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How 4H Is Helping Big Ag Take Over Africa
Lasrick writes 4H is in Africa, helping to distribute Big Ag products like DuPont's Pioneer seeds through ostensibly good works aimed at youth. In Africa, where the need to produce more food is especially urgent, DuPont Pioneer and other huge corporations have made major investments. But there are drawbacks: "DuPont's nutritious, high-yielding, and drought-tolerant hybrid seed costs 10 times as much. While Ghanaians typically save their own seeds to plant the next year, hybrid seeds get weaker by the generation; each planting requires another round of purchasing. What's more, says Devlin Kuyek, a researcher with the sustainable-farming nonprofit Genetic Resources Action International, because hybrid seeds are bred for intensive agriculture, they typically need chemicals to thrive."
You're right, Go forth and starve. Youre pre industrial farming methods will support you, because we is evul.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
What are the possible choices for farmers?
1. grow crappy crops with free seeds and lots of expensive water,
2. grow good groups with seeds that you need to pay for but use less water?
#2 will make you more money, so the cost of the seeds is a non-factor. #1 will make you poor, because when it doesn't rain your crops die.
So, what exactly is the issue?
Heavin forbid, CHEMICALS! How dare we use chemicals to produce more food. The next thing you know, they will require copious amounts of OHO, a known chemical responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands every year.
This post is anti-science, ignorant and maliciously stupid. "Big Ag" is why we don't live in a Malthusian apocalypse. We could never sustain our population without modern, advanced farming techniques.
Perhaps the alternative is seeds for fragile crops that will die in a drought and never yield much despite access to cheap chemical fertilizers? Look, I get that it's fun to hate on "Big Ag", but I also get that hippies are fond of biting the hand that feeds them. And Big Ag doesn't just feed hippies, it feeds the world, and there currently isn't any good substitute for it.
Instead of disparaging charitable works in Africa that a rational person will perceive to be doing good to feed hungry people, why don't you focus on donating money to promote "open source" crop lines somewhere in the States so there are good alternatives to give to Africa and the rest of the world? Put your money where your mouth is (in a couple of senses).
Devlin Kuyek makes a living off of selling fear of modern living. Why should we believe anything he says? Or are you simply trying to confirm that there's one born every minute.
because hybrid seeds are bred for intensive agriculture, they typically need chemicals to thrive
...unlike natural, free-range grains that are invulnerable to pests and thrive under the gentle light of the waxing crescent moon. Sorry, but you lost me at "chemicals". Yes. They're matter-based lifeforms, and need a whole slew of chemicals to exist.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Sure, hybrid corn gets weaker by the generation, but it's also far higher yielding.
American farmers buy it because they make more money buying seeds every year than they would saving seeds. Thinking that farmers from Ghana will not be able to make a rational decision between buying industrial seed every year or saving whatever strain they have already from year to year is a not so subtle form of racism.
Won't this contaminate and F up the natural seeds people rely on when they can't purchase these? Is the fact that they get weaker purposely engineered? (can't rtfa just now)
Chemicals are *everywhere*, in all of our food, and many will kill you! I only eat chemical-free food, mainly neutrons and assorted leptons.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
You should go without food. Because ... politics
"Big Agriculture", and not "Big Silver". I thought this was about mining silver in Africa.
Proprietary seeds are an obvious trap. Perhaps it lets produce more, but they are expensive, and if farmer have to take debt for it, they become dependent on international market price for the goods the produce. If it drops, they are toasted. It will drop at some time.
I've never owned a farm.
I've never planted or harvested a crop.
I've never used fertilizer.
I've never seen GMO seeds.
I've never gone a day without food.
I've never been to Africa.
But I know this is really bad.
Sent from my iPhone
"While Ghanaians typically save their own seeds to plant the next year, hybrid seeds get weaker by the generation; each planting requires another round of purchasing. What's more, says Devlin Kuyek, a researcher with the sustainable-farming nonprofit Genetic Resources Action International, because hybrid seeds are bred for intensive agriculture, they typically need chemicals to thrive."
