GMO's - Scientific and Economic 'realities'???

[LizzieMaine]

If you employ more people, the cost of the product goes up. How does that help?

If you employ fewer people, fewer can afford to buy the product. That doesn't help much.

 

[oak1971]

If you employ fewer people, fewer can afford to buy the product. That doesn't help much.

You are assuming that is the only occupation. A healthy economy is diversified.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You're assuming a healthy economy.

 

[oak1971]

And I shouldn't? Who made the tractors, combines, plows, planters, and fertilizer equipment? The farmer?

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Chinese? The Germans? The Mexicans? The Japanese? If they aren't just now, wait a few more years and they will be.

 

[sheeplady]

In the 1930s, something like 32% of the US population lived on a farm. Now it's 2%.

In the US we pay the smallest portion of the money we earn for food. It is much higher in Europe and slightly higher in Canada.

Only 2% of farms today are not family owned.

The average profit point for a dairy farmer in the northeast around 2002 was said to be 250 cows. Unless you have a large family, 250 cows requires help.

Most large dairies in my area hire undocumented workers to milk the cows, as milk prices are too low and too many cows are required to make a living.

There's always tradeoffs when you engineer a product. The tradeoff can be the corn is less sweet, but more resistant to pests. "Superior" product is a judgement call. Tomatos are bred to be shippable and shelf stable, not delicious.

 

[St.Ignatz]

For what it's worth.

http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/imaginary-organisms/

 

[MisterCairo]

We have one of those stickers in our car window "If you ate today, thank a farmer" (my inlaws are farmers, part of a huge farming family).

I saw another one in Toronto recently - "If you farmed today, thank a banker".

I laughed out loud!

The point of both is that each one plays his or her part. No one group is key or central, and everything is connected to everything else. A farmer grows the tomato. Someone picks it and packages it. A trucker drives it. A clerk puts it on the shelf at the store.

Someone worked at the gas station the truck fuelled up at. Someone grew the seeds the farmer planted. Bankers work to lend money to the farmer to buy expensive equipment. My county is dotted with farm equipment dealers. Nuhn Industries up the road from me builds specialized manure spreaders sold around the world. The transport truck drivers who take the hogs to porcine university in suburban Burlington, Ontario where I grew up.

Who's job is more important? Will industry stop moving to Mexico or China if local companies don't compete on costs including payroll? Of course not, the pace will quicken. And we'll adapt into other areas.

Southern Ontario no longer has any fruit canning capability, so it comes from China now. But the land is turned over to vineyards and the Ontario wine industry is booming.

I don't think the sky is falling quite as fast as some think it is.

 

[MisterCairo]

In the 1930s, something like 32% of the US population lived on a farm. Now it's 2%.

In the US we pay the smallest portion of the money we earn for food. It is much higher in Europe and slightly higher in Canada.

Only 2% of farms today are not family owned.

The average profit point for a dairy farmer in the northeast around 2002 was said to be 250 cows. Unless you have a large family, 250 cows requires help.

Most large dairies in my area hire undocumented workers to milk the cows, as milk prices are too low and too many cows are required to make a living.

There's always tradeoffs when you engineer a product. The tradeoff can be the corn is less sweet, but more resistant to pests. "Superior" product is a judgement call. Tomatos are bred to be shippable and shelf stable, not delicious.

My wife's aunt and uncle run a successful dairy farm with 80 cows.

Three words - Milk Marketing Board (supply management).

Four litres of milk costs $3.99 Canadian.

Taken from the milk.org website FAQ section:

Q. How much milk does a cow produce?
A. There are about 322,000 dairy cows in Ontario, averaging 60 cows per dairy farm. The typical dairy cow will produce 30 litres of milk from two daily milkings.

 

[sheeplady]

My wife's aunt and uncle run a successful dairy farm with 80 cows.

Three words - Milk Marketing Board (supply management).

Four litres of milk costs $3.99 Canadian.

Taken from the milk.org website FAQ section:

Q. How much milk does a cow produce?
A. There are about 322,000 dairy cows in Ontario, averaging 60 cows per dairy farm. The typical dairy cow will produce 30 litres of milk from two daily milkings.

Well, we're averaging about $15 per 100-weight here. We don't have minimum milk prices, nor a Milk Board. We also do not have subsidized agriculture in the United States, as in Canada (no Board grains, for instance).

The difference in milk prices in the store and what the farmer gets accounts for processing, distribution, etc.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Maine's had a milk commission since 1935, as a protection to farmers and consumers who had been ruthlessly exploited by processors and distributors in the pre-New Deal era. The minimum prices are recalculated on a monthly basis. The current minimum for a gallon of whole milk is $3.34 wholesale, $3.70 retail.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

We may not have government subsidized agriculture in the States, but our Western farmers sure get subsidized water, provided by taxpayer-funded dams and pumped to them by taxpayer-funded water systems, for which they pay zilch. After more than 70 years, it's become their birthright.

 

[MisterCairo]

I haven't done a lot of research into this area, but in some economics classes at uni, we did learn that when nations say "we don't subsidize (insert industry here)", it should be taken with a grain of salt.

Not to get political, but there are many things implemented (tax policies, import duties on competing products, subsidizing of inputs) that effectively, if not directly, have the same effect as direct subsidization. What the Canadian farmer gets directly, other farmers get indirectly. Much of a muchness as my Irish friends would say.

The same goes for how "high" tax rates are considered. What we pay for via taxes others may pay for out of their pockets. If it's not in my bank account, it doesn't much matter to me how it was taken out.

The issue of supply management is controversial in Canada, particularly with this Trans-Pacific Trade deal just signed.

We shall see!

