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Title: The Colossal Hoax Of Organic Agriculture
Source:
Forbes
URL Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymi ... griculture-is-a-colossal-hoax/
Published: Jul 29, 2015
Author: Henry I. Miller and Drew L. Kershen
Post Date: 2015-07-29 15:08:17 by Tooconservative
Keywords: None
Views: 7191
Comments: 46
Consumers of organic foods are getting both more and less than they bargained for. On both counts, it’s not good. Many people who pay the huge premium—often more than a hundred percent–for organic foods do so because they’re afraid of pesticides. If that’s their rationale, they misunderstand the nuances of organic agriculture. Although it’s true that synthetic chemical pesticides are generally prohibited, there is a lengthy list of exceptions listed in the Organic Foods Production Act, while most “natural” ones are permitted. However, “organic” pesticides can be toxic. As evolutionary biologist Christie Wilcox explained in a 2012 Scientific American article (“Are lower pesticide residues a good reason to buy organic? Probably not.”): “Organic pesticides pose the same health risks as non-organic ones.” Another poorly recognized aspect of this issue is that the vast majority of pesticidal substances that we consume are in our diets “naturally” and are present in organic foods as well as non-organic ones. In a classic study, UC Berkeley biochemist Bruce Ames and his colleagues found that “99.99 percent (by weight) of the pesticides in the American diet are chemicals that plants produce to defend themselves.” Moreover, “natural and synthetic chemicals are equally likely to be positive in animal cancer tests.” Thus, consumers who buy organic to avoid pesticide exposure are focusing their attention on just one-hundredth of one percent of the pesticides they consume. Some consumers think that the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) requires certified organic products to be free of ingredients from “GMOs,” organisms crafted with molecular techniques of genetic engineering. Wrong again. USDA does not require organic products to be GMO-free. (In any case, the methods used to create so-called GMOs are an extension, or refinement, of older techniques for genetic modification that have been used for a century or more.) As USDA officials have said repeatedly: Organic certification is process-based. That is, certifying agents attest to the ability of organic operations to follow a set of production standards and practices which meet the requirements of the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 and the [National Organic Program] regulations . . . If all aspects of the organic production or handling process were followed correctly, then the presence of detectable residue from a genetically modified organism alone does not constitute a violation of this regulation. [emphasis added] Putting it another way, so long as an organic farmer abides by his organic system (production) plan–a plan that an organic certifying agent must approve before granting the farmer organic status–the unintentional presence of GMOs (or, for that matter, prohibited synthetic pesticides) in any amount does not affect the organic status of the farmer’s products or farm. Under only two circumstances does USDA sanction the testing of organic products for prohibited residues (such as pesticides, synthetic fertilizers or antibiotics) or excluded substances (e.g., genetically engineered organisms). First, USDA’s National Organic Production Standards support the testing of products if an organic-certifying agent believes that the farmer is intentionally using prohibited substances or practices. And second, USDA requires that certifying agents test five percent of their certified operations each year. The certifying agents themselves determine which operations will be subjected to testing. The organic community, including the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM), supports the USDA’s lenient testing protocols and opposes more frequent mandatory testing of organic products for prohibited and excluded substances. The organic community and USDA offer two explanations for such minimal testing. First, they emphasize that organic farming is process-based, not product-based, meaning that what counts for organic certification are the approved organic system (production) plan and the farmer’s intention to comply with that plan as reflected through record-keeping obligations. Second, widespread testing would impose substantial costs on organic farmers, thereby increasing production costs beyond the already greater expenses that organic farmers incur. Organic farmers offset these higher productions costs by earning large premiums for organic products, but there is always a price point beyond which consumers will shift to cheaper non-organic. Few organic consumers are aware that organic agriculture is a “trust-based” or “faith-based” system. With every purchase, they are at risk of the moral hazard that an organic farmer will represent cheaper-to-produce non-organic products as the premium-priced organic product. For the vast majority of products, no tests can distinguish organic from non-organic—for example, whether milk labeled “organic” came from a cow within the organic production system or from a cow across the fence from a conventional dairy farm. The higher the organic premium, the stronger the economic incentive to cheat. Think such nefarious behavior is purely theoretical? Think again. USDA reported in 2012 that 43 percent of the 571 samples of “organic” produce tested violated the government’s organic regulations and that “the findings suggest that some of the samples in violation were mislabeled conventional products, while others were organic products that hadn’t been adequately protected from prohibited pesticides.” How do organic farmers get away with such chicanery? A 2014 investigation by the Wall Street Journal of USDA inspection records from 2005 on found that 38 of the 81 certifying agents–entities accredited by USDA to inspect and certify organic farms and suppliers—“failed on at least one occasion to uphold basic Agriculture Department standards.” More specifically, “40% of these 81 certifiers have been flagged by the USDA for conducting incomplete inspections; 16% of certifiers failed to cite organic farms’ potential use of banned pesticides and antibiotics; and 5% failed to prevent potential commingling of organic and non-organic products.” Speaking of trust and faith—or lack thereof–in organic foods, there was the example of holier-than-thou Whole Foods importing large amounts of its supposedly “organic” produce from China, of all places. Those imports even included Whole Foods’ house brand, “California Blend.” (Yes, you read that correctly.) Organic agriculture is an unscientific, heavily subsidized marketing gimmick that misleads and rips off consumers, both because of the nature of the regulations and cheating. The old saying that you get what you pay for doesn’t apply when you buy overpriced organic products. Henry I. Miller, a physician, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He was the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology at the FDA. Drew L. Kershen is the Earl Sneed Centennial Professor of Law (Emeritus), University of Oklahoma College of Law.