There's just so much wrong with that statement, I don't know where to begin. 'bred for intensive agriculture' is a meaningless statement. What's preventing farmers from saving their own seeds is threats of litigation from the GM corporations not that the seeds get any weaker. Hybrid seeds don't need chemicals to thrive, the seeds are bred to be immune to chemicals such as glyphosate. Through over use, weeds are developing resistance to these chemicals, meaning that more of it has to be used.
Not for all colleges, but there are plenty of colleges that are less likely to admit students who've taken part in 4H.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I love a good conspiracy theory, but any journal that publishes a decent article showing a reproducible harm from GMO crops will be hansomly rewarded.
I've never owned a farm.
I've never planted or harvested a crop.
I've never used fertilizer.
I've never seen GMO seeds.
I've never gone a day without food.
I've never been to Africa.
But I know this is really bad.
Sent from my iPhone
You don't know anything about the topic, and aren't involved or affected, but you're going to pass judgement on other people's choices.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Technology can be used for good and feed the world. DuPont wants to focus their efforts in assuring that they monetize their tweaks to nature's developments, even at the cost of others' lives or prosperity. When you put more effort into sterile plants that require chemicals than towards nutrition and human survival than you should not be permitted to enter the world food market. Its criminal extortion plain and simple. I guess DuPont's Napalm sales are down so this is another bad use of science.
A few years ago, this was started: http://www.opensourceseediniti...
For some reason they haven't spread into Africa - but are all over North America/Europe in a large way, someone needs to start providing higher quality seed options for the poorest farmers of the world rather than leave the door wide open for obvious pillagers like most of the shameless extortionists in the Big Ag industry. Once they convince people of the higher yields and lock them in, ah.. one of the saddest things in the world - and seeing it happen in the poorest nations just compounds that feeling. These people need food. Technology can help make that happen. The technology that will make that happen - must not be patented and created with self-degradation causing forced-repurchase as a 'feature'.
It's a classic addiction scam like a drug dealer or pharmaceutical company would use. Get the mark (in this case farmers) hooked on seeds that only produce high yields when given large amounts of fertilizer that they sell, then as the yields decline they need more fertilizer, helping them reap higher profits and farmers are stuck with low yield crops
As for their farming methods. Humans on all continents have for decades, even before the green revolution, planted enough food and known how to grow more than enough food to feed everyone. The problem has been the distribution of it.
The true alternative is to not live in places where food won't grow. Evolution is a lie when it comes to humans. These dumb fuckers would have been dead eons ago if this wasn't true.
This post is spot on, because many of the people impacted by the influx of GMO seeds are sustenance farmers, not profit based farms. Attempting to convert them to a money making agriculture system does not work very well because the people have little to no income sources to go buy food that people are selling. The few jobs these companies create do not support the economy, and the pay is so low that it can't support the economy.
The current reality is that these small governments must subsidize what used to be sustenance based economies. Until manufacturing, repair facilities, etc.. are functional in the country there is no choice, because there are no income sources. And lets face it, there are no plans to bolster anything else in these economies
In other words, the only people currently gaining from these programs are the people pushing the programs. There is plenty of information out there on the subject, you can start with this one, or this one, or this one (get the point? There is plenty of information). Sure, Dupont is not the same company but a new face on a same exact problem.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It's a good thing you're here to help those incompetent, ignorant, helpless, uneducated, clumsy, idiot African farmers who need your help to decide what seeds to plant.
"the sustainable-farming nonprofit Genetic Resources Action International"
Yea, that's an unbiased and science based organization right there.
Lets see if we can hold a rational discussion without the bullshit. Since the sock puppets are out censoring everything not proGMO and bolstering everything proGMO I'm not confident, but lets give it a try.
Problem with your statement: Invalid generalization. Centuries of study show us that many homeopathic cures do work. As an example, I have a medical doctor who suggested drinking camomile tea to help me sleep, and it works. He could have prescribed a man made chemical to do the same thing with much worse side effects, but he's a great doctor. As another example, Willow bark is a known pain reliever and anti inflammation herb. It's so good in fact that we created a mimic called Aspirin. Scientists look to nature all the time and try to mimic properties we find naturally, and try to synthesize those natural things. So yeah, homeopathic cures are very well proven in the general sense. Natural remedies and poisons are so good that we try very hard to synthesize them for mass consumption and use as well as monetize them.
