there is contamination in one location. Which they told us about.

Untold has two main meanings:

1. Not told or related.
2. Incalculable or vast.

The situation here fits neither of these definitions.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[cangrejoinmortal]

While I agree with you that most of the anti-GMO movement are just the usual granola smoking paranoid bunch (and since I'm a liberal, a vegan and an environmentalist I know that bunch quite well, some of them are even my friends), and that the technology holds promise to mankind, that doesn't mean that all criticism to Monsanto's is unscientific and pure fear mongering. Round up is toxic to ocean's photosynthetic life (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10646-009-0446-7#page-1 I offer a link of just one study, not because you cant' use google, but because the last time I said this here someone told me it was not backed up by facts, which is of course epistemologically impossible so I offer science) and their GM tech allows to spray it indiscriminately cause it won't kill the crop, and this is an issue in an already very troubled ocean environment.

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

can i call bullshit on your comment?

Re:Ruin the US wheat crop, get a prize!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help notice the dishonesty in your representation about why people are opposed to Monsanto, so most of your examples and declarations about people who are against Monsanto's GM stranglehold amount to little more than corporate propaganda.

I'll let the more intelligent interested readers decide for themselves, as there are many posts here that explain in excruciating detail why it is Monsanto simply can not and should not be trusted, and why people like yourself are not who or what they represent themselves to be.

Oh, and nice try to mitigate the "risk" for Monsanto, but it's unnecessary, as they've been exempted from legal action for anything they might do that's grievous and criminal, thanks to the current administration. But then, as a tool for them, you knew this already, didn't you, you lying fraud.

Cool a Skull And Bones Guy (Kerry)

[Anonymous Coward]

Give an award to a guy who condones death on the world and the world food supply.

Makes sense.

Yes all the dangerous studies mean nothing. Look aside and everyone praise the deathmongers patting each other on the back.

Please view this for the reality of the situation:

http://www.gmofilm.com/trailer.aspx

Re: Cool a Skull And Bones Guy (Kerry)

[EGSonikku]

Do you have a non-biased not-crazy-person source?

Who woulda thunk?

[macbeth66]

Winning an award for poisoning people and contaminating innocent neighbor farmers' fields.

Re:Who woulda thunk?

[Anonymous Coward]

The makers of DDT and Agent Orange have got our best interests at heart. What could go wrong?

Re:Who woulda thunk?

[Anonymous Coward]

The proper word is stealing their neighbors crops by letting pollen fly in the wind. Which brings up a couple of facts: My wife is asian and she plants many non-traditional for USA plants for crops in the garden. Several of the varieties are immune to roundup and were never GMOs. Does Monsanto own these seeds too? Obviously these plants carry the Roundup Resistant Gene and Monsanto owns the gene. Any crop which contains the gene even at 1% of the crop content is by court ruling property of Monsanto. The fact here is that lawyers made the wrong defense argument for the farmers. The appropriate law that should apply is the "Law of the Sea". Literally a ship which is abandoned can be claimed as property of anyone who takes it. This applies to the air and aircraft as well. This means that abandoned to the air pollen should become property of anyone who gets it. Get this argued in court and Monsanto is in real trouble. In the mean time people need to get their heads correct in this whole GMO issue.
(1) GMO process is not stable. Its use in plants causes the GMO genes to spread among the plant community without regards to any species barriers as example of Roundup Resistant Weeds. This is an artifact of the methodology.
(2) GMO process cannot be removed once in the environment. Once moved in it spreads and grows it doesn't stop.
(3) GMO process is not inventing. It is merely taking an existing gene which was not invented by man and moving it around.
(4) GMO process is not science, it is more a random shot. It may carry other genes that are unanticipated in consequence.
(5) This is playing with real dangerous stuff if you consider the consequences of "Invasive species" already.

Re:Who woulda thunk?

[LordLimecat]

Do tell? What sort of poisoning has occurred?

Really, the thing that makes me saddest isnt the comments on slashdot, its their moderation. How exactly is hysterical fearmongering insightful?

Re:Who woulda thunk?

[squiggleslash]

Also Monsanto turned me into a newt.

When homophones attack.

[inexia]

Cell not sell.

Freudian slip

[Anonymous Coward]

The award was given for devising a method to insert genes from another organism into plant sell, which could produce new genetic lines with highly favorable traits.

Indeed.

By the by, who is in the running for the World Feeding Hungry People Prize this year?

Re:Freudian slip

[Anonymous Coward]

By the by, who is in the running for the World Feeding Hungry People Prize this year?

Hitler and Satan. It was close this year.

gmo

[Anonymous Coward]

"which could produce new genetic lines with highly favorable traits" or kill us

Re:gmo

[Will.Woodhull]

Those "highly favorable traits" are resistance to the herbicides that Monsanto also sells. For every USA acre sown with their GMO corn they can be sure of selling an appropriate amount of Round Up to treat that acreage at least a couple of times.

The foreign markets will be more lucrative, though. Many countries in South America, Africa, and elsewhere do not have the regulatory mechanisms to assure that no more than a certain amount of Round Up is applied, and that it is only applied when the weather is good for keeping it on the cultivated fields. That means that Monsanto will be able to sell much more Round Up per acre to these foreign users, who can splash it around like holy water. If the morning's dose gets washed into the streams by the afternoon's rains, what the heck, it doesn't cost that much to just spray the fields again the next day.

Of course the ecosystem does not have the genes to protect itself from Round Up. But since the effects of poisoning it will not show up until after the fatter end of year bonuses to the Monsanto's executives, there is no reason for this company not to push their GMO products AND their wonderful herbicides.

There is a whiff of corruption about the USA State Department now. I am really surprised and disappointed that John Kerry is involved in this. I thought he had more sense.

Re:gmo

[Anonymous Coward]

And what about the efforts to derive drought resistant rice through GMOs, or golden rice, or Bt to prevent the application of insecticides?

Re: gmo

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize glyphosate is off-patent now, right?

Re:gmo

[Will.Woodhull]

Monsanto is developing drought resistant rice through selective breeding, which will compete with 4 or 5 other drought resistant strains of rice already developed in other countries. There are no stories about Monsanto doing any drought resistant GM rice. If it was happening, Monsanto would be blowing its horn about it. So parent post is factually wrong on this one.

Monsanto has gained approval to market a drought resistant GMO corn. The only thing is, it is not any better than strains of drought resistant corn already on the market, developed at agricultural colleges to meet the specific conditions of various areas. The Monsanto GMO corn is not as good a solution as the strains that have been bred for each region. Monsanto's long term goal is to probably combine "Round Up Ready" GMO corn with GMO drought resistant corn and drive all other strains out of the market. That will ensure an increase in the flow of Round Up, which is one of Monsanto's biggest revenue streams. (What Round Up can do to a trout streams is something else again.)

There has been a noticeable increase in Bt resistant pests in areas where Monsanto GM Bt crops have been grown. Perhaps it should not be a surprise that not much research on this "aberration" is being funded.

Aren't you the little Monsanto fanboi. But your post does provide a convenient place to air some of the other problems that are associated with Monsanto's exploitive business practices.

