This is how we're going to lose bananas.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

The specific webpage from which that version of the image comes from is in German and seems (BRick's word of the day) to not be so much about GMO but rather being alarmist about a great, many things [/Palpatine].

With that said, I'm unable to locate any version of that image that isn't employed by dubious website.

https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZitxSUcKdFmmlTWC52vZancqZgHo8o-t_1dUPbZiyjeYWEH6OLF7ditHV2jvtAsYzTz_1aJ_1CQSJDXAU6zyiWpJIkvyadMPqKswEPNFgDSrmn_144gvPOe2bgEcL5DiicM6F3DVifk-xB94QPQqo4x7AVMViH8GiTrL9Bv7lg8Rsi0TamSbwlAlaEQOaBeiOxSdBfHchb0M-GVj3_1laLuh6WeeirGfcSQqVAskA43eqXpM9a2zl7LfDhuhAWRs2LzlyZ5iZzVnqxyK8lwRqRuMJ293nfbpb7LJSpwkniZJ6hVHrNBR8MxnQtIkRcq7fm_1kXxHNVxra-FOeQCeQp_1SlJc1LNzQT8zA&hl=en

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Plus it's bad business if GMO seed developers don't spend quite some time making tweaks here and there to avoid the situation noted above.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Brocoflower is great.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

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God is the uncaused cause of the universe. He had no beginning and has no end. He is not bound by the laws of the universe he created.

This is exactly right.

I am biased because I come from a farming family, but GMOs are necessary.

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I realize we must use GMO's, so ultimately I'm for them. But there is definitely a sense that we are toying with things we do not understand fully.

If you're against GMOs, is it the modification in and of itself that you don't like, or the modification to be highly pesticide-resistant and expose people to more pesticides?

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I'm fine with GMO. yeah, it's not much different than a weed-grower cross-pollinating/developing new strains of kind bud in his backyard greenhouse. the problem is the size and scope of GMO/Monsanto/et al activity--driving out non-GMO seed strains on a global scale that is troublesome to some.

having handled GMO seeds, that shit it toxic as fuck. you have to wear at least a painter's type mask and the smart guys pay other people to handle the Monsanto seeds. you end up in a cloud of purple-red toxic dust that coats your entire person. maybe the toxic dust is part ofwhat makes GMO seeds impervious to pests/blight.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

The funny thing about this is that "organic" crops require a higher volume use of pesticides. Organic farming is a giant scam, just like chiropractors, homeopathic medicine, mediums, and acupuncture. It's just a bunch of woo

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Not quite sure what you are referring to here, GMO seeds are edible, in fact, that's what people are worrying about, eating the seeds from plants that have had genetic modifications. Seed corn or soybeans, the products farmers buy to plant their fields do not all have toxic coatings on them- most have coatings to flow better through the planting process. The pink coating is often a mixture with Captan, a general use fungicide to protect the seed under ground. Hardly toxic to humans, even in huge doses.

New colors of seed coating today are used to mark the seeds as to GMO traits they contain. Since some seed traits require setback spaces from your neighbors' fields, you have to know which seeds are which. Some do come with protective coatings for wet planting conditions and even pest resistance, but not all, nor is it only GMO seeds that do. Far fewer open pollinated (non-GMO) seeds available today, and I have not planted any to know what coatings they come with.

You may be thinking of some of the extremely toxic corn root worm pesticides that were commonly used in the 1980s, the manufacturers even developed closed containers that hooked directly to the planter to limit exposure to the farmers. Those were super toxic in very small doses to humans and especially birds. Just a whiff could give you a headache. That is the impetus for some of these GMOS- to get away from using such toxic crap on the seeds during planting, they discovered that some gene alterations in the corn plant itself could turn the plant matter toxic only to root worm and corn borer, not humans or cattle. Great leap forward in safety for the farmers.

As far as glyphosate resistance, most grain farmers use less product and far fewer products to keep weeds under control than before. Also, cultivation, using iron tools to kill weeds between rows is nearly never done in modern farming, cutting costs of fuel and the environmental effects of more trips across the field.

In all seriousness and as a city kid, this thread has become fascinating.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Glad we can add some stuff that isn't Cubs/Sox or MVP/Score.

I still find it fascinating the things we have come up with, much out of necessity, to improve on things that happen all on their own in Nature (or by Divine design, depending on your belief). Much of it results in even lower rewards to the people using the improvements, but cheaper foods for the world.

