I can't shake the feeling that the history of modern agriculture is just a history of staying one step ahead of disaster.

We used intensive farming until it ruined our soils. Then we used rotation farming with heavy irrigation until it collided with a drought. We used DDT until it killed the eagles and condors. We used nitrogen fertilizers until they triggered algae blooms and ruined our waterways. I see no particular reason to expect a different pattern; we keep putting things into widespread usage before their harms are known.

I'm not even sure I'm opposed to this; most of these crises have been mitigated and most of the changes have been reactive, to accommodate a population that grew regardless of agriculture. I'm just skeptical of claims that this time, rushing things into national use without long-term evaluation won't cause any harm.

One could make a strong case that the entirety of human history is staying one step ahead of disaster. Political, economic, cultural, agricultural, and so on. One could very reasonably make a further case that it's generally those who embraced risk who did the best, long-term.

Well, the explanation for that looks like it's a job for survivorship bias, isn't it?. I mean, we could not know about the huge amount of people that have died by betting their livehood in the wrong risk. Only that the stakes are higher this time, we are not talking about a few tribes trying their hand with agriculture, but messing with the food chain in a way that could spread continent-wide easily.

It's possible! We do know about a number of societies that perished because their conservatism got them out-competed.

That sort of competition hasn't gone away. The world of people capable of using CRISPR isn't going all agree to a cartel-type pact to never do certain things. There's too many people and the bar is too low.

Hmmm! You're making me want to move to India and set up a GMO shop.

Go for it! The world needs more people willing and able to take those risks.

Very true for the notable successes, but let's not forget the large percentile of risk takers who ultimately fail in obscurity.

I've not forgotten them. I remember them right alongside the even larger percentile of those who failed after deciding to stop taking risks.

Indeed.

See DDT was bad for birds, but in a very short time frame we got rid of malaria in the United States.

https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.htm...

And we put down so much DDT that people around my age never had to deal with bed bugs till now.

I'm not advocating for spraying DDT again, I am suggesting that the history and use of DDT far more interesting than can be covered in a string of HN comments!

Indeed, the issue of DDT is much much more nuanced than people make it out to be. At the time, it was a miracle chemical that was going to let us eradicate (rather than simply control or minimize) all manner of diseases, so the scale at which it was used was pretty incredible. In some cases we were effectively carpet-bombing whole islands with the stuff. No wonder we were killing birds and fish.

There's a book [1] about the history of DDT that does a great job of establishing a historical context for its use. I agree that we can't simply un-ban it, but our approach to disease prevention/control has come such a long way since prohibiting it that I can't help but wonder if we could deploy it safely now.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/DDT-American-Century-Environmental-En...

And people also seem to have forgotten about yellow fever. A nasty mosquito bourne disease that regularly killed tens of thousands in the Southern US. DDT also eliminated it along with malaria.

You're absolutely right! There's a very great deal to be learned. And in the meantime, there's a great many problems that we know we can address with tools like golden rice.

The idea of a food chain dates from the 8th century, though. DDT wasn't used in agriculture until the 1940s.

The fact that we knew, in a scholastic sense, about the concept of the food chain, but could not foresee the extent of downstream effects is even more reason to be far more careful than seems necessary now. Our best guess is probably not good enough.

A laudable attitude! Are we going to extend this caution to all things, or just to scary-sounding new-ish things like GMOs?

Because we have people doing profoundly unnatural things right now like growing rice in Texas, and we cannot know the full extent of the downstream effects of that either.

There genuinely is a GMO-skeptical branch of analysis which applies this to everything.

I'm hesitant about how we're using GMOs, without being opposed to the basic principle of genetic modification. I'm also vehemently opposed to growing rice in Texas and cotton in Arizona; we know those things are stupid with far greater certainty than we know about GMOs.

For me, this isn't about fear of the unknown. This is about a history of prioritizing short-term gains in agriculture over long-term sustainability. It covers everything from nitrogen fertilizers to neonicotinoids to water-rights law. GMOs concern me as they're currently used in the US; the abuse of the Ogallala Aquifewr horrifies me on a much deeper level.

Yeah, and actually we get to know where that rice is coming from. There is a fucking label on it. Also you can't export it everywhere because it's a shitty experiment.

Out of curiosity, what's the issue with growing rice in Texas? Is it that it's not suitable for that climate or something else?

Basically, yeah. Growing rice requires a great deal of water, and the parts of Texas rice is being grown in don't naturally have that much surface water. It's only economically viable because they have artificially cheap water.

So, the downsides are not hypothetical at the future.

A lot of bad things human do are know to be bad. Is just that humans refuse to accept it.