And the problem is, like anti-vaxxers, the GMO denialist is going to continue to adapt, shift goal posts, and develop new and misleading claims. The GMO denialists aren't anti-GMO, oh no, they're pro safe GMO, just like how Jenny McCarthy claims to be pro-safe vaccine, not anti-vaccine, but somehow manages to find flaw in every vaccine. Same thing is happening here, with every type of GMO crop, they are going to find a flaw in, even if they have to mislead or lie to make that point.

What irks me is that so few people have the understanding to see these people for what they really are. Which isn't surprising, because how many people are involved in agriculture anymore? So when someone says that Bt crops are unsustainable because they create superpests, people think they are bad. No one points to the same thing happening in conventionally bred crops and says conventional breeding is wrong, because they do not know about those examples, so those GMOs seem bad.

Then the anti-biotech crowd points to herbicide resistant crops, and hey, doesn't a plant designed to withstand a chemical sound bad? But they conveniently neglect to mention that this enables a switch from less environmentally damaging weed control methods like soil degrading tillage. Instead, they harp on how the herbicides that go with those crops are increasing in usage, but don't seem to care to mention that they are replacing harsher herbicides.

Hit those points and they shift to the anti-corporate angle, which sounds reasonable enough by comparison.Naturally, they don't mention that the opposition to GMOs started with the Flavr Savr tomato, produced by a small company, or that there is also strong opposition to Golden Rice, which was developed by the International Rice Research Institute and could be saving the lives of countless children in developing countries. They even attack the Rainbow papaya, developed by the University of Hawai'i, that saved the Hawaiian papaya industry, and Greenpeace has a creationism grade stupid denial of it's success on their site. In Australia and France, GMO low GI wheat and virus resistant grapes developed by CSIRO and INRA (government bodies) was destroyed. You can't claim to be merely anti-corporate while also opposing all GMO work done by universities, NGOs, governments, and small companies. I've seen people oppose the Arctic Apple (non-browning apple developed by a Canadian company) on the basis of cross pollination (apples are asexually propagated), and GMO taro got banned in Hawai'i because of local politics.

My point is, change the developer, change the trait, change the gene, change whatever, and the opposition still stands. This is not logical by any sense. Let's call it what it is, a symptom of anti-science sentiment and a shift to pre-enlightenment naturalism. As it stands, of all the potential applications of GE crops, we only have a few traits in use due to the overly strict regulatory burden keeping out publicly developed GE crops, and that's absurd. No one is saying there aren't legitimate problems or issues, but you're sure as shit not going to get anything even remotely resembling an accurate picture from any anti-GMO group I've ever heard of. The parent poster is right. It's time we called this movement out for what it is, and threw it in the rubbish pile next to the denial of climate change, vaccinations, and evolution.

Disclaimer, I work with a publicly funded crop breeding program, so if you believe that there is a vast world wide conspiracy among virtually every agricultural researcher and plant scientist on earth to hide the secret dangerous truth about GMOs that you were clever enough to discover at by reading nonsensical bullshit and speculating on your couch (though strangely we shop at the same stores and eat the same foods as everyone else), you might want to disregard this post, but you were going to do that anyway.

And decreasing efficiency is sustainable? We don't have infinite land you know, everything has a cost, and if you lose efficiency, you lose wild land. Somehow, that sounds less sustainable than various chemical inputs.

I stopped reading at the point where you forgot that the past couple thousand years have been plagued by constant threat of famine. Out of sight, out of mind. Kinda crazy how detached people are from agriculture these days.

Are you volunteering to be the one to pull weeds and squash bugs in the hot summer sun for hours on end and then shoulder the immense cost increases that would bring? Or are those burdens for the sweat and blood of 'other' people so that you can live comfy and judge the hand that feeds you? Because if you are willing, find your nearest farm and sign on up. I'm sure the farmer would be thrilled to save a few bucks on inputs while you spend your days doing backbreaking labor for dirt cheap.

I wonder what will happen to their CCD rates. I doubt there is any one cause to CCD, but this could be a contributing factor, so it will be something to watch.

You're saying the people who produce the most food aren't real farmers? Nice. But yeah, polyculture is great and all in your garden, and intercropping systems are something worthy of more research, sure, but economically scaling it up might be a problem, and even then, it is highly unlikely to be the end of pest problems. The thing with simple solutions is that if they were really that simple everyone already be doing them.

From TFA:

Sorry to say, but I think the apocalypse has been postponed yet again.

Um, you have heard about "Romneycare" ? He pretty much invented the idea of the individual mandate. And yup, it's working.

What could go wrong? I don't know, maybe a disease that kills 22 thousand people? Sorry developing country kids, you gotta die, but hey, at least you don't have to worry about something that might somehow be even worse, like the dangers of unknown consequences, in other words, I don't have an actual argument, but I do have the first world heebie-jeebies, so here's a non-falsifiable appeal to ignorance. Try not to die of hemorrhagic fever while I vacuously muse about precaution from my overpriced organic café. Man, I'm glad you 'What could possibly go wrong' people weren't around when some crazy dude tried fighting disease by injecting people with dead viruses.

I'm not an entomologist, nor an ecologist, but I do recognize the standard MO among genetic engineering opposition, and this looks like the same horse shit type of opposition we see when dealing with genetically engineered crops, so unless someone can give me an actual reason (no, Jurassic Park doesn't count) as to why this is not worth trying, I fail to see the problem with this.

Both, and sometimes not without reason, but those who distrust science sure do like to pass their anti-science off as a more reasonable sounding anti-corporate sentiment.