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#1. To: TooConservative (#0)
It CAN, if you buy local and know the farmers, which is possible in some areas. It is certainly true that if you're buying something slickly packaged and transported from afar, the chances of chicanery are higher. Also, truth is, organic stuff is smaller, with more flaws in it. If the fruit looks perfect, it's not organic. If the vegetables are super plump and lush and bright, they're not organic. Real apples have spots on them. Real vegetables grown in poop are smaller and less perfect. If the strawberries are big and luscious and bright red and LOOK more appealing, they're not organic. On the other hand, you CAN tell organic strawberries from conventional ones. Conventional strawberries don't look all that great. They're smaller, less plump, darker. The bruise easier and they decay faster. But when you taste the strawberries, you can immediately taste the difference. Organic strawberries taste like...strawberries. Conventional strawberries taste like...well, nothing. They barely have a taste.
The GOP is full of chicanery: It won't be long before they'll be importing horse, dog or even rat meat from China and selling it in US supermarkets labeled as "ground beef." That's what "deregulation" and the "free market" is all about, isn't it? Maximizing profit by forcing unidentifiable carrion & offal onto the American food supply at the lowest possible cost?
It is certainly true that if you're buying something slickly packaged and transported from afar, the chances of chicanery are higher. Also, truth is, organic stuff is smaller, with more flaws in it. If the fruit looks perfect, it's not organic. If the vegetables are super plump and lush and bright, they're not organic. Real apples have spots on them. Real vegetables grown in poop are smaller and less perfect. If the strawberries are big and luscious and bright red and LOOK more appealing, they're not organic. The Harvard Food Law Society hosted a talk by Barry Estabrook on September 22, 2011. A two-times James-Beard-Award-winning journalist, Estabrook discussed his recently published book, Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. In it, he argues that the Florida winter tomato is the poster child for many of the problems of large-scale farming. As revealed in his writing, workers in the industry are routinely sprayed with pesticides, paid below minimum wages, and are often victims of slavery and indentured servitude. http://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137371975/how-industrial-farming-destroyed-the- tasty-tomato If you bite into a tomato between the months of October and June, chances are that tomato came from Florida. The Sunshine State accounts for one-third of all fresh tomatoes produced in the United States — and virtually all of the tomatoes raised during the fall and winter seasons. But the tomatoes grown in Florida differ dramatically from the red garden varieties you might grow in your backyard. They're bred to be perfectly formed — so that they can make their way across the U.S. and onto your dinner table without cracking or breaking. "For the last 50 or more years, tomato breeders have concentrated essentially on one thing and that is yield — they want plants that yield as many or as much as possible," writer Barry Estabrook tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "They also want those fruits to be able to stand up to being harvested, packed, artificially turned orange [with ethylene gas] and then shipped away and still be holding together in the supermarket a week or 10 days later." Estabrook, a freelance food writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times and The Washington Post, looks at the life of today's mass- produced tomato — and the environmental and human costs of the tomato industry — in his book Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. The book was based on a James Beard Award-winning article that originally appeared in Gourmet magazine, where Estabrook was a contributing editor before publication ceased in 2009. Estabrook says the mass-produced tomatoes in today's supermarkets lack flavor because they were bred for enduring long journeys to the supermarket — and not for taste. "As one large Florida farmer said, 'I don't get paid a single cent for flavor,' " says Estabrook. "He said, 'I get paid for weight. And I don't know of any supermarket shopper who tastes her tomatoes before she puts them in her shopping cart.' ... It's not worth commercial plant breeders' while to breed for taste because their customers — the large farmers — don't get paid for it." As a result, customers have become accustomed to the flavorless tomatoes that dot supermarket shelves, says Estabrook. "I was speaking to a person in their 30s recently and she said she had never recalled tasting anything other than a supermarket tomato," he says. "I think that wanting a tomato in the winter of winter — or wanting a little bit of orange on the plate ... is inherent in a lot of our shopping decisions. We expect an ingredient to be on the supermarket shelves 365 days a year, whether or whether not it's in season or tastes any good."
Interesting . . . thanks for posting. (and here I thought food was becoming tasteless because my taste buds were wearing out)
And you, a liberal sheeple, like huge big brother regulations and a socialist type driven economy that promises income equality. I'm the infidel... Allah warned you about. كافر المسلح
Soylent Green(GMO) is People(Tissue/Baby Parts)!, but Planned Parenthood Corp doesn't have to label it that way. This is a good thing? I find an advocate for a more policed police state calling others socialists for wanting the same economic trade policies as our founding fathers as hilariously ironic.
To the extent to which state and corporations get involved the term "organic" might lose its meaning. Organic movement was created by grassroot, non government, non corporate actions.
I ask my father about natural versus commercial farming. He grew up on a farm. He said they used both natural and commercial products to grow food. Commercial is very productive and natural is very limited. As for an example he said natural farming 1/4 as much food per acre. But commercial products cost money and it takes away from profit. Pesticides have to be used or you could lose most if not all your crop. It's not as black and white as most people think. Yes it's great to go natural but there is no money hence no profit in farming with out commercial product helping the farmer. There is nothing wrong with natural farming but no profit in it. That's why it's religated to individuals who want to know where the food came from. It's not really any better for you. Most defects in food come from processing and delivering of food.
True enough. As the article points out, using natural pesticides on organic is still a lot of chemistry in foods. Vic also made some very good points about the less desirable cosmetics and size of organic produce. The article is a little biased in its estimates that organic contains 99.99% of the pesticides found in non-organic produce. While it is largely truthful, the non-organic pesticides contain chemicals found nowhere in nature so our bodies are likely far more vulnerable to the modern pesticides than to natural pesticides/fertilizers. I thought that the info about organic produce being allowed to contain GMO species is valuable. Most people blithely assume that their organic produce doesn't have GMOs in it and that is incorrect.
GMO's maybe all we can do to stave off hunger but it can also be a two edged sword. See this excellent VICE report. Genetically modified seeds have been planted around the world and hailed as a solution to global hunger—but these crops, called GMOs for "genetically modified organisms," have also sparked heated protest around the world. Isobel Yeung traces the path of these super-crops from the headquarters of American agribusiness titan Monsanto to the soy fields of Paraguay, and visits the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, high in the Arctic, to see what's truly at stake when humans try to improve on nature.
