for the most part, the people of china, japan, korea, and saudi arabia are native to those places, not invaders who often committed genocide to take control of those places and resources. there have also long been outcries to how they deal with foreigners, we just don't hear about it since we don't live there and aren't part of that media bubble. their attempts at monoculture have presented them with a variety of different issues and existential threats, japan probably suffering the most acutely right now.

We need manure to feed the world. Anything else will pollute earth and water even more.
Rain forest is also destroyed to make room for "bio" fuel plantations and other monocultures.
Maybe we find a way to collect sheep farts and use them, like here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqL4DRZ2EkA

In first world countries....yes, or close to that much. Agreed. Not world wide.

Mechanized harvest is accepted in "natural" old school farming. Agreed, it would fall under the "industrial farming" methods, but is one of the least damaging.
>1000 acre farms do not count as "family farms" in my eyes, even if they are owned by a single family. So is Walmart, but it's not a mom and pop or family store.

Again, mechanization is not the same as industrialization, but does still do damage by over plowing, etc. I'm talking about monoculture crops, over application of man made fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Grain was farmed "by hand" since farming existed with few problems, but more work involved. The work it takes to rehab a river system because industrial farming runoff contaminated and killed it is FAR more work than the extra work involved in farming using old school methods (which does not mean everything is done with hands, tools and machines have been in use for eons).

Roundup doesn't "break down" completely, and doesn't break down at all if it's washed into river systems and out of the UV light.

Once again, machines aren't all of "industrial farming", they are one of the least damaging facets, and they are not unknown in old school, smaller farming techniques. BUT....overuse of heavy equipment either over packs the soil, making it produce far less, or over plows the soil, making it run off and blow away (see the dust bowl). If it was ONLY about machinery, and ONLY industrial farming used machines, you would have a point, but neither is true.

No, actually overproducing on a piece of land like that makes it unusable quickly and new farm land is needed to replace it while it recuperates (if it ever can). Chemical fertilizers add salts that kill beneficial bacteria, "killing" the soil, sometimes permanently. producing double or triple the amount of food on the same land is beneficial in the extreme short term, and disastrous in the barely long term. (See 'dust bowl')

Man power is far less damaging to the environment than fossil fuels for the same amount of energy. Also, the people would use no more resources because they're in the field than they would anywhere else, so there's NO net gain to the energy used or demand on the environment if they farm instead of sit at a desk, but machines don't use energy when idle, so there is a net loss to the energy required if you replace them with pre-existing people.

Yes, you quoted it directly, buy your characterization of what that meant was insane. You claim they said Monsanto worked on the project (and other things) because they're evil and want to do evil and harm. The video actually said they do these things without much care for the negative consequences to others, and that makes them evil. I hope you can comprehend the distinct difference in those statements, and that your portrayal of what they said is not honest.

There are also issues of monoculture -- all one variety of carrot. There are lots of "hippy" issues about this kind of farming.

And. With scales this large, this is why carrots are so cheap. And showing up in all the microwave dinners.

additionally anybody who thinks a plant that is planted in massive monoculture fields and produces INSECTICIDE is not harmful to the environment or to us is a fucking moron.

Look, I provided a link to a peer-reviewed journal publication showing that Golden Rice is an extremely good source of vitamin A, with one cup providing 50% of the recommended daily amount. I can also provide other citations supporting this claim if you'd like. So, if you have references to actual peer-reviewed scientific research (rather than unfounded claims by anti-GM activists) refuting the efficacy of Golden Rice, let's see them.

As for your claim that the initially free distribution will be rescinded, that seems unlikely. The licenses under which Golden Rice is being distributed explicitly allow farmers to freely save, replant and sell the seeds from their crop for as long as their annual income remains under $10,000. Also, most of the patents relevant to the production of Golden Rice are not internationally valid, so they cannot be used to sue people in third world countries. And all the patents that are internationally valid have been explicitly waived by the patent holders. Is there still some remote possibility that poor farmers will end up getting screwed? I guess. But it seems bizarre to me to just hold up potentially life-saving technology because its possible (though highly unlikely) that it will be used to exploit farmers. Also, I should note that Monstanto does not own Golden Rice. They merely own one of the patents for a process involved in the creation of Golden Rice.

On your third point, Rachel explicitly says "You know that GMO’s actually don’t have higher yields either." It's in the video, at 5:45. Watch it again. So she is claiming quite clearly that they do not produce higher yield, which is false. And it is simply not true that all the research showing higher yield comes from corporations. For instance, see this paper published in Science. The authors do not claim affiliation with any major GM corporation. That's just the tip of the iceberg. There has been volumes of independent research on GMOs.

On your last claim, about monocultures, you are again mistaken. Golden Rice is not a single variety. The International Rice Research Institute (a non-profit, not owned by any major corporation) has created "Golden" versions of hundreds of different rice varieties, so potentially Golden Rice can be as diverse as regular rice. Also, if rice plants are separated by a few feet, then cross-pollination becomes extremely unlikely. Rice is typically self-pollinating. So as long as a small separation is maintained, GM and non-GM crops can be grown in the same location without any significant gene flow between them.

