> We've been genetically modifying corn for nearly 10,000 years, but we've just done so really inefficiently.

We've also been doing it massively distributed which means it can adapt and change independent of a single/couple organizations. Yes, it's inefficient but that's also somewhat of a feature in that we don't have a single point of failure.

If the history of both tech and biotech is any indication, GMOs will be massively distributed on timescales much shorter than 10,000 years. Patents last for 17 years, and if drugs like penicillin or acetaminophen are any indication, generic competition springs up almost as soon as the patent is expired.

It's pretty unlikely that the original development of agriculture was decentralized. In fact, we have pretty good evidence that it was intensely centralized in a few places, and that tribes that had this technology then outcompeted, conquered, and killed all the hunter/gatherer bands that resisted using it.

>The difference between teosinte and maize is about 5 genes. We've been genetically modifying corn for nearly 10,000 years, but we've just done so really inefficiently.

I'm all for inefficiency when too much efficiency can cause a problem.

Decentralization is inherently inefficient because redundancy is inefficient. Sometimes inefficient is not really a problem because you have bigger priorities, like genetic diversity and avoiding a single point of failure.

And primitive peoples managed to breed corn from teosinte in a few hundred years -- roughly from 9,000 ya to 8,700 ya for the teosinte to modern maize forms.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/25creature.html...

I'm looking for sources on early 18th and 19th century maize farming and cultivars, haven't turned up any yet.

If you realise that all three major grains on which humans are overwhelmingly dependent, maize, rice, and wheat, did not exist only ~10,000 years ago, the power of simple selective breeding becomes apparent.

Look to dogs, horses, cattle, hogs, sheep, and poultry for similar trends in selective breeding over only a few thousand years, though in many cases a few centuries.

We've been traveling from point A to point B for more than 10,000 years, but we've just done so really inefficiently compared to planes and automobiles. People have a right to be wary of newer technologies; more powerful generally means more dangerous.