Exactly. It is a hungry world with global financial downturns pressing down against the hungry masses in the Third World especially. But GMOs do have their downsides, especially seeds from litigious Frankenfoods giant Monsanto and their allies.
It would really be cost prohibitive to test all produce on the market for GMO . I know this because the company I work for pays the lab fees for the right to put non-GMO on our labels . Going non-GMO is silly if you ask me. The whole anti-GMO movement is based on junk science . Every independent scientific body that has ever evaluated the safety of GMO crops has deemed them safe for human beings to eat. This includes the Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and many more. Here is what the American Association for the Advancement of Science says : "The science is quite clear: crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe. The World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the British Royal Society, and every other respected organization that has examined the evidence has come to the same conclusion: consuming foods containing ingredients derived from GM crops is no riskier than consuming the same foods containing ingredients from crop plants modified by conventional plant improvement techniques." http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/AAAS_GM_statement.pdf I have nothing against organics . I grow my own veggies this time of year and do not use any chemical fertilizers or pesticides . I use only hybrid organic seeds . But the issue is how to feed the world .The potential of GMO is to increase crop yields, increase nutritious value, and generally improve farming practices while reducing chemical and land use . It's a win -win situation if we refuse to be Luddites. btw ;those apple size strawberries ? They are not GMO . They were developed with traditional hybridization methods. In fact there are very few GMO products on the market...mostly grain like corn and soy. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Interesting GMO food tidbit today from Chinese researchers working for a Swedish university:
Eat the GMO if you want to. We all end up in the ground in the end anyway. Yes, the "science" all says thus and so, today. And for 30 years eggs caused heart attacks. Until they didn't. Then, the LACK of eggs results in a lack of choline...which leads to heart attacks. Thalidomide is safe, and Camel cigarettes are doctor recommended. All you have to do is go back a little in time. In short: science is completely untrustworthy. There are vast lands in the world, and there is plenty to eat. But to unlock those lands and eat as we could would require breaking the current economic structure of food production and delivery. Far better to break nature and trust science, according to some. Others disagree.
It's like cars vs buggies. You go faster but it kills more people. Really, if you think about it cars are as dangerous as smoking. There is a good and bad. I am not one of those that freaks out over this. And funny thing is it may all be cultural. In Europe, irradiated food is common. In the USA we are freaked at the idea. Yet, Europe is very anti nuclear energy while in the USA many favor nuclear energy, weapons, etc.
at the same time that we freak out over micro-contamination like e-coli and salmonella in the veggies we buy . Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I certainly do not bow to science like it is a religion . We have already cleared 35% of the Earth's ice-free land surface for agriculture. Since the last ice age, nothing has been more disruptive to the planet's ecosystem than agriculture. The challege is to feed the world on less land . In 1940, each farmworker supplied 11 consumers.In the 21st century each worker supplies 90 consumers,and that number is increasing. In that time ,the world’s farmers doubled their output to accommodate a doubling of the world population. And they did it on a shrinking base of cropland. Agricultural productivity can continue to grow, but not by turning back the clock. But if you are talking about unlocking more land capable of agricultural production then GM is the answer . Already there is GM drought resistant crops being grown in developing countries Too Conservative mentions GM rice. There is a product called 'golden rice ' developed to grow in parts of the world that consume rice as a staple ,where the poor are susceptible to blindness from vit A deficiency .The deficiency also kills 670,000 children under the age of 5 each year. Golden Rice is engineered to have high levels of beta carotene , a precursor of vitamin A . Unfortunately it has met with opposition from 'environmentalists' and people who see the name Monsanto and see evil . Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
There are vast deserts next to oceans: the Sahara, the Sonoran, the Arabian. The Israelis have demonstrated that mass volumes of seawater can be converted swiftly to fresh water, at reasonable cost. Where there are deserts, there is unlimited, uninterrupted solar power. Which means that the deserts along the oceans can all be turned green through desalinated water pumped by solar-powered plants. Land that is currently utter waste and worthless would become valuable farmland, giving rise to employment and to land profit that would more than pay for the cost of the plants. If you want to increase the food supply, turn the deserts green with desalinated water. Create massive employment doing that. Also, take a hard look at the taiga. This vast, cold zone is full of plants but hardly any people. There are many wild plants that naturally grow there that are more nutritious than any domesticated variety. Example> stinging nettle is about 50% more nutritious than spinach or kale. and it naturally grows, as a noxious weed. Forest culture is more manpower intensive, certainly - one no longer clearcuts and monocrops. But then, we live in a world with massive unemployment. Those mouths, right now, are being fed and are producing nothing. Turning a substantial number of them into trained foresters to manage the taiga, nut just for lumber, but as a source of naturally growing wild plants - a more primitive model, gathering and tending, as opposed to planting and harvesting, and a material contribution could be made both to the food supply and to the employment picture. To believe that we are going to be able to squeeze ever more crops, through technology, from ever-less soil is a fool's errand. We need to go wider, and use the excess manpower, and aim at bringing a lot more wasteland into cultivation, and at looking differently at the land we have. One example: there are a billion deer in the Siberian taiga. Deer can be milked. Reindeer were among the first animals domesticated for that purpose. It's a labor intensive prospect...and if we lived in a world that had full employment of young people that would be a concern. Truth is, we have jihads and revolutions and crime breaking out everywhere because we have massive unemploynment and underemployment, and idle hands are the Devil's workshop. None of these activities are "high profit". In many cases, the subsidy for doing them will be the welfare payment itself and the Medicaid medical insurance. Nevertheless, getting people to healthy work, and expanding out to tend to the whole world - and getting the deserts green with irrigation using water drawn from the sea...and unleashing creative minds to work on extracting precious metals and rare-earths from the concentrated brine that comes from desalinators - this is where human activity should be focused, because it will solve many problems at once. Instead, we're allowing concentration of profits in a few stovepiped industries, and so concentrating the food supply on so little land, with so few crops and varieties of crops and foodstuffs, that it is simply a matter of time before an unanticipated blight shows up with unexpected properties, and the massive die off of the affected crop precipitates food shortages and starvation. Using hand-tools and French intensive gardening methods, a man can feed himself on one-eighth of an acre while improving the soil. The suburban greensward of wasted land should end, and people should drop their gym memberships and be out there with those hand tools getting exercise and vitamin D tending to their little gardens, and substantially increasing the food supply while decreasing their own burden. That is what OUGHT to be happening. Instead we're concentrating power and relying on science whose full consequences we do not understand to try to get us past a problem that will only grow. Remember how people used to watch the nukes go off, and we sent our troops wandering straight through the fallout. We didn't know. The only way we found out was through all of the deaths and cancer. When I think of all of the men I went to school with, and how the submariners were the smartest so they went nuke, and how many of them have died young of cancer, it is obvious to me that we STILL don't have that all figured out. But if you tried to say that to THEM they'd tell you you were a Luddite. Now so many of them are dead, but the others would still look straight at you and say that doesn't prove anything. Yeah it does. There is a right way to address these issues and a bevy of other issues at once. And then there's the path that enriches a narrow line of industries and puts us in the position for a descolada to wipe us out. So one will. It's inevitable. Plagues and blights always come. And when they do, if you monocrop, you're dead.
