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  • From: KAKerby AT aol.com
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Now......GMO sweet corn
  • Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2011 02:47:14 -0400 (EDT)

This conversation also seems to have focused on the production end of the spectrum.  I won't argue over whether GMO is needed or not; others can do so much more knowledgeably than I.  But I will point out that distribution from where it's grown to where it's consumed is another big chunk of the equation, as is the "true" cost of production vs what we'd call the retail cost, and the ability of the consumer to pay for it.  Those distribution and cost issues would also have to be addressed, whether any given crop was GMO or not. 
 
Already, a lot of famine in the world is due to distribution and cost when production issues are relatively simple.  And that's not even anything new.  History is replete with examples.  Just within the last 150 years, Stalin's Russian famine and the great Irish potato famine were largely manufactured due to the socio/political/economic conditions of the time.  Those folks starved not because crops were insufficient, but because the powers that be created policies which denied the populace reasonable access.  Those sections of the famine spectrum must also be dealt with if we are to feed the world with any regularity.
 
I suspect sheer gluttony would also need to be addressed, as would First World feeding of grains to livestock for a meat-and-dairy-heavy diet, rather than living lower on the food chain.  Lots of issues involved with famine besides growing more food.
Kathryn Kerby, descended from an Irish Potato Famine refugee
frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA
Ruminations - essays on the farming life at frogchorusfarm.com/weblog.html
 
In a message dated 9/19/2011 11:23:05 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, unschooler AT lrec.org writes:

On Sep 19, 2011, at 8:49 PM, Thamnophis wrote:

I try to judge GMO crops while keeping in mind the people I saw starving to death in Haiti. Our earth's population is growing much faster than our ag output. And GMO crops will save untold lives in the future.

The genie is out of the bottle. The trick now is how it is managed, since it's growth will be unstoppable and exponential.

Population will always expand to the limit of our food supply--it's the way it is and has always been and we don't seem to be getting any smarter in that regard.  Sooner or later, no matter how much we exploit and pollute our resources (in this case, the gene pool; in the case of "conventional" production, the pesticides, herbicides, water pollution, etc., and in both cases the loss of topsoil, draining of our aquifers, deforestation, etc.), we'll pass the carrying capacity of our planet.  Most knowledgable people believe we already have.  Exploitation can't be "THE" solution to starvation--it only leads to more starvation and takes us further down the path-of-no-return.  

I am a compassionate person of the sort who cries during Hallmark commercials.  I'm not "pro-starvation".  But humans are not exempt from the laws of nature--though we live as if we are--and the sooner we realize that, the easier it will be for all of us.  We need permanent solutions and one of those is population control because if we don't do it deliberately, "nature" will take care of it for us and it won't be pretty.  

--Leslie
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