On Monday, November 17, 2003, at 12:54 PM, Ingrid Bauer/Jean-Claude
Catry wrote:
> once the plants and animals used as crops will be genetically modified
> , ou
> will have to ask the experts to learn how to grow them.
>
Nah, you can still grow your own, if you want to, or buy organic.
Anyway, most people still have to "ask the experts" how to grow regular
food crops, it is pretty difficult if you don't have experience. I
think most people would starve if they had to try it. If anything, GM
will probably make it easier to grow things. I garden organically now,
and have endless wars against the various bugs that want to eat my
veggies. Some things I just can't grow here, all melon/squash/cucumber
like things, for example. The local farmers manage it by hosing
everything down with pesticides. If we had to go without pesticides we
wouldn't be eating much! Gm seems a bargain (with the devil?) compared
to that.
I am not saying I like the situation, but we are not going back to the
simple life before the neolithic. The only way we could do that would
be by killing off 99.9% of the people and then waiting 100,000 years
for the ecology to readjust. We have to live with the world the way it
is, and we have to feed the people here now the best we can. GM will
bring its troubles but in my mind I have to balance those against the
troubles we have already. It is not good verses bad, but poor verses
less poor options. We can look forward to big decreases in pesticide
use with GM crops, and that is a big plus for me. GM cotton alone will
save us nearly HALF the insecticide now used in the whole world.
By the way, my Dad tried GM corn on his farm a few years back. Didn't
like it, and went back to regular seed, GM seed was much more expensive
than regular seed and didn't do as well in his fields. I don't have any
particular anti-GM feelings. It isn't so different from what goes on
all the time in nature, virii are always cutting and splicing genes
from one plant to another, every time they reproduce, they even take
genes across species. Supposedly even happens between animal species.
We all carry a few pig and duck genes from influenza, probably.
|