Anywhere that rice grows is green. Every green plant has loads of Vitamin A right in its green parts. So, one can try to take the traditional, staple crop and fiddle with it OR one can do the easier, more sensible thing, which is to analyze the local plants and find edible ones in the local environment, and then instruct people to eat them and prepare them. Then there will be no Vitamin A deficiency. Rice is a green plant that grows in marshlands and swamps. Wherever rice grows, swamp plants grow that are kin of swamp cabbage. One quarter cup of swamp cabbage leaves has a day's worth of Vitamin A for a child. A half cup, for a full grown man. We don't need to be modifying the genome to get Vitamin A. We need to be teaching cultures to eat plants beyond their traditional varieties. Go into your backyard. Do you have a pine tree? Take a small handful of pine needles (not hemlock or yew, please). Fallen needles that are still somewhat green work for this. Throw them into hot water and let them steep. You will have a strong, aromatic tea. It smells like pine. Drink it. You just got 1000 mg of Vitamin C - the equivalent of eating 12 oranges. You can't grow oranges in Canada, but the pine trees grow themselves. Do you have a maple tree? Pick up the spinners when they're still green. Squeeze out the seed when it's still green. Taste it. It's not terrible bitter. Maple edamame. You don't even have to cook it. If you cook it, it's softer and less bitter. Maple trees produce huge amounts of edible beans. Acorns fall from your oaks. Apache and Cree Indians used acorns as their main source of starch. Where corn doesn't grow but scrub oak does, soaked acorns, mashed into a paste and cooked makes bread, and it's quite nutritious, very protein heavy. There are about 800,000 species of plants on the planet. 95% of them are edible. Less than 200 have been domesticated. And we do not HAVE to domesticate plants to substantially increase the food supply. All we have to do is break habits of mind of SOME people, show them a few additional plants they can eat and use. If there is a Vitamin A deficiency anywhere in the world here they grow rice, it is not because there's no Vitamin A bearing plant right at hand, it is because people are so traditionalist and fixed in their ways that they have decided they will only get their nutrition through rice. So they starve for want of vital nutrients that are growing right under their feet. Yes, some plants are toxic. But we already know which ones. So, we can build massive laboratories and spend billions fiddling with the genome, like sorcerers apprentices, just tempting fate and waiting to bring a descolada down on our heads. OR we can use the knowledge that botanists ALREADY HAVE, and go to places, teach the locals about simple Vitamins, and show them 100 grasses and herbs growing right there all around them they just need to take a handful of, throw it in a pot, pour off the water and eat. The stubbornness about the traditional diet kills people, not the lack of edible plants OR land. 95% of what you see is edible. Some of it is bland. Most of it is bitter. Bitter is removed by preparation. Bland can be spiced up. Virtually every forb in the field and at the margins of the woods are edible, and most have the nutritional profile of spinach. We starve in the midst of abundance. European settlers died of scurvy in pine forests. Chewing on a handful of pine needles would have saved at least 15,000 European lives. But nobody knew. Now, we COULD try to genetically engineer oranges that will grow in Canada. Or we could stop being stubborn fucks, go with what we already know, and chew on pine needles. One way is massively expensive and hard and will intermittently fail. The other way means that even children will never have scurvy. The barrier is not that there is no land and nothing to eat. The barrier is that people are ignorant and traditionalist and extremely conservative about what they eat, and prefer a high-tech solution that recreates rice (and invites an eventual descolada, such as the Irish potato famine) instead of picking one or two wild plants already growing there and adding them to the diet. Stop putting weedkiller on the lawn and just eat your weeds instead. Your yard will produce more salad than you can eat, and it will be more nutritious than ANY greens you can buy. Dandelions and clover, swamp cabbage and milkweed and thistles and stinging nettles - every one of these things is as more more nutritious than kale and spinach. And it's free and it WANTS to grow in all of this idle greensward all around our houses. Wherever rice grows is green and there are a thousand edible plants loaded with Vitamin A growing all around. In fact, the natives whose kids go blind from Vitamin A deficiency PULL UP THOSE PLANTS to plant the rice. Teach them which of those plants to eat, and you don't need to fiddle with the rice. It's really much easier, once one breaks the "somebody has to make MONEY on this!" paradigm. Spread the knowledge out. And if people eat dandelions to extinction? First, they won't. Second, if they do, Who cares?
