15-01-2014, 10:05 AM
I have a marriage relative, a really nice, genuine and gentle (and highly intelligent) guy who is an agronomist and who spent his working life in some of the poorest places in the world trying to help local, small farmers develop practises that would benefit them.
I posted this story along with one of my vitrilolic rants about Monsanto's greed, and this is what he said in response:
This changes the complexion of this argument considerably.
I still don't fucking trust Monsanto, though....
I posted this story along with one of my vitrilolic rants about Monsanto's greed, and this is what he said in response:
Quote: Calm down! Terminator genes stop genetically modified plants cross pollinating with non-GM plants so the GM component stays where it is and does not proliferate. This protects the considerable investment that breeders have made in developing GM crops AND it satisfies one of the key objections of the anti-GM lobby, that of contamination. Any farmer who has grown hybrid crops such as hybrid maize for the past 60 years has accepted that the seed would not breed true and so could not be used for a second crop. This is a fundamental feature of crop improvement by hubridisation because the process involves maintaining at least two completely separate populations of parents the offspring of which yield better than their parents due to what is known as hybrid vigour. This is a natural phenomenon and commercial farmers have been prepared to accept the restriction since at least the 1940s. Seed of some crops such as wheat and as far as I am aware, rice cannot be economically produced by hybridisation so other breeding methods have to be used. These are not GM crops either. Farmers have been able to continue using the seed from this kind of crop and have traditionally done so but they have to take care to avoid contamination of their seed by seed from different varieties. Breeders do not like the seed they spend a fortune on developing from being grown on but there was not a lot they could do about it. You, for example could plant "Rooster" potatoes from the supermarket in your garden and they would grow once the effect of the sprouting inhibitor that is sprayed on potatoes for food had worn off. Sorry, I rant!
This changes the complexion of this argument considerably.
I still don't fucking trust Monsanto, though....
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14