Chemical pesticides are less than 100 years old. We got along just fine for beforehand for millennia without them.
You'd best edit Wikipedia, quickly, then! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Chemical pesticides date back 4,500 years, when the Sumerians used sulfur compounds as insecticides. The Rig Veda, which is about 4,000 years old, also mentions the use of poisonous plants for pest control.
Hmm, Gimp is fairly decent for a Photoshop alternative. I know pros won't be switching, but I'm proficient enough with it that I still prefer it now.
However, Gimp won't cover Illustrator. Inkscape does a damned good job with SVGs.
I'm a scientist, not a designer, so these cover the needs of me and my lab for no cost. I can do nice looking posters and whatnot with these tools, quite efficiently.
Blaming GMOs for this is silly. We've had herbicide resistant weeds before. It's the cultural practices used in production. Scientists warn of this and companies give guidelines on proper use, e.g. refuges of non-Bt corn to help prevent resistance from building up in insect population, use different mode of action herbicides, etc. but farmers (yes my father was one) often ignore these guidelines and do what's easy. Thus the problems.
These things worry me. I am an not a biologist, but I am an engineer. Please don't accuse me of being a "science denier" and coming up with "crap."
Well, since you're not "anti-science" why have you not read the literature? Reductions in mycotoxins and pesticide application seem like a verygoodthing to me. Just two articles of general nature, but there's plenty of others out there...
http://www.ask-force.org/web/Benefits/Phipps-Park-Benefits-2002.pdf http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1081/TXR-200027872
"a bunch more"? I'm not aware that the label rate of RoundUp changed once RR Soybean was introduced. In fact, there's plenty of scientific evidence that says that pesticide applications and use of fossil fuels and soil erosion were reduced when these soybeans were introduced.
As for RoundUp Ready corn, everyone conveniently forgets Atrazine and the other *zines that were used and leached into groundwater etc. prior to it's introduction.
Your "bunch more" really is a "bunch less".
Errm, Monsanto has nothing to do with Golden Rice and Dr. Shiva is a physicist, hardly an expert on biological organisms. Oh and RTFA linked from
But it IS a big deal.
Imagine the inverse of the situation, the person screening fails to recognize something that's on a select agent list and lets it in. This is their job to know what they're looking at and doing. Not to just act carelessly.
Having done my PhD on late blight, P. infestans and your "Mexican" Phythophthora are the same species. Not sure just what you're trying to say here? BTW, you misspelled Phytophthora, twice.
"Fix poverty". Which immediately leads to the question, *how* do you fix poverty? Don't you fix poverty by giving the poor more opportunity to grow and make what they need?
It's well established that human health and poverty are closely linked. Fixing human health is one of the steps to fixing poverty. Healthy people are more capable of working than those that are ill.
So in your world, blindness and other consequences of nutritional deficiency is in no way a driver of poverty?
Poverty and well-being are inextricably linked. It's a vicious cycle. If you can start breaking into it at any point it's helpful. Golden Rice is just one entry point into this cycle.
The simplest solution seems to be to grow some carrots or other vitamin A rich food alongside rice. But, maybe you're right and they need every inch of their land to grow rice and can't spare any for other vegetables.
Have you actually set foot in a rice paddy here in Asia? I'm guessing not. Rice is extremely unique in its ability to grow under monsoonal conditions. I'm not aware that carrots are fond of 5cm of standing water throughout the growing season.
Beyond that, as the grandparent noted, these people use all the land to grow rice. It's not that there aren't good solutions (from a Western developed country standpoint), it's that this one FITS the problem at hand.
Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.