The problem isn’t GMO, the problem is the type of changes big agritech is making.
Take, e.g. Clearfield Rapeseed: It’s a herbicide-resistant strain, non-GMO, bred by BASF, and resistant against Clearfield, another BASF product. Thing is: Rapeseed is a brassicaceae, and they really like to exchange genes cross-species. There’s tons of wild plants (“weeds”) that are brassicaceae, in fact if you don’t happen to be growing it rapeseed itself is a rather nasty weed. Which means that once that resistance is out there that stuff can’t be killed by stuff that doesn’t kill literally everything. Brassicaecae seeds can also stay dormant in the soil for years, making it even more nasty.
My state’s agricultural ministry got wind of the stuff, quickly decided “that’s insane we need to outlaw it”, then quickly hit their head against the EU legislation which doesn’t distinguish by impact on nature or environment or economy, but by GMO status. Instead they then flooded farmers with brochures telling them just in how much shit they would be should that stuff escape from their fields and other farmers demand compensation for loss of income etc.
The thing is: That stuff doesn’t even make sense for BASF. “Sell resistant strain and a herbicide along with it” makes a lot of sense for chemical companies (and all big agritech are chemical companies), “spread that resistance throughout the whole environment” doesn’t because who’s going to buy their herbicide when it becomes ineffective. They really dropped the ball on that one, failed ecology 101.
Speaking of “we’ve got a hammer, where are the nails”: Golden rice. The problem isn’t that rice doesn’t contain carotene, the problem is that there’s people so piss-poor they can’t afford half a carrot, onion, some garlic, and a spoon of beans with their bowl of rice. If you want a solution that is the problem to fix.
This is the kind of stuff actually modern agritech comes up with, problem being: It’s not a thing you can earn money with as a company as there’s no products to sell, definitely none you have a monopoly on, so those companies have literally zero incentive to research that kind of thing. Farmers don’t have the funds (even in the west, they’re getting squeezed by supermarkets and Nestle etc), but you know what, states already have universities. Give them a couple of fields to mess around with and you’ll be surprised by what they come up with.
That is irrelevant to the effective ban on gene-editing and CRISPR though. They can do the same thing with hybrids, etc.
Anti-GMO sentiment was able to get so big because people know that there’s something fishy going on with industrialised agriculture, and a ban was easy to enact because it’s saying “not more of that stuff” and “shut up bloody lobbyists”. It was politically possible even if misguided and not doing it would’ve been worse, not (necessarily) in terms of agriculture but politics and with that the future of agriculture: It’s high time the regime changes to an impact assessment and doesn’t only cover GMO but also conventionally bred crops, but without the current GMO rules it’d be practically impossible to enact against the agritech lobby flanked by under-informed farmers.
I do agree with some of your post though, but even efforts to control fertiliser over-use are really difficult to manage.
Fertiliser over-use is currently solving itself: Fertiliser costs lots of money and no farmer wants to use more than necessary and you can get systems that analyse a satellite image and program your machine to deposit the stuff exactly where it’s needed, and only there, off the shelf.
Of course better soil management and ending import-dependent agriculture completely is a much better idea (phosphorous mines won’t last forever and why the hell aren’t you pulling your nitrogen out of the air), but at least critters will be able to live in drainage canals. Editing nitrogen fixing into a crop would be an interesting idea. Or engineering a symbiote that can do it to get along well with the crop, that kind of thing.
The problem isn’t GMO, the problem is the type of changes big agritech is making.
Take, e.g. Clearfield Rapeseed: It’s a herbicide-resistant strain, non-GMO, bred by BASF, and resistant against Clearfield, another BASF product. Thing is: Rapeseed is a brassicaceae, and they really like to exchange genes cross-species. There’s tons of wild plants (“weeds”) that are brassicaceae, in fact if you don’t happen to be growing it rapeseed itself is a rather nasty weed. Which means that once that resistance is out there that stuff can’t be killed by stuff that doesn’t kill literally everything. Brassicaecae seeds can also stay dormant in the soil for years, making it even more nasty.
My state’s agricultural ministry got wind of the stuff, quickly decided “that’s insane we need to outlaw it”, then quickly hit their head against the EU legislation which doesn’t distinguish by impact on nature or environment or economy, but by GMO status. Instead they then flooded farmers with brochures telling them just in how much shit they would be should that stuff escape from their fields and other farmers demand compensation for loss of income etc.
The thing is: That stuff doesn’t even make sense for BASF. “Sell resistant strain and a herbicide along with it” makes a lot of sense for chemical companies (and all big agritech are chemical companies), “spread that resistance throughout the whole environment” doesn’t because who’s going to buy their herbicide when it becomes ineffective. They really dropped the ball on that one, failed ecology 101.
Speaking of “we’ve got a hammer, where are the nails”: Golden rice. The problem isn’t that rice doesn’t contain carotene, the problem is that there’s people so piss-poor they can’t afford half a carrot, onion, some garlic, and a spoon of beans with their bowl of rice. If you want a solution that is the problem to fix.
This is the kind of stuff actually modern agritech comes up with, problem being: It’s not a thing you can earn money with as a company as there’s no products to sell, definitely none you have a monopoly on, so those companies have literally zero incentive to research that kind of thing. Farmers don’t have the funds (even in the west, they’re getting squeezed by supermarkets and Nestle etc), but you know what, states already have universities. Give them a couple of fields to mess around with and you’ll be surprised by what they come up with.
That is irrelevant to the effective ban on gene-editing and CRISPR though. They can do the same thing with hybrids, etc.
I do agree with some of your post though, but even efforts to control fertiliser over-use are really difficult to manage.
Anti-GMO sentiment was able to get so big because people know that there’s something fishy going on with industrialised agriculture, and a ban was easy to enact because it’s saying “not more of that stuff” and “shut up bloody lobbyists”. It was politically possible even if misguided and not doing it would’ve been worse, not (necessarily) in terms of agriculture but politics and with that the future of agriculture: It’s high time the regime changes to an impact assessment and doesn’t only cover GMO but also conventionally bred crops, but without the current GMO rules it’d be practically impossible to enact against the agritech lobby flanked by under-informed farmers.
Fertiliser over-use is currently solving itself: Fertiliser costs lots of money and no farmer wants to use more than necessary and you can get systems that analyse a satellite image and program your machine to deposit the stuff exactly where it’s needed, and only there, off the shelf.
Of course better soil management and ending import-dependent agriculture completely is a much better idea (phosphorous mines won’t last forever and why the hell aren’t you pulling your nitrogen out of the air), but at least critters will be able to live in drainage canals. Editing nitrogen fixing into a crop would be an interesting idea. Or engineering a symbiote that can do it to get along well with the crop, that kind of thing.