Re: gmo

[Will.Woodhull]

Yes, the principle ingredient in Roundup went off-patent more than 10 years ago. Monsanto holds patents on the mechanisms, processes, and specific formulations used to produce the various Roundup poisons. I understand that Monsanto says about half of its revenues come from Roundup and associated products (I think that includes the Roundup Ready seeds, too.)

The literature Monsanto provides on using Roundup on Roundup Ready fields is specific to Monsanto products. That is, you plant with Roundup Ready corn, then you can either buy the right type of Roundup to use on that field or you can try to figure out what concentrations, surfactants, other additives you could use if you buy your poison from one of Monsanto's competitors. In some cases the use of specific Roundup poisons is apparently specified in the licensing contract on the seed (the same contract that states that the farmer cannot harvest seed for another year's crop from his Roundup Ready fields).

Re: gmo

[drinkypoo]

You realize glyphosate is off-patent now, right?

You realize that Monsanto themselves still produces more than half of all glyphosphate anyway, right?

Re: gmo

[Anonymous Coward]

You're simply wrong about this- the method of manufacture patents are also long dead. Not to mention that in the current environment, Monsanto would be insane to try such clearly illegally anti-competitive contracts as ones which require use of their branded herbicide

Re:gmo

[Anonymous Coward]

You are 180 degrees off. What farmers (including here in the USA) do with insecticide/pesticide/herbicide is try to save money by spraying less than the amount the manufacturer says is appropriate. Additionally farmers aren't stupid, they know damn well what happens when you spray something on a field and it rains shortly afterwards: it's washed away taking their hard-earned money with it. Finally glyphosphate is low-moderate toxicity, has very low chronic toxicity, has very low or no reproductive, mutagenic, tetragenic, or carcinogenic effects, has low bioaccumulation, binds tightly to soil so it doesn't spread easily, and biodegrades rapidly. It's not perfect (nothing is) but it's pretty damn good.

Why yes! I do pesticide R&D and have international collaborators from the developing world, and no, I don't have any affiliation with Monsanto. Posting as AC because this thread badly needs moderators who know something about GMOs and farming and I have mod points.

Re:gmo

[stenvar]

Those "highly favorable traits" are resistance to the herbicides that Monsanto also sells. For every USA acre sown with their GMO corn they can be sure of selling an appropriate amount of Round Up to treat that acreage at least a couple of times.

Glyphosate (Roundup) has long become generic, and many companies sell it.

Of course the ecosystem does not have the genes to protect itself from Round Up.

Farmers have used herbicides since long before herbicide resistant crops. Roundup-Ready crops mean that farmers can get by with a single appiication and space their crops more closely. If anything, that reduces exposure of "the ecosystem" to herbicides that "it does not have the genes to protect itself from". So how is this worse?

Re:gmo

[stenvar]

Monsanto has gained approval to market a drought resistant GMO corn. The only thing is, it is not any better than strains of drought resistant corn already on the market, developed at agricultural colleges to meet the specific conditions of various areas. The Monsanto GMO corn is not as good a solution as the strains that have been bred for each region.

So why would farmers buy it if it's not "as good a solution"? This isn't like the drug business where doctors are tricked into spending more of other people's money. 5% less yield means 5% less revenue to the person who selects the crop.

Monsanto's long term goal is to probably combine "Round Up Ready" GMO corn with GMO drought resistant corn and drive all other strains out of the market. That will ensure an increase in the flow of Round Up, which is one of Monsanto's biggest revenue streams. (What Round Up can do to a trout streams is something else again.)

Glyphosate is generic, so people can buy it from other companies. And farmers were using glyphosate (and other herbicides) long before GMO. If anything, they need to use less now to produce the same amount of food.

There has been a noticeable increase in Bt resistant pests in areas where Monsanto GM Bt crops have been grown. Perhaps it should not be a surprise that not much research on this "aberration" is being funded.

Pests will develop resistance to almost any pest control measure over time. That doesn't mean that everybody suddenly becomes an organic farmer, it means that we keep developing new pest control measures. That's no different from the constant arms race that any competing species in nature engage in, whether it's gazelle and lion or bt and bollworm.

Aren't you the little Monsanto fanboi. But your post does provide a convenient place to air some of the other problems that are associated with Monsanto's exploitive business practices.

So far, your objections are pointless. And "Roundup Ready" crops are going into the public domain starting next year. So at that point, you can forget all that Monsanto bashing, because then choosing those crops is really no different from choosing any other crop, GMO or not GMO. Who are you going to blame then for farmers choosing generic "Roundup Ready" crops?

Re:gmo

[Anonymous Coward]

If the morning's dose gets washed into the streams by the afternoon's rains, what the heck, it doesn't cost that much to just spray the fields again the next day.

Of course the ecosystem does not have the genes to protect itself from Round Up. But since the effects of poisoning it will not show up until after the fatter end of year bonuses to the Monsanto's executives, there is no reason for this company not to push their GMO products AND their wonderful herbicides.

I think you are missing the point. The fatter end of year bonuses will come as a result of poisoning the soil until nothing but Monsanto seeds will take root anywhere. This is not a hit-and-run scheme. It is a hit-and-hit-and-hit scheme.

Re:gmo

[Anonymous Coward]

So why would farmers buy it if it's not "as good a solution"?
If you dont listen to your bosss you'll get in trouble

Re:gmo

[Inda]

You shouldn't have posted as AC.

Gardeners have know for years that Round Up (glyphosphate) becomes innert almost as soon as it hits the ground. You only need to keep pets away for a couple of hours - it says that on the bottle too.

Re:gmo

[Anonymous Coward]

In my entire extended family I'm the third person to not grow up on a farm. I'll have to run that "listen to your boss" stuff past some relatives, I'm sure it'll be good for a laugh.

Re:gmo

[Anonymous Coward]

BT resistance: Medline lists over 900 papers when searching for "bt resistance" and Medline doesn't even index a lot of entomology or agricultural journals.

Re:gmo

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently the post you have responded to got you so angry that your reading comprehension went bad. It happens. Something pushes one of your triggers and if you have not yet become adept at yoga, zen, or one of the other modes of emotional self control, you can only see the phrases that pop out at you and you think you come away understanding what was said. When you missed maybe more than half of the content, due to your irrational anger.

You missed the part where the problems with misapplying Roundup are in non-USA, foreign, outside of American borders, farms. Like in places where English is a second language. Like in places that do not have an effective regulatory system to prevent abuse of Roundup.

You may want to consider going to an anger management seminar or two. It could help not just with your high blood pressure and other stress related health disorders, but also with your reading comprehension.

Posting anonymously since your anonymous post does not deserve any other response. In fact there is really no objective, third party, justification for what I have written here. It's just fun to poke a fan boy who has gotten so emotionally involved in defending his owner's turf that he has gone blind and deaf to reasoned argument.

Loyal minions. What would Monsanto do without them?

Re:gmo

[Will.Woodhull]

So why would farmers buy it if it's not "as good a solution"?

Because Monsanto can offer marketplace incentives that can offset the poorer crop economics of their seed.