At the same time, your generalization attempts to claim that GMO foods are proven to be perfectly safe, and we have no equivalent studies compared to homeopathic remedies. Hybridization is not the same thing as Genetically modified where foreign genes are spliced into seeds and foods. People constantly try to claim that because we have hybridized for thousands of years, we know and understand the impact of splicing fungus genes into corn, or insect genes into tomatoes. Which is wrong, the latter techniques are very new and we don't have long term studies. We do know that sometimes things go terribly wrong (and if you don't like that one there are plenty).
People want to know where GMO in terms of these odd gene splices happen, and quite frankly if there is no proven harm there should be no harm in a label. At the same time, since society has become the lab experiment with many of these modifications it should be made easy to track where things go wrong.
Lets not forget that a large reason for GMO seeds is to increase yields by protecting plants from pests. We are already seeing super pests that can bypass the built in GMO protection and creating a much larger threat to agriculture than existed previously.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Kosher labeling is required by the Jewish community, and a Kosher Jew can't purchase anything not stamped and certified Kosher. People pay for the Kosher labeling and won't purchase anything else. The Jewish inspectors that stamp approval take pride in their ability and don't try and hide the Kosher label. They stand by the label and it's prominently displayed on _every_ package. Culturally speaking "Kosher" means "up front", "on the up and up", "open and honest"
You are really trying to compare that to a group that is so afraid of stamping their label on a product that they spend billions of dollars lobbying and advertising to hide what they are doing? If there is no harm, and no fear of harm, Monsanto and Dupont should be proud to stamp the box with their logo and "GMO MADE FOOD!" for all the world to see.
The Government does not have to force Jewish Rabbi's to stamp things Kosher, BECAUSE THEY ALREADY STAMP THE PACKAGE! When companies try to hide ingredients you are damn right people should be concerned and yes the Government should force them to label the package.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Famine, plague, war, or birth control. Choose. I guess you have.
Malthus.
Better to not give technology to those who turn food into more mouths, soldiers, and infected.
Ebola is the cure for overpopulation.
Hybrids have been around officially for over 200 years, unofficially 5000.
It's called selective breeding. It's been going on since man discovered agriculture.
Hybrids loosing effectiveness in subsequent generations, is a well known problem. It's not something engineered in by man. Mother nature is a bitch,
This isn't Monsanto enforcing a patent for their GMO seeds, that do spread that gene.
These are hybrid seeds, with no GMO genes. They've just been carefully selected.
Many hybrids are mules. Look at seedless grapes. The desired hybrid can't reproduce.
The post is a bit skewed, the text for the link to the story tells the story. The author has an agenda.
JROTC is one thing but the Boy Scouts have pretty much become the Hitler Youth. Anyone who strongly rejects those who agree to be part of that organization has my support.
Bullshit. Your statement seems ignorant and ill-informed.
I was in the scouts for several years. The troop was sponsored by a local catholic church, their involvement: they provide meeting and storage space. The kids involved were Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Hindu; White, Brown and Black. Given that it is a quasi-religious organization (technically religious in the "there is a God" and "being reverent is good" sense but not promoting any particular religion or denomination or belief system) and given the age of the kids involved saying that sexual preference is not a topic for discussion is reasonable. And if a kid was being bullied for any reason, including any suggestions of being gay, the adult leaders would be pretty quick to put a stop to that. And most of our leaders were of the former military variety not hippy variety.
Even with the quasi-religious and quasi-military overtones it was a far more tolerant and safer environment than our public high school run by a bunch of former hippies with a politically correct public facade regarding homosexuality. Going the "don't ask, don't tell" route is hardly the hitler youth; and again given the ages of the kids involved and quasi-religious nature of the organization sexual discussions being out of bounds was not unreasonable.
If genetically engineered seeds "get weaker by the generation" then why are GMO plants going to tear themselves out of the ground as the flat-earth lobby insists they will any day now, grow to giant size and stomp through Tokyo, tossing subway trains around like toys and flattening tall buildings?
This line of argument rings with the same consistency as the one we hear from the ultraviolet end of the spectrum: government employees are all stupid, which is why government is infinitely powerful and will destroy us all.
to starve children. They hate us and want us to die. Creating these scheme to kill us is the way of the kind. Just as they love to rape women with barb wire, they love to watch children starve to death.