Open pollinated is fun to grow you’ll probably see more n coming years again as the craft bourbon market develops. Best corn bread I ever had was off a Bloody Butcher corn we grew for shits and giggles one year. You won’t find coatings on most of those unless the new fungal treatment takes off. But I don’t folllw antique corns that closely. The non gmo hybrids can yield with the gmo in my experience but it is a different process. The return of mechanical cultivation might be more of a reality the further south you get. Palmer Amaranth and water hemp are a pain in the ass. Othman and a few other companies will tell you their sales are up over the past few years and the line is creeping north. Then they’ll tell you there’s a steel surcharge on new bars right now.

Hybrids are, by definition, genetically modified.

For the unaware, seed corn companies hire farmers to grow crops for the hybrid seeds, which are harvested and sold the next season to farmers. The seed corn grower typically plants six rows at a time, ABBBBA. The planter going up and down the field results in ABBBBAABBBBAABBBBA. Actually, the seed company often supplies a sub contractor to plant the corn, using a larger planter (32 rows+), then follows up with a specialty planter to seed the two male rows at a different date or dates. Lots of specialized equipment has been developed just for this purpose, some of it amazingly huge. The seed corn companies also do a lot of research with varieties in equatorial areas like Hawaii, due to very limited rogue pollen pressure and growing seasons that never end- no fallow time over Winter.

The corn plant is hermaphroditic- it contains both male and female reproductive parts. The tassel on top is the male part, the silk on the ear is the female part. All of the tassels of the B rows are removed prior to pollen drop, so the ONLY male pollen available in the field is from the A plants. After pollen is expended, the A rows are destroyed. Thus the offspring kernels from the B plants are now AB. The AB corn is harvested (usually on the ear) and processed by the seed corn company and stored until the next Spring, when it is sold to the farmers. Surprisingly, AB corn seeds grows AB plants and produces seeds, but they are often sterile, or do not produce AB corn plants if planted. Open pollinated corn may be a hybrid, and likely is, but it is grown without the controls on its pollen, and the seed produced will produce the same plant as its parent.

This type of selective breeding has been done for centuries. The more concerning modifications are the ones involving splicing of the actual plant genes themselves. These are the RoundUp Ready seeds that are resistant to glyphosate herbicide, or Bt corn, which has a gene from soil bacteria placed in the corn plant genes, which produces a protein that kills corn borer worms when they feed on the plant. These are called traits, which can be selected by the end grower for use on their farm. If I want to only use glyphosate as weed spray and protect against corn borer, I can buy seed with both traits stacked together.

Clearly, the seed company has huge amounts of money invested in the research and development of the seeds and traits. Which is why a single bag of multi-trait seed corn costs around $300. That is typically less than a bushel of corn by weight and plants about 3 acres (or less). And, the company has to develop the herbicide that works with the seeds, and advertise it, and distribute, etc. That makes them pretty defensive of their intellectual property. Every year, foreign nationals have been caught trying to steal corn and soybean plant materials from farm fields in the Midwest. China wants to grow their own food, and can copy with the best of them...

FARM STORIES!!!!

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https://twitter.com/DrKenCast

Level-headed, informed discussions and dissertations ... very nice, very well done ... it's appreciated.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

This is gay...

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This is my signature...

Hurts other species.

Yum-Yum. Considering there isn't a lot of research on these "neonicotinoids" (i guess that's the technical name for the toxic dust I encountered), the farmers out there taking precautions not to suck in mega doses of the stuff annually are no doubt wise to do so.

The coating issue isn't a main concern of folks who have expressed cause for pause re: GMOs. It's the above market dominance and resulting lack of bio-diversity and putting our global food supply in the hands of essentially Monsanto.

GMO by definition by use in seed corn are the ones with the traits though K. When you open a Partners Brand seed catalog or a few others you’ll find gmo and non gmo. GMO means trait, non gmo or conventional means trait free. I understand what you’re saying in that by selective hybriding you are modifying an organism but it doesn’t envolve the genetic splicing of the traits. So when the dude calls me asking me to contract 100 acres of non gmo yellow waxy corn he is referring to Pre trait corn.

Right, so you want GMO only to refer to plants modified a certain way, you are okay with the genetic modifications done all the "old school" way. The plants still have traits, we just got them there by altering the breeding of the parent plants.

I get tired of the hypocrisy of the anti-GMO crowd, complaining about "Frankenstein corn", (That's Frankensteeen) while sipping their French hybrid wine. Can there be anything more "Frankenstien" than taking a plant, chopping of the roots and grafting a different plant to those roots? Often, the profitability of the process seems to be the biggest hurdle for some consumers. See my next post.

Sorry, those numbers do not appear to support your claim that untreated seeds are unavailable.

Now that Bayer has bought Monsanto, does that alter your level of concern? Does the big, bad Monsanto under the benevolent control of the Germans make them more lovable?

Do you see me calling it frankencorn? My family grows both triple stack corn and old school corn if you want to label them that way.