Farmers that hedge against possible drought by planting a portion of their acreage in a lower yield drought resistant corn while putting the rest in Roundup Ready corn can benefit from bulk discounts if they buy all their seed from Monsanto. Monsanto can also offer other incentives to buying their seed over regionally developed alternatives, in the same way that Walmart can drive smaller, more specialized stores out of business. Regional seed producers are by nature too small to compete with a global producer like Monsanto, and the non-Monsanto strains of drought resistant corn will gradually disappear as those seed farmers turn to raising crops that have a broader market.

As discussed elsewhere in this thread, the Roundup herbicides are complex mixtures of glyphosphates with adjuvants that are sometimes more poisonous than the glyphosphates themselves. The farmer cannot buy a pure glyphosphate, a pure surfactant, and the various other agents and mix his own blend in a corner of the cow barn. He can only do limited research on the various pre-mixed combination products that he can find on the Internet. And he has limited time to spend on this research: he has to be out working his fields. So Monsanto's large advertising budget can carry the day.

Re:gmo

[stenvar]

The farmer cannot buy a pure glyphosphate, a pure surfactant, and the various other agents and mix his own blend in a corner of the cow barn.

Your view of agriculture is about a century out of date. Farms today are largely big agribusinesses receiving large government subsidies.

He can only do limited research on the various pre-mixed combination products that he can find on the Internet. And he has limited time to spend on this research: he has to be out working his fields. So Monsanto's large advertising budget can carry the day.

Do you think farmers are dummies? There are journals, trade magazines, reviews, and lots of other sources of information. And any farmer who can't figure out what the right product is for his needs will go out of business.

Farmers that hedge against possible drought by planting a portion of their acreage in a lower yield drought resistant corn while putting the rest in Roundup Ready corn can benefit from bulk discounts if they buy all their seed from Monsanto.

So you are saying that Monsanto is evil because they give bulk discounts? How is the farmer worse off than if Monsanto didn't exist at all or didn't give discounts?

I think the bigger part you're missing is the following. Either Monsanto's products work or they don't. Either there are generic products that work better for less money or there aren't. Farmers that make the right choice will stay in business, and farmers that don't will go out of business. That's what is supposed to happen. You still haven't explained what's so horrible about Monsanto.

Re:gmo

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd respond but my post bears no resemblance to your description of it.

Re:gmo

[Will.Woodhull]

The information quotient in this thread is now bouncing on zero.

Thanks for playing.

Re: gmo

[Will.Woodhull]

You have a very simplistic view of manufacture if you think Monsanto is using exactly the same equipment and processes as those they developed 40 years ago, and has never patented any part of their improved processing as they upgraded.

But then there have been other indications that your world is so much a simpler and happier place than the world I live in. I do not know how to make my fantasies as real as you have managed to do.

In any case, the information value of this thread has been exhausted. Thank you for playing.

Re: gmo

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardly. Try searching "monsanto" and "glyphosate" on the PTO database. You'll see, at best, 7 years remaining on a method patent. I guess I'll have to accept your assertion that somehow those particular methods are completely critical to planting a glyphosate-resistant seed, since that's what we were apparently talking about.

either buy the right type of Roundup to use on that field or you can try to figure out what concentrations, surfactants, other additives you could use

Yeah, you could also read the same materials, like, say, US 7,141,722:

"According to one embodiment, the DNA construct confers to the plant cell tolerance to at least one application of Roundup Ultra.RTM. at a rate of 16 ounces (oz) per acre, for example, and in other embodiments, glyphosate tolerance extends to one to two or more applications of 16 oz per acre, 32 oz per acre, or 64 oz per acre, for example."

Oh my gosh! Apparently there's some disclosure of what concentrations to use on the resistant seeds in the resistance patents themselves! Gee, I wonder if agricultural scientists might have been studying the issues you raise and publishing results, too?

Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[Bob9113]

Hey, if Obama can win the Nobel Peace Prize for expanding our wars and the war powers assumed by his office, why shouldn't a company that that profiteers on regulatory agriculture monopolies get the World Food Prize? I understand The Pope is being considered for an equally prestigious anthropology prize.

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[slashmydots]

I hear he's up for the 1st annual arming rebels for peace (ARFP) prize too, lol.

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[Nidi62]

Hey, if Obama can win the Nobel Peace Prize for expanding our wars and the war powers assumed by his office, why shouldn't a company that that profiteers on regulatory agriculture monopolies get the World Food Prize?

To be fair, Obama didn't win the Nobel prize for ending wars. He won the prize for not being Bush.

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[radarskiy]

"Obama didn't win the Nobel prize for ending wars"

Correct. Henry Kissinger won the Nobel prize for ending wars.

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[argStyopa]

"...expanding our wars and the war powers assumed by his office..."

Now that's not exactly fair; Obama won his Nobel actually for doing nothing.

In fact, given the schedule of the deliberations, it was decided before he was even formally president (Jan 21).

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[markass530]

expanding the wars? Are you retarded? He closed one out and has the other closing out., I Dont like the guy or his politics but at least be truthful

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[jsepeta]

And yet, Obama has proven himself to be the Über Büsh.

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[Myopic]

Better joke: The Pope is being considered for a prize for protecting children from sexual predators.

Ah, ha ha, it's so funny how the Catholic Church is directly responsible for the rapes of untold and countless children for over a thousand years! Ha, ha, ha, oh me oh my those wacky Catholics!

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[Myopic]

Seriously, after those disastrous eight years, all Obama had to do was say the word "peace" in a couple speeches. That's a damn low standard for the Peace Prize. In my opinion it is an embarrassment to the Nobel Committee for picking such a bad nominee, and I think Obama should have refused it. He could have given a speech listing a bunch of deserving candidates, pointed out that Presidents wage wars and cause death (which he did in fact point out in his Prize acceptance speech), and in the end he would have looked like a conscientious man for doing so. Instead he took the Prize, gave that odd acceptance speech, and joined the Committee in looking like a bit of a fool.

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

To be fair, Obama didn't win the Nobel prize for ending wars. He won the prize for not being Bush.

To be fair, the genetic engineering techniques pioneered by Monsanto have enabled us to correct that.

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably speaks worlds about Americans' grasp of history that parent is modded Funny 5 while this one sticks at 1.

I think it was Tom Lehrer who said something like "Political satire became obsolete when Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize."

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[Nidi62]

expanding the wars? Are you retarded? He closed one out and has the other closing out., I Dont like the guy or his politics but at least be truthful

Then you shuld be truthful as well. Obama didn't close out the war in Iraq. He followed the agreed upon withdrawal timetable already set in place by Bush and the Iraqi government.

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[markass530]

Semantics but sure

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[Hatta]

To be fair, Obama didn't win the Nobel prize for ending wars. He won the prize for not being Bush.

But, he is Bush.

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[LordLimecat]

company that that profiteers

All companies that arent "non-profit" "profiteer". If they dont, they go out of business. I absolutely LOVE the appeal to emotion, however.