At AoS today, I saw a link to this medieval tidbit relevant to this discussion about how man modifies his foods through breeding. Or as AoS calls it, the Poor Man's GMO (selective breeding). A painting of fruit done by Giovanni Stanchi sometime in the mid 1600s shows that the watermelon has changed somewhat in the intervening 350 years. That's because over time, we've bred watermelons to have the bright red color we recognize today. That fleshy interior is actually the watermelon's placenta, which holds the seeds. Before it was fully domesticated, that placenta lacked the high amounts of lycopene that give it the red color. Through hundreds of years of domestication, we've modified smaller watermelons with a white interior into the larger, lycopene-loaded versions we know today. More on food breeding over many centuries: Vox: Here's what 9,000 years of breeding has done to corn, peaches, and other crops And the scourge of the modern apple: TheAtlantic: The Awful Reign of the Red Delicious
There is a difference in hybridization and inserting DNA from different species like say a fly into a fruit DNA helix.
Obviously. Yet we don't discriminate so vehemently against natural mutations, like the one that allows modern tomatoes to go red. Nor do we eliminate mutants (now the majority of the human race) who are lactose-tolerant because of a mutation about 10,000 years ago allowed us to start drinking milk (and move from being nomadic hunter-gatherers to farmers and city builders). The same may be observed of the alcohol-tolerant human. About 20% of Asians are still alcohol-intolerant because the mutation has not spread widely enough yet. Alcohol is metabolized principally in the liver, where it is converted first to acetaldehyde by the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase. Acetaldehyde is then converted to acetate by the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase. Acetaldehyde produces unpleasant physiological reactions even at low concentration, so the presence or absence of the gene mutation affecting aldehyde dehydrogenase in turn affects drinking behaviors. When acetaldehyde is not rapidly converted to acetate the results are dramatic: a rapid increase in blood flow to the skin of the face, neck, and chest, rapid heartbeat, headache, nausea, and extreme drowsiness occur. "As expected, this aversive reaction affects drinking behavior," Li says, "and the mutant gene therefore serves as a protection against heavy drinking and alcoholism. " Li's current research is investigating the occurrence of mutations involving alcohol dehydrogenase. Variant forms of alcohol dehydrogenase can provide some protection against heavy drinking, though not as effectively as the specific aldehyde dehydrogenase mutation identified thus far. Our standards for these matters involving foods and even human traits of large populations are a little arbitrary, when taken in the context of a long timeline. Which was the gist of why I posted the above about the changes in familiar produce over the centuries. Are natural mutations so much safer than GMO designer species? In the long run, who knows? Natural mutations also produce very profound changes and there is little we can do to stop them over the long run. I'd better stop now before Vic gets fired up with his beloved sea-apes. See Steller's sea lion (extant species), Steller's sea cow (extinct), and Steller's sea ape (the only animal Steller described for which no proof has yet been discovered) : ) Time is long and we have been here only a moment. We overestimate our knowledge considerably. We flatter ourselves.
Tomatoes...Good source of soluble fiber. Keep that colon clean! For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.---John 1:17
I don't know why Asian genetics are mentioned here. I am just saying there is a difference between tweaking the inherit genetic code of plants and animals and inserting DNA into same that was never meant to be there to create some sort of super veggie that can produce mass quantities. And I am not saying it is a good or bad thing. It may be a needed thing because we have huge human populations that need feeding every day, day by day. We are in new territory - there has never been so many humans on earth and so many that don't produce their own food. And even less humans who are farmers. I am against what is turning out to be vanity foods - foods we don't or are exist for comfort rather than comfort food.
The people who will come to dominate the world will be the ones who have babies. The people who don't have babies will die out. Demography is destiny.
I'll say it then: using technology to insert the genes of different species into other species will end up being a calamitous disaster. It is necessary for nothing. The world is not starving, and will not starve, if we use the land we have and the plethora of species. We've created a myth of incipient starvation because of rising populations. It's true that we've turned away from farming. It's also true that everybody who has a back yard could turn back to it, if we turned away from video games. Small-plot gardening could massively increase the food supply. What I wrote up=thread is the truth: there is a desire to hold onto the present economic model, with its concentration of activity and profit. And THAT is what is killing us, not "running out of land" or running out of food. There is PLENTY of land, and sea, and plenty of food. But we cannot access it or harness it under our current economic model. Which means that we need to redesign our economic model and change ITS "DNA", not start messing around with the plants in ways we don't understand and eventually bringing down a descolada down on our heads.
I was pointing out that even in matters related to food and alcohol, we humans are mutants as well. Without lactose tolerance, we'd all still be nomadic hunter-gatherers and would number no more than a few hundred million people worldwide. And none of us would be typing on an internet.
Look at the wasted yet rich farmlands of Africa, of tropical southern Russia, etc. Zimbabwe is a prime example. Due to mismanagement by their pols, their ag output has plummeted. Yet Zimbabwe is largely composed of black volcanic soil that averages 28 feet in depth, the finest farmland on earth. So, yes, we could do a lot more with what we have. Time, 7/2015: Under the suggested policy, the leaders of the country’s 10 provinces will draft a list of farms in their respective districts that they deem to be “of strategic economic importance,” the Zimbabwe Mail reports. The government will also establish a European Union–backed commission to evaluate the landgrab practices commenced in 2000, which were frequently violent. The property-seizure policy, which sent the country into economic crisis and left a number of civilian landowners dead, was both an exercise in kleptocracy and an attempt to wrest the country from its fraught colonial legacy. Many of the 4,000 white-owned farms taken by Mugabe’s government had been operated by the same families for decades — families that had come to the British colony of Rhodesia to make their fortunes in a system built on racial hierarchy. At present, only 300 white farmers remain on their original properties; meanwhile, a number of the farms seized in the past 15 years have ceased operations, requiring Zimbabwe — the erstwhile “Breadbasket of Africa” — to import food to stave off a hunger crisis. America subsidizes a lot of food exports to appease its ag giants and their lobbyists. This drives food costs down around the world and makes native farming unprofitable, leaving many countries dependent on foreign foods rather than raising their own.