It's just food and they're just companies. Genetic engineering isn't the tool of the devil and mutinational food companies are no more evil than multinational sprocket companies. If you're ok with globalization in general then you're ok with big food companies. Get over yourself.
There is no confusion regarding homeopathic treatment on my part, you are stuck on the historical description of homeopathy instead of looking at the current definition and use of the term. Current actually goes back to when I was a kid, which could easily be before you were born.
http://homeopathyusa.org/homeo...
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/AR...
http://abchomeopathy.com/r.php...
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.co...
And I even have a link to Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
I won't argue the next points because instead of addressing my points you make a false dichotomy and a fairy tale about people not caring what milk they buy, which is absolutely detached from reality.
In fact, let me change that and address the portion about milk. People read the labels on milk all the time, and in fact if people started selling "Milk" without specifying whether it was from a Cow, Pig, Goat, or Cat people would have an absolute fit. If the grocery store is out of someone's brand of milk, you will see them read label after label until they are comfortable with what they are purchasing. Milk _is_ labelled for all kinds of information, as is just about everything else I can find in a store.
In fact we have seen companies intentionally over label in order to trick people into purchasing their products. People wanting to avoid HFCS have had to learn all of the various names used for HFCS just to avoid unwanted sugar in their diet. There are numerous ways for salt to be labelled, and MSGs are another tricky one. Yet with GMO, people are not given the information. Since Monsanto can spend a few billion dollars over a few years lobbying, this can't be an issue of just money. That should make you suspicious at a minimum.
I'm extremely skeptical that we are worse off, but I'm willing to hear more
Well you seem to be a skeptic about a lot of things that concern most people, but I'll bite. Are the super pests only after the GMO foods or do they attack the non-GMO foods as well? GMO foods produce more so are not impacted as much as their natural counterparts who can't survive super pests. Super pests are a byproduct of the GMO foods, not a natural occurrence. Similarly super viruses are a byproduct of overuse of antibiotics. Science backs both of those stances.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
"hybrid seeds get weaker by the generation" -- False, there is a level of heterzygosity that the population with stablize at. The second generation takes the biggest hit and after you can get up to 2/3 of the yeild for most hybrids of corn. " hybrid seeds are bred for intensive agriculture, they typically need chemicals to thrive." Hybrid seeds can be bred for whatever purpose you want, including low-input agriculture. Even said selecting artificial populations would be most benificial to many of the farmers as you can effectively replant
Its the maket, you have a choice, let the people decide what they want to do. We are not going to feed the world without making some changes to how we grow it. You don't want GMO? Almost every single species that we eat has been genetically modified by a process we call natural selection. Most of the GMO stuff done today lets you get that process done faster. GMO people need to educate themselves and be able differentiate inserting genes for roundup in corn versus making corn bigger\faster\stronger via inserting natural genes. Why on earth would you want to wait a few generations when you could get the same result in one? You shouldn't be allowed to even talk about GMO unless you've tried to grow plants on a regular basis yourself.
See http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted for a 2 year old rebuttal to this article...
I love the hippy dippy people, but between the anti gmo and the anti vaxers people seem to be doing all they can to keep two of the horsemen in business... Unless people stop fucking at the rate they're currently fucking we can't feed the population of the earth without science.
And that's the real rub. The yield from hybrid offspring tends to stabilize after a few generations. But the poisons and fertilizers that those have been bred for kill off the soil. Weedkillers that the commercial grains don't mind affect the more traditional seeds. Insecticides and fungicides kill off the natural soil constituents. Deep plowing by machines leads to much higher evaporation and depletes ground water.
After a few decades, nothing but artificial irrigation (who owns water pipelines and desalination plants?) and artificial fertilizers will work any more.
And that's a much more permanent tie-in than the seeds are.
You know how the anti-piracy kill switch on Microsoft operating systems will let America turn off a country's computers? GMO foods are the same thing except America can stop your country from eating.
Zambia tried to negotiate an arrangement with Monsanto for situations where America imposed sanctions but couldn't come to an agreement so they banned GMO foods. Banning the import of GMO foods is only fair since the country can't grow GMO foods for national security reasons.
Aha! Finally someone who RTFA!