Re:Fits With Obama Peace Prize

[HeckRuler]

He hasn't unilaterally invaded any nations based on a lie... yet. But yeah, there's the same slippage into a police-state that we saw with Bush. And we got a taste of that DURING the election. Anyone remember him voting to grant immunity to the telcoms when the NSA was caught red-handed spying on everyone? Yeah... So Obama was our best choice. And a hell of a lot better than anything the republicans even considered.

All the spell check in the world...

[bmo]

won't fix stupid.

>plant sell

Uh huh...

--
BMO

Re:All the spell check in the world...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying they're not injecting the genes into the sale of the plant? Did you see this was for Monsanto?

Re:All the spell check in the world...

[Will.Woodhull]

It's all about selling more Round Up. Since the GMO plants are resistant to it. That it involves plant sales is only a logistical device; the strategy is to get everyone everywhere to put Round Up on all their acreage.

Later on, Monsanto will buy the rights to the Miracle Grow trade name. And develop a line of chemicals that can be sprayed on all the ecosystems to help them recover from the mysterious global ecosystem diseases.

Monsanto Round Up, and Monsanto Miracle Grow. The stuff our surviving grandkids will be able to rely on to help them get to the 22nd century.

Monsanto won what?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like saying Hitler won the fucking nobel peace prize.

The biggest danger to the human race right now is not terrorists or asteroids. It's Monsanto. These money hungry whores are destroying our food resources and replacing them with engineered replacements without realizing the full long-term impacts on both our health and the planet's.

Re:Monsanto won what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly what evidence is that based on? The only "evidence" I've seen against GMOs is really bad science http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/once-more-bad-science-in-the-service-of-anti-gmo-activism/

Re:Monsanto won what?

[manu0601]

Using roundup ready GMO means roundup is used on the plant, and you get roundup in you food. Using BT-producing GMO means there is botulism toxin on your food. Are you sure about the consequences?

Re:Monsanto won what?

[J053]

Using roundup ready GMO means roundup is used on the plant, and you get roundup in you food. Using BT-producing GMO means there is botulism toxin on your food. Are you sure about the consequences?

Uhh... Bt-producing GMO plants have a gene from Bacillus thuringiensis in their DNA. Bt has been used for years as an alternative to more-harmful pesticides, and can even be used on certified organic crops. It has nothing whatever to do with botulism (from Clostridium botulinum).

You really should make sure you know what you're talking about before you make outrageous and trivially refutable statements. Just sayin'

Re:Monsanto won what?

[ehynes]

BT stands for Bacillus Thuringiensis, not botulism toxin. It is a bacteria that kills some species of insects by damaging their guts. It poses no known danger to humans, but its widespread use could adversely affect the balance of insect populations.

Re:Monsanto won what?

[manu0601]

Yes, of course it is not botulism toxin, I should not post too early in the morning.

Anyway, my point holds. Are you sure eating toxins from bacillus thuringiensis is fine? And you did not comment on roundup?

Re:Monsanto won what?

[Anonymous Coward]

alot of nations are beginning to ban GMO crops, and most ppl simply wont deal with GMO related products.

Re:Monsanto won what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Milk has a bacteria in it that has the BT gene. Been drinking that for thousands of years.

Re:Monsanto won what?

[phantomfive]

Anyway, my point holds. Are you sure eating toxins from bacillus thuringiensis is fine? And you did not comment on roundup?

And you didn't comment on his point that using bacillus thuringiensis reduces the use of more harmful pesticides.

Good scientists spend a good portion of their time attacking their own ideas (because, as Richard Feynman says, you are the easiest one to fool). Do that, Manu0601, and you will be wiser.

Re:Monsanto won what?

[manu0601]

And you didn't comment on his point that using bacillus thuringiensis reduces the use of more harmful pesticides.

Because I am not convinced pesticides are the only way to go

Re:Monsanto won what?

[phantomfive]

Because I am not convinced pesticides are the only way to go

I know, it conflicts with your preconceived notions so you are having trouble. In addition to my previous post, you would do well to increase your knowledge, so you can have a strong base from which to attack your own ideas.

Re:Monsanto won what?

[manu0601]

Yeah, sure. Your attitude is so condescending that it just drives me away from any discussion. Let us say you are right on everything. I know nothing and I shall remain mute. I assume that will make you happy, and it will save my time. Have a nice day.

Re:Monsanto won what?

[phantomfive]

I assume that will make you happy,

No, I'll be happy if you get educated and teach me things.

Re:Monsanto won what?

[manu0601]

I will try to teach you something: Few people will teach you things if you first call them ignorant before they even lay down some arguments. The reaction you can expect is that people will consider talking with you is a waste of time, before even trying.

The funny thing is that I am almost certain you will find some way to disagree with that and consider your attitude as open minded.

Re:Monsanto won what?

[phantomfive]

Great, as long as you're starting to think about these kinds of things.

Re:Monsanto won what?

[alexo]

That's like saying Hitler won the fucking nobel peace prize.

Hitler didn't, but Arafat did.

News Flash!

[Anonymous Coward]

Evil corrupt guy gives another evil corrupt guy an award for furthering the the cause of evil and the sterilization of the human race. Film at 11.

Bait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bait-story, much?

Just like the Nobel

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

There appears coincidentally to be a connection between the Nobel and this so-called World Food Prize. The Nobel awards were started by the man who invented dynamite. The Food Prize, according to the NY Times, "was started in 1987 by Norman E. Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for bringing about the Green Revolution, which vastly increased grain output, and who thought there should be a Nobel Prize for agriculture". One may well argue that dynamite contributed to world peace in the same way the Green Revolution, with its focus on massive crop monocultures, contributed to global food production.

A Monsanto executive winning this award shouldn't be surprising, even without the allegations of financial "compensation". The Green Revolution was all about increasing the supply of food, never mind the quality, or the ecological or social side effects. At who knows what cost, there's no question Monsanto technology helps increase food output.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[atriusofbricia]

There appears coincidentally to be a connection between the Nobel and this so-called World Food Prize. The Nobel awards were started by the man who invented dynamite. The Food Prize, according to the NY Times, "was started in 1987 by Norman E. Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for bringing about the Green Revolution, which vastly increased grain output, and who thought there should be a Nobel Prize for agriculture". One may well argue that dynamite contributed to world peace in the same way the Green Revolution, with its focus on massive crop monocultures, contributed to global food production.

A Monsanto executive winning this award shouldn't be surprising, even without the allegations of financial "compensation". The Green Revolution was all about increasing the supply of food, never mind the quality, or the ecological or social side effects. At who knows what cost, there's no question Monsanto technology helps increase food output.

Did you save more than a billion people from starvation? Did you prevent untold suffering and and social problems by ensuring sufficient food for a growing population? No. No you didn't. You know who did? Norman Borlaug.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[the eric conspiracy]

> One may well argue that dynamite contributed to world peace in the same way the Green Revolution, with its focus on massive crop monocultures, contributed to global food production.

You can argue that if you want. But then you have to explain away the fact that Borlaug saved more lives (now estimated in the billions) than any man to walk the earth.

