In my understanding, this is not quite accurate. The perception of "organic" farming is that they do not use pesticides, but this is not accurate. Organic farming does use pesticides, but they just happen to not be synthetic - that is, the pesticides happen to be "naturally" occurring. But that does not necessarily make them safer.
So, if you have a crop which is engineered to be resistant to a very particular, effective pesticide, then it is possible that you will end up using less overall pesticides when compared to organic farming. See http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/organic-pestici...
Nuance, moderation, and caution are the orders of the day, but these values seem to be increasingly scarce in a world of self-selecting echo chambers...
Edit: changed farm to garden
[1] http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&SID=9874504b6f10...
[2] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogss...
[1]http://www.colostate.edu/Dept/CoopExt/4dmg/VegFruit/organic....
And yes, that's the same Bt that's in Bt crops, by the way (proteins from Bt bacteria). Organic farmers use it in a spray. It's a natural substance, and they argue the spray causes less resistance than the GM varieties. I really don't have the domain knowledge to say whether they're right.
Not all organic farmers are the same, and over time the meaning of 'organic' has been diluted. Smaller, more idealistic organic farmers mostly don't use pesticides, but there are large commercial organic growers out there who meet the bare minimum for certification and will use whatever pesticides are allowed.
When "gardening", you can probably do just fine without using pesticides. But when you farm crops as a business, you have to do something.
Several family farms at my local farmers market claim their crops are pesticide free. Now granted they are probably 10s of acres, not 1000s of acres, but they are still making a living.
Yes, but there very well may be other downsides. A lot of the utopian ideas for GMOs basically involve creating invasive species. We here about the potential of making species that can easily grow in areas where they couldn't grow at all before. But doing so could well pose an environmental risk (if these end up growing so well in areas that they end up disrupting the ecosystem).
It might seem strange to think that too many edible plants could cause a problem, but it wouldn't be the first time (Kudzu is a good example). We're also not nearly at that point yet with current GMOs, but it seems to be what a lot of people are advocating. It'd be nice if we thought of the environmental downsides ahead of time, so that we don't keep saying "we now understand the environmental downsides of the tech we were using 30 years ago; but this new tech should be just fine" every few years.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/true-story-kudz...
It was specifically planted in many visible areas like highway banks etc, so people's perception is wrongly skewed towards it being everywhere, when it's really not.
They argue the spray is not as bad as the GM crops due to the timing of exposure. I really don't know enough about insect biology to say if that makes sense.
Glyphosate is certainly not a sustainable weed control solution but it's no worse than the herbicides that it replaced.
I wonder if the biggest negative impact of biotech firms is not the chemicals but on IP and patents, hindering the positive development of GMOs, and to what extent proprietary software IP and patent rulings paved the way for them.
What is/was the solution to that ?
If it is indeed a "cautionary tale" there is some response that we should be involved in, which, as far as I can tell is simply the anti GMO sentiment that (100 nobels) decry.
What other response has there been ?
The "cautionary tale" is that releasing GMO crops before their full impact has been studied and assessed only adds fuel to the GMO/anti-GMO fire. When it was found that bt-Corn could pose a risk to Monarchs, those in the anti-GMO camp had all the ammunition they needed to start shouting about GMOs being unsafe. When it was later found that the risk was negligible in practice, the GMO camp had all the reason they needed to continue turning a deaf ear to the anti-GMO camp.
1. Feed the world
2. Produce food organically
3. Don't genetically modify foods
Before the Green Revolution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution) the world was facing a truly bleak scenario that involved massive food shortages. Of course, a large part of the Green Revolution was the usage of new fertilizers and pesticides, which we now understand have significant impact on the environment. GMOs provide a way to continue to realize the benefits of the Green Revolution without all of the chemical-related downsides.
Well...unless you put Monsanto in charge. The real travesty of the current state of GMOs is that things like "Roundup-Ready" plants do nothing to reduce the usage of chemicals. There's also the cautionary lesson of bt-Corn and its impact on Monarch butterflies.
Learn the lessons of the Green Revolution: you can feed the world with modified farming techniques, but those techniques should strive to lessen the impact on the environment and should be implemented carefully to avoid further unintended consequences.