 

[LizzieMaine]

We may not have government subsidized agriculture in the States, but our Western farmers sure get subsidized water, provided by taxpayer-funded dams and pumped to them by taxpayer-funded water systems, for which they pay zilch. After more than 70 years, it's become their birthright.

Corn and soy are subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars a year, due to the disproportionate political pull of the corn and soy-producing states. No politician wants to tick off Iowa or the other midwestern "battleground states."

Friendly old Farmer McGregor isn't the one benefiting most from these subsidies, either. It's Archer-Daniels-Midland, Monsanto, Cargill, and other big-business enterprises that benefit the most, under a program that began in the late 1970s to completely dismantle the family-farm oriented price-support structure that had existed since the days of the AAA, in favor of a corporate-oriented subsidy system.

 

[sheeplady]

I haven't done a lot of research into this area, but in some economics classes at uni, we did learn that when nations say "we don't subsidize (insert industry here)", it should be taken with a grain of salt.

Not to get political, but there are many things implemented (tax policies, import duties on competing products, subsidizing of inputs) that effectively, if not directly, have the same effect as direct subsidization. What the Canadian farmer gets directly, other farmers get indirectly. Much of a muchness as my Irish friends would say.

The same goes for how "high" tax rates are considered. What we pay for via taxes others may pay for out of their pockets. If it's not in my bank account, it doesn't much matter to me how it was taken out.

The issue of supply management is controversial in Canada, particularly with this Trans-Pacific Trade deal just signed.

We shall see!

By and large, a lot of foreign meat here is cheaper then US grown, particularly when it comes to delicacies, like lamb. How the Australians can produce lamb for half the price that US farmers can, I have no idea. I have to assume were not using tarriffs to make our market as competitive. Growing up we sold direct to the consumer, and we absolutely fought to try to get $2 a pound for lamb. "All natural" "pasture-fed" sort of stuff.

And Lizzie is right... the vast majority of subsidies that exist in the United States benefit the big guys.

There's no "grazing rights" or "free water" for irrigation in the northeast (that I know of), and it's one of the reasons we have trouble here trying to make it with 100 cows, when a "superdairy" in Arizona can have 3,000 or 10,000 cows, free water, use near slave labor, etc., and the government seems to have no motivation to take them on.

There's a lot of practices on large farms I don't agree with when it comes down to welfare of the people and animals. But, I've seen some things on small farms that would make the average person vomit.

Needless to say, I took a lot of Ag classes as an undergrad. After our dairy unit, where we went out to see the "latest modern methods" of dairy husbandry, it took 3 years for me to eat dairy products again. And I have butchered, slaughtered, and done every dirty, heartbreaking thing you can do on a farm.

 

[MisterCairo]

There's no "grazing rights" or "free water" for irrigation in the northeast (that I know of), and it's one of the reasons we have trouble here trying to make it with 100 cows, when a "superdairy" in Arizona can have 3,000 or 10,000 cows, free water, use near slave labor, etc., and the government seems to have no motivation to take them on.

I am generally a free-trade capitalist, but hearing things like this make me hesitate to want to get rid of Canadian supply side management and import quotas. We can't compete with things like that, and other than handing over our supply of dairy (or beef or whatever) to US, Argentinian or Chinese producers, I see little else we can do.

 

[Bushman]

Everything we eat has been genetically modified. Even the meat.

Rooster: Domesticated | Wild
Cow: Domesticated | Wild
Pig: Domesticated | Wild

Heck, even our pets our GMO:
Dog: Domesticated | Wild

Humans have been messing with genetics since we've been around. We domesticated dogs, chickens, cattle, horses, corn, bananas, and we sorta domesticated cats. We've been eating GMO since long before Mendel and his famous peas. There have been numerous scientific studies pointing out that eating GMO has no health aversions whatsoever. Yet, thousands continue to jump on the train like they do the gluten free diet (and don't get me started on the ridiculousness of the "gluten free diet").

 

[belfastboy]

I am strongly in favour of GMO foods. Please check the Wikipedia link for "Golden Rice" and then explain to me how that is a bad thing for the 670,000 children it could save each year. Then check out in Wiki, "The Green Revolution in India" and then explain the downside of that work. I think the resistance to GMO is a first world, bourgeioise conceit and is an answer to feeding the world's hungry.

 

[sheeplady]

I am generally a free-trade capitalist, but hearing things like this make me hesitate to want to get rid of Canadian supply side management and import quotas. We can't compete with things like that, and other than handing over our supply of dairy (or beef or whatever) to US, Argentinian or Chinese producers, I see little else we can do.

I am going to say this, and this is based solely on my experience. I know it's not scientific, at all, I don't claim it to be.

At times on my life I have had a very sensitive stomach, to the point of developing short-term food allergies (some of which i tested as allergic to for awhile then did not). At these times, when I traveled to Canada and northern Europe, I was able to eat relatively normal. (More so in Europe, but I traveled there more frequently than to Canada.)

Now why I couldn't tolerate a mouthful of bread or a bit of salad dressing here in the US without turning beet red; but could eat any bread I wanted in Europe without a sniffle, I have *no idea.* if I didn't have doctor confirmed allergies, I would think I'm crazy, but I had an allergist confirm when I ate bread here I had an actual reaction, not an "in my head" reaction.

But I would be very hesitant to change your system of agriculture if I lived there.

 

[LizzieMaine]

For me, it all comes down to this: I don't want the world food supply dominated by patent laws and intellectual-property lawyers. It's bad enough the capitalists control the conventional food supply, I can't imagine how a system built on patented GMO products for which they reserve exclusive rights is going to be any kind of an improvement. You will find many in the Third World who would agree with me.