In other words, this whole voluntary offset business is crazy.  When we have an enforceable GHG emissions cap, then farmers who buy the nitrogen will be charged for the resulting emissions (or at least the fertilizer extractors/manufacturers will be charged and will pass that along to their customers); farmers who don't use nitrogen will save avoided costs.  You won't have to worry about who could have been worse; each emission will be tagged and it will start to make financial sense not to emit in every case.

And yes, the GM angle is so yucky,

Raphael Sperry

You wrote: "It [GM] is the anti green by definition."

Can you please clarify what you mean by this?

I view "green" as technology that reduces the use of chemicals, reduces consumption of energy, reduces harm to the environment, reverses previous harm to the environment, and/or actually allows us to accomplish more by consuming less and return cultivated land to natural habitat.

The genetically altered potatoes I constantly mention here contain a single wild potato gene that confers resistance to late blight. The result is far less use of toxic fungicides, lower use of fuel for applying pesticides, lower costs for even the smallest farmers, and higher yields, allowing farmers to grow more on less land. Furthermore, efforts are underway to put such potatoes in the hands of smaller farmers without turning the farmers indentured serfs.

How are such GM potaoes not "green"?

If a GM plant results in lower carbon emissions, the grower should be entitled to the same financial reward someone else recieves for reducing carbon emissions.

If an organic famer uses practices that lower carbon emissions, he or she should be entitled to the same financial reward someone else gets for reducing carbon emissions.

The goal is to reduce emissions, not promote one technology over another.

I don't think it is up to Arcadia, however,  to fight for other's rights. But they might want to form an alliance with organic farmers. Would organic farmers be willing to form an alliance with them?

What I do know is that I can no longer buy my preferred organic produce because his crops were contaminated by GM.  Before the problem was discovered his seed bank was ruined and he was sued by Monsanto for selling crops without a license.  He's gone and if I want food grown naturally and without pesticides it has to be shipped from much farther away which is painful irony.

So why not promote organics and other natural methods for the same reason?

I realize there are specific problems and whole websites are devoted to spreading misinformation about GMOs, but I'm asking you... why is the potato I described not "green"?

"By this logic it should be mandated that all crops everywhere on the planet should be GM."

I don't believe in mandating such things. It should be up to the grower and the consumer, who should both be fully informed. Right now, environmentalists are essentially mandating the no crops should be GMOs. I want to look at each GMO -- and other agricultural practices -- individually and assess their benefits and hazards.

"I remember decades ago how GM would solve the world's hunger problems."

There is no single solution. We need conventional ag, organic ag, new methods, and GMOs. Combine the best strategies to provide good food using less land, energy, and other resources.

"What I do know is that I can no longer buy my preferred organic produce because his crops were contaminated by GM."

Can you please direct me to more information about this person? I'm very interested in finding ways for organic and GMOs to peacefully co-exist.

"So why not promote organics and other natural methods for the same reason?"

Definitely. Promote ALL methods that can provide safe high-quality food and protect our natural environment. I buy organic products, but I also see that GMOs could eliminate even more chemicals and further protect the environment.

There are plenty of people promoting organic food. I've decided to promote beneficial GMOs. What's wrong with that?

Erik

The Orion Grassroots Network: supporting grassroots groups working for conservation, justice, & more

copper ammonium carbonate
copper sulphate
copper oxychloride
rotenone
potassium salts of fatty acids
nicotine sulfate
veratrine
azadirachtin
salannin
potassium permanganate
pyrethrin

... from their orchards and fields.

They should also stop using machinery for tilling their fields.

