Food security and global warming: Monsanto vs.organic

Education is a step leading us in the right direction. Good article Jan.

say screw Monsanto GM foods. Wana stop using pesticides to keep your crops from failing and protect them from the global warming induced frosts and droughts? then start using Vertical Farming Architecture and let all that lad in the Midwest go back to prairie grass( which just happens to be an excellent source of Bio mass for fuel) and hell maybe let so bison herds start roaming out there again that would be a tourist draw for sure. In fact maybe we could start harvesting bison meat from wild herds again instead of supporting mass slaughter cattle ranches. Wow look at all that progress from one idea, and i could go on and on about the benefits of Vertical Farming technology such as the ability to construct these in metropolitan areas which brings in jobs and reduces fuel needed to ship to various far flung locations. It also does away with restrictions of what can be grown in a specific geographical location as the temp humidity and all of the conditions specific to production of a given produce can be managed in these hermetically sealed and controlled buildings. I highly encourage anyone with a passion for the environment as a whole to look in to and support Vertical Farming.

Look, I grew up in Africa and my dad is a plant biotechnologist. He is making a positive impact with some GM crops and applying biotech to agriculture. I agree Monsanto is all BS and all about money. My dad has to work around them - they don't like to share. All I'm saying is look at it from another perspective: if you can lower the cost of inputs into a crop and get a better yield, one individual can move from merely subsistance farming (below the poverty line) to making a decent living. This is an opposite view from Monsanto who are looking for profit rather than the farmers who could benefit from it. My father is still trying to make things work in Zimbabwe and I know all the readers on current are aware of the situation there.. so he's not in it for the money!

Organic food unfortunately is a luxury. I buy it when I can because I feel the same as most of the people here, its not so mass produced etc. But most of the world cannot afford this luxury. My point is that GM and biotechnology can be applied positively in the developing world. GM isn't the evil - Monsanto etc are.. as usual they're all about greed.

I just went on my first all-organic shopping trip today, thanks to grocery store Jewel, who have come out with their own line of organic products. Everything I've tried so far tastes great, including the potato chips, lemonade, and chocolate chip cookies. I couldnt be happier knowing that my kids will not be eating mass-produced crap anymore. I have to admit, the organic groceries cost almost twice as much as regular food (and almost everything was on sale since its new), but I feel it will be worth it. I know this is the right choice and I wont be going back to "conventional" food. Plus, if more people buy organic, the prices will go down.

health warnings on cigarette packs were a joke in the 60's;
warnings to pregnant women about thalidomide use was a joke in the 50's;
long-term affects of radiation from observing atomic blasts was a joke in the late 40's.
climate change is real. the effect of humans on the planet and it's relation to climate change is no joke.
you won't be around to hear it, but your great-grandchildren will be wondering why people in the late 20th century were so stupid.

Global Warming is an absolute joke....It's fabricated just to get your interest and generate monies. Ask, Al Gore how lucrative it was for him.....200M

and if you can get some homemade compost on those li'l ol' seeds, csmonut, they will love you for it.
no artificial fertilizer can replace the natural version. proven fact.
organisms can tell the difference, so can our bodies.

We can't do better than nature.
I have had a vegetable garden many years in my life. I have bought seeds that were hybrids or GM (without realizing the consequences at the time) and seeds that were not.
The heirloom, or natural seeds did far better. The plants did not yield as much as soon as the others, but they lasted far longer through the growing season, which balanced out the total yield.
Heirloom seeds are the way to go. Mother Nature made em'.

Just because yields are improved doesn't automatically make it better for farmers or consumers.
Organics are more expensive because at this point they are not grown (mass-produced, if you will) by factory farms. It's smaller farms and local growers.
You get what you pay for. Wonder Bread is cheap as hell - and worth zero nutritionally compared to a bread made with organic ingredients at a mom and pop bakery.
Feeding the masses is important, but feeding them crap is immoral.

We can do better than nature - that's what the medical field is based on.
GM and other biotech techniques can improve yields of peasant farmers by up to 40%. Organic food is more expensive for a reason - its not as economically viable.
Correct implementation of GM crops and biotech can help Africa feed itself. The irony is the biggest GM company (Monstanto) is the one in the way of progress.. they patent everything in sight. GM is not the enemy, Monsanto is.

wait a minute bamboodizzard... Monsanto does more good than damage?
"The point of all of this science is to learn exactly how nature works."
i call bullshit.
the point of all this 'science' in food production is TO MAKE MONEY!!!!!
PERIOD!
that's why the seed is sterile after growth, so farmers MUST go to Monsanto to purchase seed for next year's crop.
Rodale Institute has been around for many, many years.
it's how i cut my teeth on organics, learned to compost and learned to grow sustainably.