Good luck with that.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[drinkypoo]

http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/2010/06/green-revolutions-dark-side-effect-disease/
http://newsdesk.org/2008/08/dark_side_of_th/
http://www.hrw.org/news/2005/09/04/dark-side-ethiopia-s-green-revolution

etc etc

At "best" the "Green Revolution" postponed the inevitable and meanwhile increased the number of people who would eventually inevitably die from starvation as the land becomes unable to support farming due to depletion and destruction of soil diversity inherent to these methods.

HTH, HAND

Re:Just like the Nobel

[yndrd1984]

Just because something is predicted by repeatedly-incorrect Malthusian doomsday scaremongers doesn't mean it's inevitable.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[the eric conspiracy]

The Green Revolution saved billions from famine and disease. As scientific understanding of the process and technology improve leading to improved sustainability. Current systems are very wasteful; some 30-40% of all food ends up not being consumed. RIGHT NOW we produce enough for estimated stable long term population levels of the planet.

http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/dsd_sd21st/21_pdf/agriculture_and_food_the_future_of_sustainability_web.pdf

In the meantime birth rates in human populations are declining due to the overall economic improvements. Some areas are even experiencing sub replacement birth rates.

http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf

Re:Just like the Nobel

[ChromeAeonium]

Be grateful that you were born in a part of the world that is able to complain about that which has saved the lives of millions of people. Not everyone is so fortunate.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[drinkypoo]

Just because something is predicted by repeatedly-incorrect Malthusian doomsday scaremongers doesn't mean it's inevitable.

Ask the Indian farmers killing themselves because their land will no longer produce crops due to so-called "green revolution" farming practices what "inevitable" means.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[Anonymous Coward]

Every Malthusian doomsday scaremongering prediction avoids a scary Malthusian doomsday. World is saved by making every day a Malthusian doomsday prediction day.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[Anonymous Coward]

http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/2010/06/green-revolutions-dark-side-effect-disease/
http://newsdesk.org/2008/08/dark_side_of_th/
http://www.hrw.org/news/2005/09/04/dark-side-ethiopia-s-green-revolution

etc etc

At "best" the "Green Revolution" postponed the inevitable and meanwhile increased the number of people who would eventually inevitably die from starvation as the land becomes unable to support farming due to depletion and destruction of soil diversity inherent to these methods.

HTH, HAND

... and by that logic, the real problem is not the Green Revolution, but agriculture itself.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and be grateful you are able to type. Not everyone is so fortunate. And so poisoning and robbing millions is ok.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[Anonymous Coward]

The Green Revolution saved billions from famine and disease. As scientific understanding of the process and technology improve leading to improved sustainability. Current systems are very wasteful; some 30-40% of all food ends up not being consumed.

And the main reason for that is that nobody is able to pay for the food. In particular, quite a few third world countries would produce enough food for their inhabitants. Food production happens reasonably efficient in large areas under the control of rich people who maintain control over the production resources with weapons acquired by the sale of the produce on the world market (usually as animal fodder for "civilized" countries). They may have even paid farmers for some of the land, previous farmers who now have a bit of money and are sitting in cities.

Money, as supposed to farmable land, is not a replenishable resource (well, you can distribute the problem on more shoulders by buying weapons: on smaller scales, you are then just surviving as a criminal instead of a potentate).

So the Green Revolution manages to produce more food that nobody has the means to eat. The price for that is terminally reducing the soil to a state where traditional forms of farming will not work any more. So at one point of time one does no longer need weapons but access to chemical plants in order to keep control over the soil's produce. Political stability returns because revolution becomes useless: the land only responds to the call of Monsanto any more.

People will starve even if they take back the land.

So it indeed seems appropriate to compare this to Henry Kissinger receiving the Nobel peace prize for bombing North Korea into oblivion.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[Anonymous Coward]

"there's no question Monsanto technology helps increase food output."

Actually, no. There is signficiant question now. There is quite a bit of recent research that suggests that Monsanto and GMO crops are actually reducing food supply. More over they are using up the resources at a disproportionate rate. The new research shows that organic production, even non-certified organic, is outproducing the pesticide, herbicide, petro driven Big Ag and the GMO are being left in the dust.

Monsanto puts out a lot of press releases and advertisements about how they're feeding the world but the real world research says the opposite.

Besides, there is no shortage of food. There is an over abundance of food. The problem is distribution. The biggest part of the distribution problem is petty warlords, tyrants and such who are blocking people's access to food.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[Anonymous Coward]

Borlaugh didn' prevent anything. He just shifted the suffenring onto future generations. Instead of millions suffering in the past, billions will suffer in the future. The whole "green revolution" is utterly dependent on the supply of fossil fuels, which are getting more and more scarce and expensive.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[Anonymous Coward]

It just occurred to me that food production is actually very similar to energy production. Both food and electricity can not be stockpiled on large scales and due to that we are constantly struggling with the logistics of producing excess supply and transporting it to where it is and is not needed.

If food could be stockpiled for years, then some countries would no longer be hard hit during droughts and other causes of crop failure. Resources now used for overproduction could be used for different purposes. If we could stockpile our energy efficiently then a lot of renewable technologies suddenly make much more sense than they do now and we could get rid of base-load fossil fuel burning.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[Anonymous Coward]

[citation needed]

Re:Just like the Nobel

[drinkypoo]

[citation needed]

If you can't find a citation with google, then you're an asshole. Right now the deaths are being blamed on Monsanto but the fact is that this has been going on in significant numbers for almost a decade.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[drinkypoo]

If food could be stockpiled for years, then some countries would no longer be hard hit during droughts and other causes of crop failure.

If people have a lot of food then they eat a lot, and they make a lot of babies. And the poorer they are, the more babies they make. Look at how many people have been added to the planet in the last decade and where they were added. People cry "hypermalthusian" when you suggest that this might be leading us to a problem. If India's cropland is failing, what of China? I'll guarantee you that the same is happening to them, only we're not hearing about it as much. Transportation of food is only becoming more expensive.

Another truth is that we are not even stockpiling the foods we can stockpile. Grain is permitted to rot rather than being made into processed foods that will keep a long time, and then being shipped to countries where people are hungry — due to the influence of capitalism, which says that we must get paid for our production. As always, we could feed the hungry today, but we would have no plan to feed them tomorrow.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[drinkypoo]

... and by that logic, the real problem is not the Green Revolution, but agriculture itself.

All you need do is look to Africa to see that improper use of agriculture is hazardous to biostasis. Or, you could take a swift peek at the Amazon, probably already past the point of collapse. You could examine the American West, which has only a tiny fraction of the carbon-fixing biomass that it had two hundred years ago, and which is rapidly becoming desertified.

What is missing in our modern societies is cyclical resource utilization. We keep trying to throw things "away", but there is no "away". The only "away" we can access so far is still on this planet. We pump water out of a river, shit in it, semi-treat it, and then put it back in the river for someone else downstream to drink. We need to put the crap back into the soil in order to replenish what has been lost. We could do this without even abandoning the sewer infrastructure by using AIWPS.

We must stop wasting our crap.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[Hatta]

Just because you can kick the can down the road for a few centuries doesn't mean you can do so forever.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[LordLimecat]

postponed the inevitable

In the same way that eating your dinner merely "postpones the inevitable", sure. You might as well just give me your food, actually, since theres no point to you eating it-- youre going to die eventually anyways.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[RichardSP]

If you can't find a citation with google, then you're an asshole.