I had to reread that a few times to realize you didn't forget an 'A'.

And one other thing I forgot to add:

There is no single gene for yield. Yield is a factor of weather, soil fertility, moisture, biotic conditions like disease, pest and weed pressure, ect. You take away pest pressure, and you don't think yield won't go up? well, it kind of doesn't, not in developed countries anyway, where we were spraying pesticides to control pests. But in developed countries, things are very different. So, you really can't say they don't improve yield, or sustainability. Even the much maligned herbicide tolerant ones do.

Of course, higher nutrient crops don't fair any better than Monsanto's crops, perhaps they are hated even more, if the protesting is anything to go by. Which makes sense I guess...the claim that GMOs are all bad and there's no nuance whatsoever and therefore you should don't money to professional anti-GMO activists might look a bit silly when it is out saving even more lives. God forbid Greenpeace, Navdanya, OCA, and all those other greedy sociopaths put humanity before profit. Their actions have lead to more deaths than the anti-vaxxers.

They didn't create the terminator gene, they bought the company (Delta & Pine Land Co.) that did. They then promised not to use it when people got angry about it, and have never commercialized it, although people are also angry that GE crops can cross pollinate with non-GE crops (like every other outcrossing plant species on the planet). They're damned if they do and damned if they don't.

That's a bit complicated. I believe you have been mislead by the anti-GE propaganda because within the proper context that makes a lot more sense. That's exactly how breeding and crop improvement programs work. We bred for hessian fly resistant wheat, and the fly evolved. We bred for late blight resistant tomatoes, and the late blight evolved. The first herbicide resistant weeds emerged in the 70's. That was conventional breeding, not genetic engineering, and the exact same thing happened, but no one makes a big fuss because breeding is not controversial, so no one calls them super pests or super weeds or super diseases. You are describing a problem of agriculture, not one of genetic engineering. And what would you have rather had, more pesticide sprays? Ignoring the pests and hoping they go away? That argument is like pointing to anti-viral resistant strains of HIV and claiming we should just stop trying to treat HIV. There is no prefect answer here, not when dealing with biotic systems anyway. Maybe with nutrient acquisition or drought tolerance or cold hardiness traits, yeah, abiotic factors don't evolve, but biotic factors are complicated. The way the media has been dealing with this has been sensationalist, ham handed, and completely fails to give the proper context of the matter, so in a sense its no wonder people hate Monsanto and their GMOs. The best thing to do is to use a multi-pronged mode of attack, with multiple modes of action, and biological and cultural considerations, but unfortunately, between the over-bearing regulations hindering new genes being utilized and other issues such as some people not planting their refuge areas and ruining it for everyone, the ideal methods are not being used.

That's anther misconception. they're not super at all, they are just resistant to one particular type of insecticidal protein or herbicide. If you don't use Bt crops or glyphosate, if you use Liberty Link crops for instance, there is little to no difference to you. The threat here is not that we're creating a race of super weeds and super pests (BS emotional terms by the way) but that we will lose the benefits GMOs have already provided. By the way, funny how the anti-GMO groups went straight from 'There's no benefits to GMOs!' to 'Ha! They are losing their benefits!' Talk about having your cake and eating it too.

Basically, yeah, people hate Monsanto for the reasons you gave, true, but those reasons actually are not very convincing. Unfortunately, there is a lot more rhetoric and baloney being put out there than actual fact and essential historical and scientific context.

Yeah, accusations equal guilt! Who cares to stop to do some fact checking to see if they are actually doing anything people claim they do? And while we're at it, death to Merck for their autism causing vaccines!

How the hell did that get modded informative, that's blatantly false.

'They' here being farmers, do you have any idea how supply chains work?

Yes, your degree from Google University means you know more than all the scientists at Monsanto. And what the hell do plasmids have to do with anything?

Man, if horizontal gene transfer happened that easily we'd be living in a very different world, however, that didn't happen. This is evolution 101 here; apply a strong selective pressure over a large area upon a fast reproducing species and you produce genetic shifts. If you knew anything about agriculture (you clearly don't) you would know that the first examples of herbicide resistant weeds emerged in the 70's, decades before GMOs. This is a problem systematic of agriculture, not one of GMOs. As for the Roundup resistant weeds, their mode of resistance is well understood, with mutations such as amplification of the EPSP synthase enzyme, or blocking of glyphosate translocation, or modification of the glyphosate binding site responsible, but never once has there been a single instance of the weeds uptaking the crop's genes. I'll eat my hat if you can find me a single example of the C4 EPSPS gene (the gene used in RR crops) being integrated into a weed's genome. Come on, prove me wrong, I'd love to hear about it. If Monsanto is so evil, and the hate so justified, the evidence of what you say should be abundant, and it shouldn't be hard to shut me up.

And here's Monsanto talking about it., Two seconds on Google is all it would have taken to find that. That news is all over the ag world, no one is covering it up, its been a topic of discussion for a long time, and if you paid attention to ag news or watched ag TV programs like on RDF-TV then you'd know that.

I really wish people who knew nothing about agriculture would stop going around saying what's what when they wouldn't know guanine from glufosinate.

They're not monopolized though. That's not how patents work (that's like saying Sony has a monopoly on Playstations, it is kind of true, but a monopoly is controlling all of a thing, not all of a particular type of a thing), and anyway, don't like Monsanto, there's Syngenta, or Pioneer, or Bayer. A much more important problem is the over-regulation preventing publicly funded projects from being commercialized. Ending patents won't do much of benefit.