And they should stop growing canola. Formerly an industrial lubricant that caused illness when ingested, the plant was modified by a combination of chemical mutagenesis and irradiation to produce an edible oil. No one knows what other hazardous genes remain in the varieties grown for food or what other changes were caused by the chemicals and radiation. I think canola is more hazardous than carefully constructed GMO and I'm trying to eliminate it from my diet... not easy, since it is almost as ubiquitous as corn syrup. There is no such thing as "organic" canola oil.

http://www.nosprayzone.org/pesticides/quickBtfacts.html

"The Bt strains being used are applied at rates up to one billion times the natural levels. Often, they wipe out entire families of insects in the sprayed areas. For instance, Btk, a strain used to control moth pests such as tussock and gypsy moth, kills all insects in the Lepidoptera family (moths and butterflies). Soil biota is also affected - there is evidence to show that nematodes and predator insects (that would naturally control the pest population) are depressed also."

"Bt is extremely similar (so much so it is difficult to distinguish without sophisticated testing) to two other bacteria, B. cereus, which causes food poisoning, and B. anthracis, which causes anthrax."

"Bt secretes many of the same toxins B. cereus does when it is growing. There is mounting evidence that spores germinate in humans and can live for extended periods of time in the respiratory and gastrointestinal tract. The effect of these low level infections is unknown, but there have been isolated reports of disease caused by Bt. One of the reasons Bt may not be seen as a common cause of sickness is that it is very hard to test for its presence - many cases diagnosed as B. cereus gastroenteritis (a fairly common form of food poisoning) may in fact be caused by Bt."

While GMOs might not be natural, it seems a carefully constructed GMO containing a gene for a single protein that kills only the insects feeding directly on it would be safer than releasing billions of spores of an organism related to B. anthracis.

Do we know what happens to it once it is released? Perhaps at such a high concentration, a few of the bacteria can undergo natural genetic change and/or exchange DNA with related bacteria living in the soil, creating novel and very hazardous strains that affect non-target insects or even mammals. Different Bt organsim are known to exchange DNA; that is how more-effective strains are developed by "conventional" methods rather than by genetic engineering. Anyone spraying Bt spores on a field is taking enormous risks. Just because no one has died yet, does not mean a new plague will not emerge from an organic farm. Has this been thoroughly invesitigated. Perhaps the use of Bt under any circumstances should be banned until we know it is absolutely safe.

Canola, maybe so.

No more machinery? Sounds like the increasingly grim "use better cars vs. don't use cars anymore" debate going on over at the Greening of Madison Ave thread. In the long run, I might agree. In the short run, how is that practical?

Erik


The Orion Grassroots Network: supporting grassroots groups working for conservation, justice, & more

I don't know your potato so can't say.  In general I don't like GM if it  is patented or can't be created by farmer Joe out in the greenhouse without fear of lawsuits.  If farmer Joe can still produce his choice of potato without being contaminated by Franken Food (TM) then I don't care.

"There is no single solution."
Very true but the only solutions being promoted by our governments are those that benefit the locked down mega corps with rosy promises.  The earlier promises are unfulfilled and I doubt the new ones will be either.

"Can you please direct me to more information about this person?"
It is happening all over the place but one that made the news is Percy Schmeiser: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/genetics_modification/p ...

"Definitely. Promote ALL methods that can provide safe high-quality food and protect our natural environment."

Absolutely but again, farmer Joe and his methods that are thousands of years old are not being promoted in a big way and in fact he's being pushed out in favour of big ag and their unnatural methods.

"There are plenty of people promoting organic food. I've decided to promote beneficial GMOs. What's wrong with that?"

Nothing as long as one method doesn't interfere with another.  As long as I have reasonable choices and things like cross contamination aren't a problem I don't mind what anyone does.  However it is already a problem and choices in non organic certified food are getting fewer.  I used to love corn but it is already too late in North America.  Simply label GM as such and I'd be happier.

I believe that the whole food chain is breaking down in ways that frankly are very frightening.  This isn't a new problem and it is already a mess that needs changing however it is moving in even more scary directions.

If the hundreds of varieties of rice (technically GM but done in concert with nature over hundreds of years) become only a handful and all of them patented then we are taking a huge risk that I'm not prepared to take.