Anyway, gene flow is only a danger if the GM plant has a clear adaptive advantage in its environment (if its pest resistant, e.g.), but that is not the case with Golden Rice, so even with gene flow Golden Rice won't end up dominating non-GM rice evolutionarily.

The types of mass produced production shown in this movie are the only reason that we can sustain an opulent lifestyle where it is rare that people starve and exercise is needed to fight over-nutrition.

Producing food "organically" takes much more time and money to create the same amount of final product. It also creates more waste.

Monoculture crops and warehoused livestock are ways to more efficiently create the resources that people crave thereby optimizing profit for those who create and sell the final product. The downside of these production techniques is that they are very sensitive to disruption by disease or pests.

If we didn't have mass produced farming, food would be more expensive and more people would be starving.

mmmm.... monoculture

mmmm... monoculture

I don't think theres any basis for these statements.

>> ^jwray:
.
Probably half the population lives in places that are too densely populated to have significant vegetable gardens

68.1% of Americans owned homes in 2007. Of those, almost all of them have at least 600 square feet (0.01377 acres) somewhere in their yards.

Even those living in apartments have enough space. With modern aeroponics, you can acheive 20-30x the yield of traditional agriculture in the same space. 600/30 = 30 feet squared. That is only a 6' x 5' space.

Besides, that takes time, and time is money.

Using aeroponics, a tomato plant can grow from seedling to mature plant with fruit in 10 days. Even with traditional methods, a tomato plant yields fruit in under 50 days. With canning, you can have fresh fruit all year round. Tending to a garden takes less than 30 minutes a day, and a full garden can be planted in a single day. Time is money, but so is food. Tomatoes sell for 2-3$ a lb and a single plant can yield 20-30 lbs of fruit.

Division of labour and specialization is efficient.

Modern, large-scale monocultures are not more efficient, nor will they ever be. The fuel costs alone in transporting them to your house will be larger than the time and money involved in growing them yourself.

Like I said, you can spend $2 for a dozen eggs, or you can buy a chicken for 5$ which will give you 365 eggs a year. 5$ or 182$...thats a difference of 1600%.

To address your original question though...yes the government is to blame for those prices being higher. In terms of raw material costs, grain should be almost 10x cheaper to produce than eggs; as dictated by the laws of biology.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Wow - these guys really do sound like they are shilling for Monsanto.

Monsanto's big product is "Round Up Ready™" seeds. These have been genetically modified to be resistant to the Monsanto pantented chemical herbicide RoundUp™. If you buy these seeds off of Monsanto, you can spray the shit out of your soybean crop- and it will kill everything except your RoundUp Ready™ soybeans.

Oh, and if as a farmer, you would like to save seeds from your crop to replant. Be prepared to be sued for theft. You see, they own the patent on the seed- and keeping your seeds is a no-no. They want you to buy the seeds from them every year. You can imagine how well this works in 3rd world countries.

If you are on an adjoining non-Monsanto farm, and some of that Roundup Ready™ seed blows into your farm ... prepare to be sued.

This is the reality of GM. It's big agribusiness and monoculture farming that displaces family and traditional farms. They dress it up as saving the planet - but I'm calling bullshit.

Mexicans that were self-sufficient and able to grow hundreds of varieties of native corn, now import from the US because they were encouraged to move towards a single monoculture corn strain that was hit by blight. Monsanto to the rescue - now they are paying twice as much for GM corn from the US - and going hungry.

I'm also calling bullshit on the claim that organic farming can only feed 2/3 of the world. Although it's true that organic farms have a lower yield than massive mono-culture farms- the cost to produce is significantly cheaper when you're not shelling for herbicides, insecticides and other chemicals - and that 2/3 becomes 3/3.

In closing, Penn and Teller are full of shit - and can go piss up a rope.

I really can't stand Penn's bias. As ^reed points out, organic and sustainable farming techniques do have their benefits, especially towards the environment, while commercial crop often requires more fertilizer and pesticides often leading towards monocultures. I guess I'd just like to see a more balanced view in regards to this issue.

May issue of Scientific American has a relevant bit on US farming -- farming now uses less land, produces more food and degrades the soil less than 50 years ago. The arable land used for farming dropped 25% in the last 56 years, the total farm production increased by 166%, and the rate of soil erosion small enough that at 1982 erosion rates, after 100 years, the yields on the same land would drop only 2-4%

A monoculture has a risk of becoming easy prey to parasites (as Ford learned in his ill-fated attempt to start rubber tree plantation in Brazil), but the risk of parasites is not a worry for consumers since it's the farmer that takes the risk.

If current practices are undesirable, we should blame not the corporations, but the consumers. It's the consumer ravenous demand for lower prices that favors the streamlining that mom-and-pop farms can't provide.