The Riff-Raff Element wrote:I'm not entirely anti-gm. I of the opinion that there are applications that are both justified and beneficial. The example I like best is the gm spud produced in India that was more efficient at harvesting nitrogen from the soil and hence was higher in protien, which is dead useful in a malnourised society.
But the GM soya and maize are a different matter. It is a myth that these plants are inherently better yielding: they yield no better than conventional varieties when grown in the same conventinal regime. Their (minor) yield improvemnets come about simply because these can be liberally washed with roundup after sprouting to remove weed competition.
And because Monsanto make both the seeds and the weed killer they are able to "add value" except to the wider environment, of course.
That's pretty much how I feel. I have no real problem with fiddling with genomes, after all that's what seed providers have been doing for hundreds of year. What bugs (and that's a tame term) me is what they're doing. There are plants, such as walnut trees, whose roots unleash chemicals to reduce competition from other plants. If GM companies were doing anything useful, why can't they create a strain of wheat that does the same? Maybe a strain of cabbage that isn't appetising to caterpillars? Instead it's being used as a means to agricultural extortion. Terminator 'technology' is the worst.
If these companies are trying to help poor farmers, for Gods sake let them save their own seeds!
