Franken-foods need to compete with whole organic vegetables in a level market playing field. You enthusiasts can purchase them, and I will pick organic. Fair, right?
What does organic mean to you? Sans synthetic fertlizer? Sans GM?
We should probably stop using synthetic fertilizer and large-scale monoculture system. But to truly address climate change and environmental degradation, you should really consider GM as a solution.
The most likely path to a sustainable food system incorporates GM crops but leaves behind the destructive framework which was built around the first GM varieties.(roundup ready monoculture systems)
Climate change: GM traits to improve the plants ability to sequester carbon in higher concentrations, in more tissue, and further into the soil where it is less likely to re-enter the atmosphere.
Environmental: moving away from herbicide resistance traits and focus on yield, crop improvement traits, and crop protection. The current business model of GM is designed to force farmers to buy herbicide from the same supplier as the seed. It's a double money grab.
Moving away from herbicide resistance traits will improve environment by reducing monoculture and evolutionary pressure on weeds.
it sounds like you believe that GMO foods can be key to fixing our most serious problems, and that the existing, documented problems with GMO "can go away" .. seems unrealistic at best to me
Well, it sounds to me like you are uninformed. Please, tell me about the documented problems with GMOs and how unrealistic it would be to mitigate them.
It's just so exhausting for me to communicate with someone like yourself, who simplifies a complex issue down to "unrealistic" because of its complexity. I have personally generated multiple GM varieties and spent a substantial amount of time researching horizontal gene transfer in the environment. If you think we can feed the world's growing population, mitigate and resolve climate change, and quickly address new pathogens in our crop system, *without GM crops*, then let's see it. Let's see the data which supports non-GMO as a viable equal yield. As a viable solution to emerging pathogens.
I would love to have a meaningful conversation about this, but you are certainly indoctrinated into a way of thinking about GMO which doesn't align with reality. See: "Frankenfoods" in your original comment. You choose a disparaging way to describe GM varieties as a way to amplify your negative opinion about them. Look up Agrobacterium-mediated gene transfer and you will learn that the mechanism used to deliberately insert genes has already been occurring in nature for thousands of years.
What's funny is you didn't even answer the very first question I asked you: What does organic mean to you? Because organic is a half-baked term with a dozen definitions used as a marketing tool for product differentiation. Organic labels mean nothing, are based on varying parameters, and are assessed by a slew of certifying bodies with questionable ethics.
organic is a term that will surprise you when you learn what it means. organic does not mean no pesticides. organic certifiers agree to an allowed level of pesticides. organic does not mean it hasn’t been subject to genetic modification. nearly all food we eat has been selectively bred for our consumption and isn’t found in nature
> organic is a term that will surprise you when you learn what it means.
my current understanding is that the organic certification of food in America is a giant success story with many facets; that the negotiation on the meaning of organic for fruits and vegetables was relatively strightforward while the terms for meat products delayed the process and were difficult; that the organic certification has been a success in the marketplace, giving some farms a chance to get profitable with a higher selling price; that organic certification in California is also consistantly forged and that there is an enforcement challenge to curb forged organic certificates and brand marking.
Yes, I am interested to learn more about organic food, and I do buy organic food regularly and often, here in California.
What you need to understand is that organic cropland makes up less than 1 percent of total US cropland, organic commodities make up less than 2 percent, and less than 6 percent of total retail food purchases are organic.
You can buy organic all you want, but rest assured it is a luxury good and you are paying a premium for whatever peace of mind it gives you. The rest of the world doesn't have that luxury. Waging war against all GM crops could drive food prices beyond what's affordable. It also drastically reduces our ability to battle emerging pathogens.
a big concern with organic branding is how organic does something have to be? lower on the food chain on the raw ingredients end it’s easier to quantify. once you get up higher like organic breads and cakes it’s tricky. if i’m making a strawberry cake with organic strawberries and organic wheat but not organic sugar is that ok? what if i mix some organic and some not? there’s a lot of flexibility here. organic produced goods have a minimum organic ingredient percentage requirement but it doesn’t mean it’s 100% organic
We should probably stop using synthetic fertilizer and large-scale monoculture system. But to truly address climate change and environmental degradation, you should really consider GM as a solution.
The most likely path to a sustainable food system incorporates GM crops but leaves behind the destructive framework which was built around the first GM varieties.(roundup ready monoculture systems)