Actually, the person making outrageous allegations that doesn't provide a citation is the asshole. If it were so simple, why didn't you include the cite in the first place?

Re:Just like the Nobel

[yndrd1984]

Ask the Indian farmers killing themselves because their land will no longer produce crops due to so-called "green revolution" farming practices...

You mean the people who have often committed suicide during droughts for centuries are still doing it? Horrifying yes, but not exactly the "green revolution's" fault.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[yndrd1984]

Just because you can kick the can down the road for a few centuries doesn't mean you can do so forever.

Literally the only other alternative I can see is "give up and guarantee that people die now, in the hopes that possibly someday there might end up being fewer total deaths". How is that not absolute lunacy?

Re:Just like the Nobel

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you save more than a billion people from starvation? Did you prevent untold suffering and and social problems by ensuring sufficient food for a growing population? No. No you didn't. You know who did? Norman Borlaug.

And Norman Borlaug didn't do it for money. He did it so that children wouldn't go hungry. Try a little perspective.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[Anonymous Coward]

From BBC News (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21077458): consider the overall suicide rate in India. Using figures from Professor Jha's findings and population figures from the UN, the suicide rate in India is around 15 per 100,000. The suicide rate among agricultural workers is around seven per 100,000.

How nice it must be to hear something from somewhere and conclude without any effort of your own that it is absolutely true. People (including farmers) in India are killing themselves at shocking rates but to think that Monsanto is to blame is ignorant and lazy.

Re:Just like the Nobel

[volmtech]

Farmers produce food to earn a living. They have thousands of dollars per acre in production cost. Someone has to pay the fuel, seed, and machinery cost. Give my crops away? I'll just let weeds grow ( at least I wont be using any Roundup) and you can starve.

unforseen consequences?

[hurwak-feg]

Can != should. What happens when these plants pollenate other plants? Is there going to be any ecological impacts? Monsanto is playing a dangerous game. As of August, Monsanto has $3,000,000,000 US in cash. This is such a farce. There is plenty of food to go around. It is a distribution problem. With their insane lawsuits, lobbying, and self terminating plants, they are part of the problem. Lets not forgot about that recent case where we found out it is apparently not ok for journalists to investigate the animal side of the food industry. This whole food business is corrupt to the core. Feeding people healthy food is a political problem, not an economic or supply problem. Now they get an award for fucking or food economy and risking environmental/ecological problems? This bullshit is tiring.

Re:unforseen consequences?

[yndrd1984]

What happens when these plants pollenate other plants?

Floral sex? Seriously though, at most it will lead to normal crossbreeding.

Is there going to be any ecological impacts?

With the stuff in use now and currently in development, probably not. In the long run, possibly, but it's hard for me to get upset with an existing technology because it might possibly lead to something else that isn't even on the drawing board yet.

There is plenty of food to go around. It is a distribution problem.

Absolutely right. But that's only because advances made in the last half-century let us grow so much more food. So why stop now and risk turning our merely political problem back into a supply and political problem?

not ok for journalists to investigate the animal side of the food industry

Sure, GMO seed companies and their long history of animal cruelty. *eyeroll*

Re:unforseen consequences?

[hurwak-feg]

"With the stuff in use now and currently in development, probably not. In the long run, possibly, but it's hard for me to get upset with an existing technology because it might possibly lead to something else that isn't even on the drawing board yet." Asbestos tiles and brakes, X-rays for shoe fittings, lead paint. Lots of things have been widely adopted before adequate testing. "Sure, GMO seed companies and their long history of animal cruelty. *eyeroll*" Relevant because it shows how the courts in the midwest, a region with a huge amount of agriculture for the non-US crown, view the agribusiness. "*eyeroll*" It is not necessary to be rude.

Re:unforseen consequences?

[yndrd1984]

"*eyeroll*" It is not necessary to be rude.

Yeah, that did come off as harsher than I meant it to, but you seem to be saying that we shouldn't encourage potentially lifesaving biotech because in a time before the idea of product safety testing existed some people did some things that turned out to be somewhat unsafe. Maybe I'm missing something, but that seems absurd.

Re:unforseen consequences?

[hurwak-feg]

I am not against biotech, I just don't trust Monsanto, and I have my doubts about the FDA. I was tired when I wrote my initial comment so it probably wasn't as well thought out or written as I thought at the time. I apologize if I wasn't clear. GMOs might have different nutritional properties and chemical contents that could cause human health issues or ecological problems.

University of Minnesota lecture notes

I just think it might have been a bad idea to start growing GMO crops on the scale we have before any long term testing has been done. I understand doing a long term study is expensive and might take years or even decades, but think of the scale. Millions of humans health and entire ecosystems are at stake.

I have no role in agriculture other than a consumer, so I don't know if it would be possible to produce enough without GMO's. I think there is a lot of potential in GMOs. I just wish we would have VERY thoroughly tested the technology and were VERY sure of its safety before deploying the technology on such a large scale. This is the reason why I would like to see the US federal government spend more money on R&D. Cutting a few billion from the DoD wouldn't leave the US defenseless and would fund a LOT of research that benefits everyone.

Re:unforseen consequences?

[yndrd1984]

My original issue (admittedly unclear) was mostly around this statement:

Now they get an award for fucking or food economy and risking environmental/ecological problems? This bullshit is tiring.

You seem to be saying that the company shouldn't get recognition for basic research because our patent regime is messed up and we need more safety testing. To me that sounds like a pharmaceutical company shouldn't get an award for a breakthrough in cancer research because their antidepressant is overprescribed.

Re:unforseen consequences?

[hurwak-feg]

Good point. I think you are right. I'll admit I let my dislike of Monsanto cloud my judgement a bit. You are right, if they truly did some quality research, they should be rewarded. I found some other posts discussing Monsanto's involvement with the organization giving the award interesting. If the their influence on the organization swayed things, then that is a different story.

Biased much?

[mosb1000]

Monsanto is aiming for complete control of global food production through its extremely controversial genetically modified crops. These GM crops not only pose unknown risks to human lives, but also threaten the human existence at large.

Really? How can you say for certain that something poses "unknown" risks? And if the risks are unknown, how can you say for certain they threaten all of human existence? And given the expiratory nature of the patents monsanto uses to enforce their intellectual property, isn't it impossible for them to actually achieve "complete control of global food production through its extremely controversial genetically modified crops?" Wouldn't they need the political clout to extend patents to an unlimited timeframe and require use of their GMO crops in all cases before they could have complete control, or even dominance.

Re:Biased much?

[hurwak-feg]

I agree that global control is a stretch, but their US market share is near monopoly.

Re:Biased much?

[the eric conspiracy]

Nonsense. The idea that Monsanto has a monopoly is flat out wrong.

There are several major crops where Monsanto has a lot of competition, and others where Monsanto doesn't even offer products. Corn, which is Monsanto's biggest product has a 40% market share.