You are free to create, grow, and eat GM but if it takes away my choices or if the industry while on one hand promotes healthy benefits but on the other refuses to label that food so I can choose to not consume it then I have serious reservations about the whole industry.

Update> a lot has been said before I posted so I can't comment much on the new comments except to say I still don't believe it.  Bottom line, it isn't a religion for me, I simply refuse the notion that we can fool mother nature and fix any of our problems.  We can debate and nit pick all day but I won't be any more convinced toward GM than you will be against it.  I just say no.

I'm just trying, in my own crude way, to communicate my view that the organic vs. GMO debate really can't rely on objections to chemicals (combining both practices could actually eliminate ALL chemicals) or on the notion that one is natural and other is not natural (organic farming relies on technology).

If one is going to draw a line or two, saying some breeding practices are acceptable and other not, some chemicals are acceptable because they are "natural" while GMOs are not, and some agricultural practices are natural and others are not, then the debate is not about whether GMOs are good for the environment (they clearly can be if not abused) or whether they are natural, but about whether technology should be used to solve problems and where do we draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable technology.

In my original response to Vikingsson, I was trying to get a handle on what it means to be "green". I don't see how GMOs can collectively be labeled "green" or not "green". The real question is, for each GMO and for each organic practice, does it preserve the biosphere or harm it?

I think we both agree that we have to eliminate toxic chemicals from our environment, but I doubt we will ever agree on how to go about doing this. I was not serious about the machinery issue, but I was serious regarding the spraying of Bt... seems like a pretty dangerous experiment. I'd rather see the protein in the plants rather than the spores in the air and soil.

Oh... I do believe we should try the most benign methods first. I have to repeat what I've said before... I do not consider GMOs the first or ultimate solution for every problem. It just seems like that because I've decided to follow this particular issue.

You indicated you dislike all GMOs. They cannot be "green". I presented an example of a GMO that could be "green". You did not zero in on the rice in your post. You condemned all GMOs. You might be correct in objecting to the rice.

So, based on my description of the potato, do you think it MIGHT be "green"? Just so you know, potatoes are progated vegetatively. It is possible to breed them, of course, and if you were doing so, you would want to take measures to prevent undesirable crosses. However, farmers do not save seed from year to year. They plant fresh tubers. If I planted a row of GMO potatoes in my yard and you planted a row of non-GMO potatoes next door, our tubers would remain free of "genetic contamination" from each other's plants.

Regarding Percy Schmeiser, I have to review the information. But based on what I recall hearing about this case, I agree that the ag company had no right to complain in this matter. If they plant a field of canola and don't want anyone to get their hands on the genetic material, it is up to them to keep the pollen in their field. Percy should be able to sue them for trespassing or something. This would be true whether the company is growing a GMO or a coveted heirloom variety. It is a legal issue independent of whether a GMO was involved.

On the other hand, my sympathy for Percy as a vicitim of GMOs  is limited. He himself is growing what I would consider more of a "frankenplant" than a GMO. See previous post regarding canola. If there are abominations of nature growing in farm fields, canola certainly is one of them. It is a good thing you had to stop consuming your neighbor's canola... might save your life.

So... we need reform to reduce corporate control of our common genetic heritage, not banning of GMOs. By the way, not all GMOs are controlled by corporations. And we need a uniform definition of "frankenplant" if we are going to use that as a means of condemning GMOs.

Other food should also be appropriately labeled. Conventional food should include a list of pesticides and herbicide used on the label. Organic food should include a list of pesticides and herbicides used on the label. The consumer can then decide whether they want GMO/zero chemical food, GMO/chemical food, conventional/chemical food, or organic/chemical food (see earlier post).

One could also include amount of energy used for growing and distribution... I think consumers should be aware of the advantage conferredd by a combination of RoundUp and no-till agriculture, though I'm not necesssarily a big fan of RoundUp.

Full disclosure.

Though I buy organic products, I do wonder whether organic is always a good option. It would be nice to know exactly what they spray on the different crops.