So they're basically a patent troll with better legitimacy and a ton of GM seeds?
Who are also committing genocide on a species (bees) we depend on for the continuation of human civilization.
There are other pollinating insects, you know.
A) No. Pollinators have close relationships with specific plants, and many plants are only pollinated by bees. The loss of the bee population is Majorly Serious Shit, for the world and for humans. As a biologist, I am legitimately scared for what this could mean. This would have far-reaching consequences; food webs would collapse, whole swaths of species would go extinct, soil quality would degrade, and regional climates and weather patterns could even change and render places unlivable without certain plants in place... all because of a lack of bees. They're that important.
B) There's a lot of merit to genetic engineering of food, but Monsanto is giving the fledgeling industry a TERRIBLE name, with their borderline Bond Villain Doomsday Scenario practices. We need to do decades more controlled studies and legal groundwork before we start exposing the wild to some of these gene-modified plants with innate pesticides and shit... there are just too many unknowns involved in the longterm effects of interbreeding, and the new proteins and such we're making plants synthesize, that it's hard to predict the effects on those who consume it, and on the wild.
Well Monsanto aside, GM food is probably going to become necessary barring space colonization because let's be honest here: the sheer, enormous effort of splitting and distributing equal amount of food per capita across such a large surface area with the current population distribution, diminishing areas of arable land further increasing travel time and general instabilities in the world - it's simply not going to happen without some serious technological improvements (and we're talking sci-fi levels here) as well as economic shifts (can't expect everyone to simply sell food for less than its cost).
Actually, we can grow more than enough food to feed the world, in much less space than we already are. And we are super creative with storage methods (freeze drying, canning, pickling, etc). The problem is just distribution. Think of how much food (like fruit and produce) is allowed to spoil and is thrown out in your local supermarket or farmers market or whatever (if you've worked a grocery store job, you have a better idea of this; we lost a few dumpsters of food daily). Then multiply that by all the markets in your city. Then all the cities in your province or state or country.
Honestly, it's not that we lack the tech to distribute it either... there's just no willingness to distribute it. Why should a United States farmer pay to ship their food abroad, only to sell it at much lower prices in the parts of the world that really need it? Especially when US Supermarkets will buy it for the prices they've come to expect? We are wasting tons upon tons of food, because we have surpluses in many areas, and social/economics policies that don't make it attractive or practical to distribute to the places that need it. And until we start to look at things like this as a Global Community, people will continue to starve, and those who produce food will continue to avert their eyes, and shrug at how their hands are tied by the inconvenience of it all.
There's not always money in morality. And when money is all you're considering, expect immorality to happen.
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Topic: Things that made you RRRRRRAAAAGGGGEEEE today: Trust-o-nomics Edition (Read 3702148 times)