Now let's go back to Genesis 1. The first four commandments: Reproduce! Increase! Fill the land. And subdue her. Followed by the commandment to eat plants. Babel was destroyed because men preferred to clump into a city rather than to obey God's Prime Directive: spread out across the land, reproduce, fill it, subdue it, and eat plants. When man and woman were in Eden, what was their job? They had one. They didn't have to do it to eat, or to earn money. It was their assigned task, and they enjoyed it. What was it? Adam and Eve were gardeners. The assigned natural task of man is to be a GARDENER, subduing the land, tending it, and to be a watcher of flocks and tender of animals: to regulate the animals (not originally to eat them, but to lead them and care for them, just like with the plants of the garden). Man's purpose was to be the leader of the natural world, to tend it and shape it. And to fill it all up. And when God made and ruled a state, giving it ALL of its laws and regulations, and giving them a government which did not have so much as a town council to make any new laws, what was the economic pattern God set? Each family was to have a farm, a farm that could never be taken, for ANY reason. It could not be taken for taxes. It could not be taken for "eminent domain". It could not be taken to satisfy debts. If the king wanted or "needed" the garden, tough luck. He had to do without. If a creditor lost out, tough luck, the priority of the permanent family farm was established by God. And if taxes were owed? Then the state did not get paid. The family farm was primary, and the vested interest of the family in the farm superseded tax law, legal judgment, "needs of state" - everything. It was primary, and God gave no exception. A man executed for murder lost his life, but his heirs got the farm. If he had no direct heirs, then it went back up the family line until heirs were found. Creditors or the state never, ever got the farm. And God's promise, the actual convenant of Sinai, did not have a word in it about "salvation", or heaven, or life after death, or redemption. All of that is purely Christian revelation. The Sinai convenant was this: if you Hebrews follow this law and do all of these things, then I will grant your peace and prosperity on your farm in Israel. Your family line will not fail, and each man will live under his own vines. God's ideal for man is that every man be on his own plot of land tending it as a farmer. That was what man was designed to be at the beginning. It was Cain who made the first City, not Adam or Seth. God destroyed Babel and scattered men because they preferred to clump in a city rather than follow the commandment to fill the land and subdue her, ruling the animals. Today, the world is empty, men are clumped in cities pursuing frenetic activity. Even if they have a plot of land in their yard, they have no meaningful time to tend it. The suburbs are filled with green, rich land, land that used to be farmland. And what is it all turned into grass. Grass that is close cropped so that it never goes to seed, and is thus infertile. And why? Because English gentry and aristocrats of the 19th Century had greenswards around their country homes, for playing polo and lawn bowls and having garden parties - and everybody else imitated their fashion if they could. Men are stubborn, stupid and very arrogant. The first thing they do, if they can, is flee the land and clump in cities, like Cain, like men at Babel. And it has always been contrary to God's design. We are mandated by God to reproduce (not to cut off our reproduction so that we can "economically manage" our lives, so that we can earn our living at desk jobs (which are unhealthy for us), and live clumped in expensive cities without land to tend). We are mandated to fill up all the land and to subdue it, to tend the land and the animals. And if we do what we are designed to do, we don't have the health problems of sedentary urban dwellers. We don't have the economic struggle, because we've got our housing and we've got a substantial portion of our food provided directly by God through the growing thing in our garden. Of course if we insist on being urban dwellers, and we shun all agricultural labor as the FIRST thing to be walked away from - and we permit men with money to set up a legal system and a debt system that charges interest and imposes taxes on the necessities of life, and to repossess houses and family farmland from people who cannot pay these debts and taxes. (And when that doesn't work, they use eminent domain to drive people off the land, such as with the Enclosure Acts of old.) And most men will waver and express all sorts of doubts about God, but will be steely eyed, clear, and violent when it comes to their REAL personal god, which is money. That's how it is. It is not going to change on the macro-level. People are so far estranged from God that they don't even WANT to find the way back. The path is narrow and difficult. Few find it and fewer stick to it. But as individuals we CAN find it. We can start by remembering what we are and what we are designed to me. We can disembarrass ourselves from endless needs, shut off the TV, cut the cable, cut off the things that drain money from us. We can live more simply, and in so doing, free up time for ouraelves. We can change the way we eat, and thereby become much healthier. Before the Flood, people lived for 900 years. If we eat like them we may not live that long, but it's a cinch that if we don't we're not going to. We can discipline ourselves to stop "needing" these things which are bad for us, and living a simpler life, and find freedom in want.
I keep a garden in the summer as a hobby . I use organic methods and organic hybrid seeds .What I grow could not feed me or my family over the course of a year . Most of my neighbors do not want to do that.They see it as a lot of work for little reward . Most of the world feels that way about farming .Technology gave humanity the option to leave the farm ;and to get higher productivity from less land . That is a good thing IMHO. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
While you love such debates, that probably would interest about 1% of the population. Of those interested, only 1% of that 1% would actually be willing to make any changes to realize those goals. You have a utopian streak, you know. : )
Most of my neighbors do not want to do that.They see it as a lot of work for little reward . Most of the world feels that way about farming .Technology gave humanity the option to leave the farm ;and to get higher productivity from less land . That is a good thing IMHO. If you applied French intensive techniques you could feed yourself on 1/8 acre, using hand-tools. Jeavons has a practical book to tell you how ("How to Grow More Vegetables"). You're right: your neighbors don't want to, and most of the world feels that way. Which is why we do what we do. I say, however, that just because "the world" doesn't WANT to do something they should do, does not mean that we should permit anybody in a lab to create chimerae in the lab. There is plenty of land, and plenty of food on it and to be gained from it, by techniques that do not risk opening Pandora's box. Lots of people don't want to farm. And lots of people don't want GMOs. Somebody loses. I say that the losers should be those who don't want to farm, and that we should outlaw GMOs. It is not good to improve productivity by inserting genes. We do not know what we are doing. We're playing "sorcerer's apprentice". There is a better, more practical way: use more land, and grow more food. People are fat and have Vitamin D deficiencies. Encourage them to get out of the gym and to garden their plot. If they won't, then they can bear the higher cost of food. The avenue of messing around with the genome should be closed by law, just as human cloning should be outlawed. Growing more food on more land less efficiently will employ more people and make food cheaper, reducing the need for unemployment and welfare, and reducing medical costs. And all of those tangible benefits are more important than pleasing people because they don't "want to" be involved in farming and gardening. Somebody wins and somebody loses. More people win if the door is blocked to GMOs and the need for food forces back open land and labor to expanding the agricultural sector. Oh, and government subdidizes GMOs, and pays welfare and Medicaid and food stamps. Cut the subsidies for GMOs and put that money into French intensive, and make French intensive a condition of welfare and Medicaid, for those able to do that. MAKE that "the job" and watch food production rise, health problems plummet, neighborhood blight end, and things start to look better across the board. Let people do "what they want", and you will have abortion, rampant STDs, obesity, crime, and bankruptcy. Like we do. Since people are not going to be saved from themselves, grosso modo - most men die because they cannot be kept from killing themselves - macro-policy is a fool's errand. It is time to start thinking very little picture, very micro.