In only soybeans could you say they have a monopoly. And the first generation patent that gives Monsanto the edge in this market expires in 2014.

http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/roundup-ready-patent-expiration.aspx

Re:Biased much?

[hurwak-feg]

You forgot corn. They have a 90s percentage of the corn market. What do you think most farmers in the US are growing?

Re:Biased much?

[mosb1000]

He didn't forget corn, it's right there in his second paragraph!

There are several major crops where Monsanto has a lot of competition, and others where Monsanto doesn't even offer products. Corn, which is Monsanto's biggest product has a 40% market share.

The problem is that you haven't accurately defined what you mean when you say "market share." If you go by acres planted, monsanto only provides 35% and like he said, that is by far their biggest seller.

So how do you two have such wildly different numbers? You are counting seeds with patented genes licensed by other companies from Monsanto as having been sold by Monsanto. Who is right? One thing is for certain, Monsanto is not going to achieve global dominance as long as they license their patents to competitors.

what?!

[slashmydots]

They're just as "too big to fail" as the big investment companies except unlike last time, you can't eat money. That deserves a prize? They deserve to be split up, have all their lawyers disbarred forever, and all their ridiculous "patents" invalidated. THAT would be a benefit to global food.

Great

[DaMattster]

Let's give an award to an employee of a company that's basically polluting the agricultural gene pool! Boo on Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, and their ilk!

Hmmmm

[DaMattster]

Giving a Monsanto exec a food award is like giving a freedom award to an NSA employee.

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Snowden?

Re:Hmmmm

[DaMattster]

Snowden would be the notable exception! He actually would deserve the award.

Re:Hmmmm

[prefec2]

Its like giving Obama the Peace-Prize. Oh wait... They did. Never mind. The also awarded the EU with that prize and as a citizen of the EU I am still waiting for my share of the prize money or the equivalent of two high quality jelly babies/gummy bears.

They told me if I voted for Romney

[AntiBasic]

They told me if I voted for Romney, we'd see a regime increasingly in bed with multi-national companies unethically exploiting the world's food supply... and they were right!

Re:They told me if I voted for Romney

[Anonymous Coward]

They told parent if he told the same smug joke over and over, he would be modded up by other smug Slashdotters and gain karma . . . and they were right!

Re:They told me if I voted for Romney

[Anonymous Coward]

you are terminally stupid if you think the other party would have done things differently.

Re:They told me if I voted for Romney

[prefec2]

Romney would have done exactly the same. However, he would act faster, as he has less a conscience mocking him. So the difference is more in the time when you get there and not in where you go. I am looking forward to the EU-US trade union, so I can see how European food standards, established over decades, will be obliterated by that treaty in minutes.

BTW: That would not have happened with Romney, as he might not have found the EU on the map. (Just kidding of course).

Lol, I saw sell, and..

[Macchendra]

I just knew that this would be a nerd s&^%storm over the proper speling (sic) of cell.

"... genes from another organism into plant sell"

[Anonymous Coward]

Plant sell? Well that still makes sense, and cents, even if it was an accident.

Unlike most posters...

[Anonymous Coward]

... I'm not going to send this to the grammar-Auschwitz. Instead, I must point out the fact that Kerry(D) backs Monsanto... Par for the course in the fight between the 99% vs the 1%...which in and of itself is another fraud. Anarchists (no gov't) thinking that Communism (total gov't) would be the perfect ally... Fools, so many fools...

Surprise! Monsanto has been paying the WFP

[Camael]

If you look at the website of the World Food Prize org, you will find :-

The World Food Prize sincerely thanks the following sponsors for supporting its annual programs: ...
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation DuPont Pioneer John Deere Foundation
The Mathile Institute for the Advancement of Human Nutrition Monsanto DuPont Pioneer
Ruan Transportation Management Systems Claudia and Paul Schickler....

So, Monsanto is one of the sponsors of WFP. A pretty important one too, as shown by this link which used to exist on the Monsanto website.

The World Food Prize Foundation on Friday accepted a $5 million contribution from Monsanto Company to ensure the continuation of the annual World Food Prize International Symposium -- now known as the "Borlaug Dialogue." The funds support a renewed fundraising campaign to transform the historic Des Moines Public Library building into a public museum to honor Dr. Norman Borlaug and the work of the World Food Prize Laureates.

When you look up the WFP website , you will find that "The World Food Prize is sponsored by businessman and philanthropist John Ruan and is located in Des Moines, Iowa."

Not in itself damning, until you realise that :-

Monsanto has more facilities in Iowa than in any other state in the country

Monsanto has made substantial investments in Iowa

Monsanto actively lobbies to change laws in Iowa

I think its fair to say that Monsanto has a lot of influence in Iowa.

I question the integrity of this "prize".

Re:Surprise! Monsanto has been paying the WFP

[Anonymous Coward]

Iowa is one of are best food producing states. Your in food production...your in Iowa that's just how it is.

Re:Surprise! Monsanto has been paying the WFP

[Anonymous Coward]

I grew up on a family farm and my parents still farm to this day. You need to think like Archie Bunker, the only people to get farm aid (welfare) are farmers because they are so important (cannot mange money) all the other lazy lowlifes need to get a job. To them and most others Monsanto and the other ag companies can do no wrong. 99% of the farmers could care less about the environment, GM contamination, GM side effects, over use of chemicals, and animal conditions to name a few. A lot still dump their excess chemicals on to the ground.

Re:Surprise! Monsanto has been paying the WFP

[HeckRuler]

Hi, I'm a software engineer living in Davenport Iowa. I was born in Omaha. I went to school in Ames, Iowa (ISU) and got my degree in computer engineering. I work on Avionics, OBOGS.

Just to inform the ignorant masses that live on the coast and think the world doesn't have electricity once you get past Jersey, we live in the same first world nation and have all the toys and advances that you do. We just don't sell hotdogs to wallstreet execs. We also do not have wooden sidewalks. We don't ride horses to our one-room school. We don't (all) love country music.

I know two people that work in food production. An uncle that inherited my grandfather's farm, and his son that will inherit from him. My father didn't get the farm, he moved off to the city. My 2 other cousins didn't get the farm. They also moved off to the city. And honestly, my farming relations are lucky. A lot of family farms have been bought up. Because farmland has been consolidated because a single person can farm a ludicrous amount of land these days because the machinery is so big. And my uncle likes round-up. It makes crops easier to farm. Monsanto, for all their evil shit, really does have a viable product that helps people. And actually, there's quite a lot of food production jobs in Davenport because we have a Kraft plant, but I don't know any of those people.

Also, fun fact: Iowa by and far grows FEED, not food. Feed corn is corn that we feed to cows and such in feedlots. It's food we feed to our food so our food tastes a little better. Ok, a LOT better. America could raise their cattle purely on grazing, but it takes a lot of land, they don't get as much meat as fast, and ultimatly it's more expensive. Iowa doesn't feed the nation. It feeds the cattle that the nation eats. Because we like meat.

I think what you actually meant to say is that Iowa is strongly tied to agriculture industry. It impacted our code-shop when one of our engineers jumped ship to John Deer (they make tractors, btw). If the agriculture industry tanks, John Deer will have less sales and less R&D, and will let engineers go, who will seek employment at my job, and I'll face more competition and suffer for it. In theory. In truth we could probably use a few more coders.

