Gilly wrote:
They'll have to either be incentivised financially to do it, or penalised for not doing it I should think - or both.
This is the reality of the situation. In the United States, farmers are paid to produce a surplus of corn for no good reason whatsoever. They’re now turning corn into fuel, and it’s admitted that this has contributed to the increase in food prices. This is happening purely for economic reasons, there is no other justification. There are so many false premises at the heart of the MSM coverage of this issue.
GM crops are safer than conventional plants – obviously people don’t drop down dead immediately after eating GM food; you’d hope it would be withdrawn from the market were that the case! We’re seeing cancers, conditions like asthma, numerous allergies all going through the roof. This is because the human immune system is being steadily – some might say systematically – broken down. GM food is only one contributory factor to this, but I do believe that it makes a contribution. As did Dr. Árpád Pusztai who was one of the world experts at the time.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81rp%C3%A1d_Pusztai#Pusztai_affair
You can see a lot more about this in the film ‘The World According to Monsanto’, but Pusztai’s research was directly and explicitly opposed by both the White House and Downing Street, and the latter made direct moves to have him removed from his position, which was successful. This is completely documented – one day he was one of the world’s foremost biochemists, the next day he was fired thanks to a phonecall from the Prime Minister’s office.
GM crops will increase yields – this is debatable, to say the least. Many studies indicate the opposite, but when the foremost producer of GM food has developed a system that prevents plants from creating seeds, thus farmers have to buy more seeds from them every year (although, they’ve said that they won’t use this technology...) there has to be a doubt over whether in the long-term this technology will have a positive effect on prices. To say the least. Even if you accept for the sake of argument that GM foods can create higher yields – which I don’t, I believe the opposite is the case – then there is no point having high yields if less people can afford to buy them. This actually won’t matter to the likes of Monsanto because what they’re aiming for is a total monopoly over the food production system. It’s good for them if people can’t afford food because this will make it harder for small suppliers and producers to survive.
Yields need to be increased – considering that every single supermarket chucks away tonnes of food, and now moves are being made to criminalise homeless people that attempt to eat it, is this necessary?! There are very few starving people in Britain, and a relatively small number of homeless people. Every single one of them is there due to economic reasons – and also arguably to a lack of support for alcohol and drug dependency, which is also indirectly an economic issue – so this will have no impact on that whatsoever. Is there anyone that has ever accessed this forum that can’t gain access to food? I’m not aware of one. So what’s the problem? There is no problem. What will be threatened is the ability of people to exercise control over their own food buying decisions.
Yields need to be increased in the third world – to suggest that GM crops are the solution to hunger in Africa is patently ridiculous. None of Africa's starvation problems are crop-related; it's all related to economics. Poor countries have legions of farmers. They sell crops all over the world as cash crops to pay back debt that should never have been incurred in the first place, which will never be fully repaid, and which is being paid back to billionaires and trillionaires. It's got fuck all to do with crop yields, as anyone with half a brain will tell you.
I’m sure there are several other completely false premises at the heart of this issue. There are also all sorts of solutions to any problems that there might be with regard to food issues, all of which are economic – infrastructure, investment and debt-related. Even The Guardian said the following:
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/21/gm-foods-editorial
But the bigger answers lie in asking bigger questions about the politics, as campaigners argued at the G8 earlier this week. As Europe proved in the 40 years after 1965, when agricultural production doubled, it's not only science that makes a difference. No amount of chemical fertilisers would have done so much if there had not also been agricultural education, investment in roads, storage and markets, and access to improved seed – as well as a political economy that prioritised food production. These are at the heart of a global sustainable agriculture. Genetic engineering is no substitute.
But even this is irrelevant with regard to Britain because no-one’s fucking hungry! You could actually solve all of the problems related to agriculture in Britain - which are all price-related - by simply subsidising or even incentivising small-scale local production of food instead of, oh, I don’t know, maybe banksters and arms contractors.