You have a utopian streak, you know. : ) Which is why I'll be the only one still around 400 years from now. And everybody will still be ignoring me then too.
The final victory of the Basque/Nordic wine-tippling sea-ape. LOL Of course, you may be right. As you observe, the future belongs to the most prolific breeders. Yet I've only see you mention one kid in your household so you can only overcome the perspiring masses with quality of offspring, not quantity.
I'm for cutting all subsidies . They distort the market and promote cronyism . Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Not through want of trying. We lost three to miscarriages.
Of course, you may be right. As you observe, the future belongs to the most prolific breeders. Yet I've only see you mention one kid in your household so you can only overcome the perspiring masses with quality of offspring, not quantity. No. Merely a demonstrative non-miracle proving the literal truth of the portions of Scripture directly stated by God - the vindication of my visions and conversations with God, and proof that my way of looking at Scripture and religion are in truth in accord with God, and what he said. Live that certain way, and LIVE, just like he said. Only through longevity can one demonstrate the literal Truth, as the counterfeit truths offered as Truth tickle the ears more, are more entertaining, are easier in some fundamental (and deadly) way. I'm not a wine-tippler. I don't really like wine all that much, truth be told. I keep trying to like mead, but I don't, really. The African stuff is the best I've had, but not good enough for me to keep at it. Whiskey and Cognac are ok - I'll have one if offered, but I won't go spend money on it. The only thing I'll actually go spend money on, rarely, to bring home, is a bottle of Aalborg or Linie Akvavit from Danmark or Norway, which I then leave it in the freezer. Or a bottle of aged rum down in Guadeloupe. Alcohol doesn't really taste all that good, and it makes my head hurt and disrupts my sleep. So I don't drink much of it. Basque and Nordic are genetic types, I'd say, not cultural types for me. I have that round head, big ears and negative blood of the Basque, and the blondeness and paleness of the Lapplander Saami. And the blue eyes of the Western Celt. But I have the cultural sensitivity of a Michigan boy who prefers the woodlands and farm country over cities.
I was a little surprised you took no notice of my links to the sea cow and to Steller's report of a sea-ape. Steller had quite a reputation. And I do recall your posts on the sea-apes of the inland salt marshes back at LP. It's kinda scary I recall that much of it from memory. : )
Well, if we evolved at all (and I don't believe we did - I think God created us directly), of course we are marine apes. It's obvious to any observer who looks at the facts. I say the same thing about the Shroud of Turin, and the pictographic record of Genesis 1. Anybody who really LOOKS at the discrete, concrete facts, without cant, realizes that he's staring directly at a true miracle, and the hand of God. When I discuss those things, I put out enough so that curious folks, like you for instance, can go and look up those things yourself, and see the facts as mustered by various folks, and realize that it's true. I know that nobody is ever going to accept the things that come from me as direct revelations, without explanation or substantiation, as true. I'm glad you looked up Sea Apes and saw that we are indeed that, if we are anything. If you do the same thing for the Shroud facts - ignore the cant and look at the physics and forensics - and you'll similarly have the basis in the evidentiary trails that you respect to be able to make it a weight-bearing element in your belief systems. You don't want to be fooled or be wrong, so you find your footing carefully and in fact-based argument. That's reasonable. I didn't comment, because I don't really BELIEVE Sea Ape theory. I believe that IF we evolved, that then that is CERTAINLY what happened. But I don't believe that we evolved at all. I think we sprang forth whole and sapient, like Athena from the head of Zeus. For you to follow me THERE, you'd have to see the miracle that is embedded in the pictographic text of Genesis 1. You're not there yet. But Sea Ape is a good set of training wheels, because the facts are so clear that they're obviously true (relative to standard theory). And that allows you to take a stance directly against accepted, dominant science, and know that it's wrong. And once you do that, it ceases to be scary to call "settled" science nonsense on all spheres, and to disregard it without care when it contradicts reality. You stop trying to make the truth work with the established theories and just discard the theories without a second thought, and move on with the truth. Sea Ape helps you.
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Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestOrganic agriculture is an unscientific, heavily subsidized marketing gimmick that misleads and rips off consumers, both because of the nature of the regulations and cheating. The old saying that you get what you pay for doesn’t apply when you buy overpriced organic products.
#2. To: Vicomte13 (#1)
It is certainly true that if you're buying something slickly packaged and transported from afar, the chances of chicanery are higher.
House Votes to Remove Country-of-Origin Labels on Meat Sold in U.S.
#3. To: TooConservative, Vicomte13, Willie Green (#0)
It CAN, if you buy local and know the farmers, which is possible in some areas.
#4. To: Pericles (#3)
#5. To: Willie Green (#2)
It won't be long before they'll be importing horse, dog or even rat meat from China and selling it in US supermarkets labeled as "ground beef." That's what "deregulation" and the "free market" is all about, isn't it?