Re:Surprise! Monsanto has been paying the WFP

[Anonymous Coward]

The Monsanto supporters don't have anything to say about all these little ugly details, I wonder why...

Too little, too late.

[Anonymous Coward]

Soylent products have been known about for years.

Let's sum up...

[Arkh89]

Today : Microsoft listened to customers and removed the "always connected" feature from the XBox, US House wants sustained presence on moon and Mars, Microsoft starts $100k security bug bounty program, Monsanto CTO wins World Food Prize...

April's fool... check.
International Joke dat... check.
Carnaval... check.
SYSTEM FAILURE.

Monsanto corrupting academic journals similarly

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprise! Monsanto has been paying the WFP

It's no surprise at all, because it's been revealed that Monsanto has been using this same tactic for years to corrupt academic journals to ensure that no contrary research gets published.

Take a look at The Goodman Affair: Monsanto Targets the Heart of Science. It's enough to make you weep for the biomedical and horticultural sciences.

This is very likely to be why Monsanto shills so often dismiss contrary research with "It's not published in a top peer-reviewed journal." They known damn well that they control those "prestigious scientific journals" and nothing harmful to their interests will get published in them.

"Prestigious journals" my foot. They're only prestigious to those who aren't aware of the endemic corruption.

Nice technology, bad laws

[taj]

The technology is great stuff. The real valid reason Europe and others complain goes back to the laws around these innovations - it really is innovation not round corners on a dumbed down interface.

Lets say the innovation results in a 20% increase in production. A farmer producing crops by traditional technology becomes a cash loss as prices decline. A farmer producing with the new technology does not own the seed and perhaps the product as they sign contracts to work for monsanto. The IP owner dictates what the cash crop worker does, how much they are paid and if they get to be viable next year.

That's markets, right? more efficient things come and less efficient things go. The measure of success of the market is the price we pay for food.

So we move to a contract mentality and family farms go away. You get short term goals with no concern about the productivity of the land from one generation to the next. Land does not work that way. You can do a decades worth of damage very quickly.

But what stake does Monsanto have in this game? So total productivity drops 30% due to short term corporate farming practices. It applies to farms moving back to traditional technology as well and Monsanto has a 20% advantage. Small farmers go away. Monsanto wins. We lose.

I have no fear of eating GMO agricultural products other than the damage it does to our future.

What about Jail

[bdevlin]

So when will they put everyone at that company in jail for monopolizing and tainting the natural order of the worlds food supply?

Re:Mmm Tomacco!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty soon Homer's Tomacco will be on the shelves.

Ptoooy! Gimme more!

bad analogy

[stenvar]

Monsanto's products aren't copyrighted, they are patented. Those patents expire after 20 years. Roundup-Ready is becoming generic next year, at which point you can use it freely (since Roundup has also become generic). And Monsanto has to innovate in order to compete with its own generic product.

What has made Microsoft so dangerous and threatened to monopolize the industry was the unreasonably long duration of copyrights. And as you may notice, Microsoft Windows is fading from significance as well.

Re:bad analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a bit tired of people saying MS is losing significance. They're irrelevant. They're out of date. Reality is there's hardly anywhere to go but towards lower marketshare when you had 80-90% marketshare to begin with. There is still no real alternative to Microsoft in the business and government sectors, and in the consumer sector its still the dominant OS.

In real terms: Linux = insignificant
Microsoft = generalists & dominant
Apple = specialists & students

I'm the first to try out alternatives. I had 2 macs at home. The macbook I just switched out for windows (yes, on purpose - windows is still better for gaming and for business applications). The macmini drives the entertainment system (see, specialist application) and works great with apple tv, ipads, and iphones.

Linux I abandoned when I ran out of time to futz with settings about 10 years ago.

Re: bad analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

You game at the office? You gave up on Linux 10 years ago? All fine by me, just don't portray it like this should apply to everyone.

Re:bad analogy

[EzInKy]

Linux I abandoned when I ran out of time to futz with settings about 10 years ago.

I set those settings 15 years ago and haven't looked back. Actually I wish I could say that were true, but along came KDE4 and Gnome3 and screwed everything all up. Keeping my fingers crossed that XFCE will leave the environment that is perfect for me alone.

Re:bad analogy

[Cyberax]

No they don't. GM crops are nothing magical, they just have several extra genes inserted. They mutate with the same speed as "normal" crops (which quite often are already hideous mutants only alive because of human support).

Re:bad analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

Well your no fun! I hate realists

Re:bad analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

The middle-age fiefdoms relied on swords and defense weapons being unavailable to farmers, so they were dependent on their lord for "protection". The modern fiefdoms rely on chemical plants as production means putting serfs in a bind.

Farming is largely done by big businesses and corporations, even in developing nations. Those businesses know how to take care of themselves; they aren't serfs. That's also how serfdom ended in Europe: it's not that there was an outbreak of liberty, it's that serfs simply became unprofitable. They were kicked off the land and often emigrated to the US, where they engaged in small scale farming a little longer before being sucked up in the industrial revolution.

You're clinging to an outdated notion of farming and building an agricultural policy on it. Even if Monsanto was the evil trickster you imagine it to be, it's tricking other corporations who can take care of themselves. Unfortunately, people like you are responsible for the prodigious waste of agricultural subsidies.

Re:bad analogy

[HeckRuler]

. And Monsanto has to innovate in order to compete with its own generic product.

Cue the blister-rust and weevils from the calorie men universe. Shit'll get bad if they pursue the more aggressive forms of competition.

Re:bad analogy

[vandamme]

Ten years ago, Linux WAS scary. That was 100 "computer years" ago.

Prizes are Special

[betterprimate]

This is when the committee shall drink and feast. A day's work. They will applaud themselves. It is now night and they will retire to their study. Not in their rightful place between the butcher and the con, but from their pedestal of penthouses that overlook the common lot of us. From there, they will survey the domain they've taken.

They are bored. No, not boredom. The feeling they feel is an implosion of nothingness. The feeling of purposelessness. A dry heave; heartless and undefined. As they return to their desk, they reach for their revolver. Tonight, below their precipice, another child's dreams are preserved. To bloom. One day, another day.

Re:Prizes are Special

[Antiocheian]

beautiful

yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

Give hime the Peace Nobel Prize too, please. Like Obama. WTF is wrong with this world?

Now what are we gonna have?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama's Nobel peace? ... Oh wait!

Monsanto

[Goodl]

First against the wall when the revolution comes

It was a close race

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Ronald McDonald was the runner-up.

It's *PEOPLE*!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"insert genes from another organism" ...
"highly favorable traits" ...

IT'S *PEOPLE*!

Apple not oxidizing when cut

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you need a GM organism for not oxidizing when cut?

Just apply a few drops of lemon juice at the cut if it bothers you! It does not oxidize.

Re:Nobel Prize

[Anonymous Coward]

Re-vivifying dead tissue is not necessarily related to "immortality".
Nobels have been awarded for less.