Also, not mentioned is that many of these genetically modified crops produce sterile seeds that can't be used to produce the next years crops. I'm sure there is some completely rationale and reasonable sounding excuse for this but the net result is this.

Farmers have always been able to maintain their independence by saving seeds from the previous years crops and replanting them. Now, they are destined to become totally dependent on mega corporations like Monsanto to sell them seeds each year so they can grow food. If they can't pay, they starve.

This is important folks. These companies will do anything within their power to make as many people dependent on their seeds as possible. Why? If you had a choice between oil or food, which would you pick? The potential power these companies could end up wielding is terrifying.

The point of all of this science is to learn exactly how nature works. They have to make money to continue the science in this direction, and this is a biproduct. Why hate these scientists who are learning how to do this.

These companies have their downfalls but they do far more good than damage, contrary to your biased sources.

If the problems that we were facing with Global Warming were natural, I would agree with you, but the problems that we are facing are caused by our science, why is it not reasonable that Science be the solution?

Rodale Institute is GREAT! I visited there years ago. It's a wonderland of organic experiments. I am so grateful that there is a research group out there besides the big agricultural behemoths that is seeking what is healthy for the soil for the plants for us. I just became a fan on Facebook.

Amen. To be so arrogant to think that we are even above the natural processes of this Earth that have sustained her and us all of these centuries is to be our downfall.

We can feed the world with natural healthy food. It isn't about the food, it is about the people controlling it.

FRANCIS BACON:
"We cannot command nature except by obeying her"

Hopefully not after they've allowed it to die.

When will people realize you can't do better than nature? It's impossible.

From the article:

Determining the best course of action for ensuring food security in the face of global climate change remains a challenging task. Recognizing that climate change is slated to affect developing countries and small-scale farmers the most is a crucial point. Such understanding enables people to realize that viable solutions must be accessible, affordable, and relevant to the billions of small-scale farmers in the developing world. Unfortunately, it appears that some of the solutions on the table fail to meet these criteria.

Last week, Monsanto made a big public relations splash by filing documents with the FDA regarding a drought-tolerant GM corn variety it is developing with a German company, BASF. Monsanto claims that in field trials, the corn got 6-10 percent higher yields in drought-prone areas last year, but the release is extremely short on details. Regardless of the reality, Monsanto is presenting the corn as a way to help improve on-farm productivity in other parts of the world, notably Africa.

Yet, absent from the media hype were the many technical and social problems with Monsanto's corn.

A little over a year ago, the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics held a conference specific to drought and drought-tolerant crops. As a follow up, the Australian government's Grains Research and Development Corporation published a piece detailing the research shared and lessons learned from the conference. One topic addressed was the potential of GM drought-tolerant varieties. In the analysis stated, "The most notable and problematic (effect) is the tendency of drought-tolerant GM lines to not perform as well under favourable conditions. This appears to be the case for CIMMYT's GM wheat and Monsanto's GM corn. The flaw is a profound one. It amounts to shifting the yield losses experienced in dry seasons onto the good years." In essence, farmers might get a small bump in yield during droughts, but will suffer yield losses when conditions are favorable. Considering that climate scientists continually point to increased erratic weather patterns as a symptom of global warming, this reality is clearly disastrous. Surely there must be better solutions that increase production under all weather conditions

One promising solution appeared in an article published in BioScience in 2005. The authors outlined the Rodale Institute's Farming Systems Trial, a long-term comparison of organic and conventional farming systems conducted between 1981 and 2002. Significantly, the trials found that organic production yielded equivalently to conventional systems after a transition period. Yet even more importantly, Rodale found that in drought conditions in which rainfall was 30 percent less than normal, organic systems yielded 28 to 34 percent higher than conventional systems. Rodale equates the yield gain to increased water retention as a result of higher soil organic carbon. Water volumes percolating through the various systems were 15-20 percent higher in the organic systems as compared with the conventional systems over the 12 year period.

The BioScience article additionally noted that the organic systems used 28 to 32 percent fewer energy inputs, retained soil carbon and soil nitrogen better, and offered a higher profitability over conventional systems. What is so significant about this research is that it demonstrates the ability of organic agriculture to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions with fewer energy inputs and withstand climate change impacts like drought with greater efficacy.