#6. To: TooConservative, GMO Baby Parts tissue, Soylent Green, *The Two Parties ARE the Same* (#0)
"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul
#7. To: GrandIsland, Willie Green (#5)
And you, a liberal sheeple, like huge big brother regulations and a socialist type driven economy that promises income equality
#8. To: TooConservative (#0)
Some consumers think that the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) requires
#9. To: TooConservative (#0)
#10. To: A Pole, Vicomte13 (#8)
Organic movement was created by grassroot, non government, non corporate actions.
#11. To: TooConservative, A Pole, Vicomte13 (#10)
#12. To: Pericles (#11)
GMO's may be all we can do to stave off hunger but it can also be a two edged sword.
#13. To: TooConservative, A Pole, Vicomte13 (#10)
#14. To: Pericles (#11)
#15. To: tomder55 (#13)
#16. To: TooConservative (#14)
(Edited)
#17. To: Pericles (#16)
In Europe, irradiated food is common. In the USA we are freaked at the idea.
#18. To: Vicomte13 (#15)
There are vast lands in the world, and there is plenty to eat. But to unlock those lands and eat as we could would require breaking the current economic structure of food production and delivery.
#19. To: tomder55 (#18)
#20. To: tomder55 (#18)
There is a product called 'golden rice ' developed to grow in parts of the world that consume rice as a staple ,where the poor are susceptible to blindness from vit A deficiency .
#21. To: tomder55, A Pole, Vicomte13, Justified, Pericles, Chuck_Wagon (#13)
btw ;those apple size strawberries ? They are not GMO . They were developed with traditional hybridization methods.
Pericles mentioned the dominance of the red Florida winter tomato. But what about the older heirloom tomatoes? Renaissance painting shows how watermelons looked before selective breeding
JUL 29 2015
Those little yellow cherry tomatoes are likely what the Spaniards found in South American and brought to Europe. Heirloom tomatoes lack a genetic mutation that gives tomatoes an appealing uniform red color while sacrificing the fruit's sweet taste.[3] Varieties bearing this mutation, which have been favored by industry since the 1940s, feature fruits with lower levels of carotenoids and a decreased ability to make sugar within the fruit.[4] 
Organic heirloom tomatoes at Slow Food Nation 
Selection of heirlooms, plus one hybrid, the Early Girl (second largest red)
#22. To: TooConservative, tomder55, Vicomte13, Justified, Pericles, Chuck_Wagon (#21)
#23. To: Pericles, Vicomte13 (#22)
(Edited)
There is a difference in hybridization and inserting DNA from different species like say a fly into a fruit DNA helix.
Will the Japanese and Chinese eventually dominate world population because they have the anti-alcohol genetics? Check back in a thousand years to see if the future is Japanese/Chinese or if the bon vivant wine-sipping surrender monkeys of southern Europe will dominate the future. The quest for genes that influence alcohol abuse follows two paths. One goal is to locate genes that predispose a person to alcoholism. The other is to identify genes that help to prevent this from happening. Li and his coworkers have made important advances in this latter category. "We have identified two genes that protect against heavy drinking, and these are particularly prevalent among Asians," Li says. "We have shown that Native Americans, who have a high rate of alcoholism, do not have these protective genes. The one that is particularly effective is a mutation of the gene for the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase, which plays a major role in metabolizing alcohol. The mutation is found very frequently in Chinese and Japanese populations but is less common among other Asian groups, including Koreans, the Malayo-Polynesian group, and others native to the Pacific Rim. "We've also looked at Euro-Americans, Native Americans, and Eskimos, and they don't have that gene mutation," says Li. Thus, incidentally, the study of genetic mutations and alcoholism links native North-American populations to central Asian ancestors, not to those from China and Japan.
#24. To: TooConservative, Chuck_Wagon (#21)
#25. To: TooConservative, Vicomte13 (#23)
#26. To: TooConservative (#23)
Will the Japanese and Chinese eventually dominate world population because they have the anti-alcohol genetics? C
#27. To: Pericles (#25)
#28. To: Pericles (#25)
I don't know why Asian genetics are mentioned here. I am just saying there is a difference between tweaking the inherit genetic code of plants and animals and inserting DNA into same that was never meant to be there to create some sort of super veggie that can produce mass quantities.
#29. To: Vicomte13 (#27)
And THAT is what is killing us, not "running out of land" or running out of food. There is PLENTY of land, and sea, and plenty of food. But we cannot access it or harness it under our current economic model.
A decade and a half after the Zimbabwean government seized large swaths of land from white farmers in the country, President Robert Mugabe has tentatively declared that he will return certain properties to their original owners.
#30. To: TooConservative (#29)
#31. To: Vicomte13 (#27)
It's also true that everybody who has a back yard could turn back to it, if we turned away from video games. Small-plot gardening could massively increase the food supply.
#32. To: Vicomte13 (#30)
Now let's go back to Genesis 1.
#33. To: tomder55 (#31)
I keep a garden in the summer as a hobby . I use organic methods and organic hybrid seeds .What I grow could not feed me or my family over the course of a year .
#34. To: TooConservative (#32)
While you love such debates, that probably would interest about 1% of the population. Of those interested, only 1% of that 1% would actually be willing to make any changes to realize those goals.
#35. To: Vicomte13 (#34)
Which is why I'll be the only one still around 400 years from now.
#36. To: Vicomte13 (#33)
Oh, and government subdidizes GMOs, and pays welfare and Medicaid and food stamps. Cut the subsidies for GMOs
#37. To: TooConservative (#35)
Of course, you may be right. As you observe, the future belongs to the most prolific breeders. Yet I've only see you mention one kid in your household so you can only overcome the perspiring masses with quality of offspring, not quantity.
#38. To: TooConservative (#35)
The final victory of the Basque/Nordic wine-tippling sea-ape. LOL
#39. To: Vicomte13 (#38)
#40. To: TooConservative (#39)
(Edited)
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