It's hard to tell beforehand if any change will be positive in Africa. Look at the french, who introduced cocoa in Africa years ago. That went very well, until a major price drop occurred and in some regions caused famine because farmers couldn't switch back to other food crops in time.
Besides, GMO has failed big time. Cross pollination has already carried the Roundup resistant genes, f.i. to at least 5 wild species. It's what's killing the cotton belt. These were harmless genes, AFAICT. But there's no telling if mutations in the wild will be harmless.
GMO is not necessarily evil. Look up "Golden Rice". That project had the best of intentions. But if people don't want to eat GMO's, it's end of story. The customer is always right.
All modern gains in agricultural production have been science-based. Period. Improving the sustainability of production systems also can only be accomplished by science. Do you even understand the crops you're discussing? Do you know what a hybrid is? Do you understand plant genetics? Are you familiar with the methods of plant breeding and all the steps you go through to sort out the genetics? Do you even know the basics of farming?
/.
And most importantly, do you know just how close most of the world is to starvation? Probably not--in the West, we're now a full generation away from having a cultural memory of hunger.
Please go and learn some facts about the basics of farming before you put this crap on
Crawl back under your rock you idiot.
Africa has plenty of food, as does the USA. The problem in both cases are societies that don't know how (aren't willing) to reach the poor. If the poor in Africa have access to land, they can grow food. Turning more land over to industrial agriculture just makes the problem worse; as farms get big their output goes more and more to export, with China happy to buy it to feed meat animals. So the problem, like many posed on Slashdot is social, and technological solutions, like those proposed on Slashdot for a huge range of issues, don't cut it -- the last thing that nerds can grasp.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/dont-ask-how-to-feed-the-9-billion.html
that doesn't require chemicals to live.
Using the word 'Chemical' as a scare word shows that the person using it has no real argument against the topic.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Incorrect.
", GMO has failed big time. Cross pollination has already carried the Roundup resistant genes,"
That makes zero sense.
That's like saying 'Cars have failed big time. The pinto had a higher risk of explosion when rear ended.'
The issues about GMO need to be looked at individual. They have been overwhelmingly successful as a group.
Most people don't mind, especially in countries where they need food. What we have is the scientifically illiterate making things up and using FUD. Those people need to stop.
"But there's no telling if mutations in the wild will be harmless."
which is true of every crop, ever.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesa...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The customer is not always right. Government is always right, because it is Government that has all of the guns that allow it to be always right.
There is a reason why africa is still considered the dark continent. It's occupants are just a notch above stone age subsistence existence. It's time that they get their shit straight or get the fuck out of the way and let people who know what they are doing do it. They clearly don't and never have.
I own a dry land farm in Southwest Oklahoma. I don't like the price of GM or Hybrid seed but I sure pay it every time. I need less fertilizer, fuel, insecticide, water and herbicide than with public domain seed. The patents on seed don't last forever and they will still be good in coming years as they are rotated to preserve the patents and to stay ahead in the arms race between insects, weeds and GM plants. Twenty or thirty years form now the GM genetics we use now will be useful again as the pest will have lost most of the resistance the developed to them.
If you look on the drought monitor http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ there is a dark red spot in Oklahoma that been there for years. My place is in the middle of that. Some years have been a bust but the fellow that farms it has harvested the best crop of both cotton and wheat off it ever made in the last 5 years on an unbelievably small amount of rain.
The only thing different is being able to farm it no till due to GM Cotton in rotation with conventional bred alfalfa hay and Hard Red Winter wheat. He kept what little moisture he had by not disturbing the soil. My family has farmed that place for right at 100 years with better average yields almost every year until the last 7 year drought. It will make that up when the drought breaks as they always do. I've been though 3 and my family has been thou 9 and 2 really bad weather events. My grandfather was very impressed by his grand fathers stories of the Year with out a summer. My great grand mother's stories of the winters of 1885-1886 and 1886-1887 when 75% to 80% of the cattle on the range in the USA froze to death in the "Great Dieup" kept the winter of 1899 from killing even more cattle when Galveston Bay froze over in a 5 day cold spell at 9 degrees F.
I'll take modern farming thank you as the world was on the edge of starvation using organic methods in 1900 before the Fritz Haber invented an efficient way to make ammonia from natural gas and electricity.
Red