is that, given time, they will move consumers in a direction that will favor food grown in more envrionmentally benign manners, and that is happening. They must be well-written and well argued to do that, as this one is. Producers will meet that demand. It is also a free market approach to change.

It might be time for GMO people and organic people to work through their differences. It should be possible to engineer food plants to cope with environmental change and do things like fix their own nitrogen while preserving crop diversity and reducing chemical inputs. It should also be possible to ensure farmers are not further abused. If we could discuss this matter we might stop the collapse of civilization and reduce environmental degradation at the same time.

Why reject useful technology because of a few bad apples... or kernels of corn?

I'd enjoy organizing a group of GMO and organic advocates interested in figuring this out.

The beauty of GM foods for the Monsantos of the world is double income.  They get money for herbicide resistant crops and for the herbicides.  As long as our subsidies and attitudes are what they are, GM foods will be about more money for chemical companies that also produce seed.

It'd be like big tobacco owning the latest lung cancer drug producer.

Not all transgenes are owned by corporations. Universities own them as well. Others are public domain. And putting the genes in plants does not necessarily yield double income for the Monsantos of the world.

For example, academic institutions are collaborating to transfer a gene confering resistance to late blight (the disease triggering the Irish Potato Famine, though the ultimate causes were more complex) to cultivars of potatoes grown in SE Asia... local cultivars suitable for the climate and accepted by the consumers in those countries. The resulting transgenic potatoes would be propagated like all potatoes, vegetatively -- no terminator genes.

Small scale farmers could benefit economically from increased yields, improved potato quality, and savings from reduced fungicide sprays. Environmentally, soil conditions could improve from a decline in the use of fungicide sprays. We are not talking about selling herbicide-resistant crops and then the herbicide. We are talking about lowering financial and environmental costs. Yet, there are people strongly opposed to this technology.

Consider the options... (1) GM crops that lower costs, reduce need to destroy native habitat for farming, and reduce chemical use, (2) expanding agricultural land by cutting down rain forests and using greater chemical and energy inputs to extract food from marginal land, or (3) letting people starve.

I prefer the first option in conjunction with education and efforts to stabilize population levels. And it is nothing like tobacco companies owning the treatment for lung cancer.

Why not? Because nature can handle changes better than humans can. In places where farmers save seed, a field represents a certain amount of natural diversity. Within it, there are genes to deal with almost any eventuality, including drought, heat, heavy rains, etc., any of those genese might have a chance to shine if certain conditions prevail. A genetically engineered crop is just the opposite: every plant in the field is identical; there is no storehouse of possibilities. In fact, when crops created by technology fail, it is inevitably back to the diversity of landraces that we must turn. Monoculture forces out diversity and makes our chances for survival slimmer.

Biofuels are a separate topic. We absolutely cannot afford to grow our way out of the energy crisis. The land is needed for food. But biofuels can be "harvested" from used restaurant cooking oil, for instance, tons of which are thrown out every day. Will this be sufficient to meet our transportation needs? Of course not. We are going to have to cut back drastically, which includes, as this article points out, eliminating our reliance on foods hauled long distances from the field to our table. In fact, food transportation uses dramatically more fossil fuel than personal transport.

I appreciate CyberBrook's post and look forward to exploring the links and CyberBrook's website. I am an omnivore, but feel that it is addiction more than a chosen lifestyle. Before I ask my question, I want to point out that I've used vegetarian cookbooks, eat vegetarian meals several times each week, and don't like to think about animals dying for my enjoyment. If I had to kill for meat I would become a vegetarian on the spot. But I just cannot resist beef when it is available.

So the following question has nothing to do with advocating the consumption of meat or even justifying the consumption of meat.

Is it possible to engage in sustainable agriculture, year after year after year, by removing animals from the equation? Didn't farms rely on animal manure before the advent of chemical fertilizers? Farmers around my home spread manure on their fields. I assume this is not only a way of disposing of it, but also enriches the soil and reduces chemical fertilizer use. Can dairy cows supply the nitrogen for sustainable organic agriculture or will crop rotation be the primary means for building soil?

Thank you for any information you can provide.

Is it correct to assume that you are also opposed to hybrid seed technology...  just crossing two independent varieties for increased productivity? The seeds from the hybrid plants are not particularly useful for growing another crop.

Are you taking the objection to GMOs one step further and would prefer that our food production depend soley on open pollinated varieties of plants?

In that case, we will have to arrange for a dramatic decrease in human population or add every single acre of the remaining natural landscape to the area cultivated for food and fiber production. I'm not sure how this protects the natural environment.