The science behind GMOs are fine. The situation with GMOs being patentable IP, and the monopolization of the market that has resulted from this, to me is rather worrying.
I do have a bit of wariness in the back of my mind about the long-term ramifications of setting the precedent that companies can own genetic patterns. I don't think anybody knows quite what the knock-on effects of that might be in twenty or thirty years... but I also don't know how we can protect and encourage this kind of innovation without granting those exclusive rights.
"The Flavr Savr turned out to disappoint researchers ... as the antisensed PG gene had a positive effect on shelf life, but not on the fruit's firmness, so the tomatoes still had to be harvested like any other unmodified vine-ripe tomatoes. An improved flavor, later achieved through traditional breeding of Flavr Savr and better tasting varieties, would also contribute to selling Flavr Savr at a premium price at the supermarket.
...
The failure of the Flavr Savr has been attributed to Calgene's inexperience in the business of growing and shipping tomatoes."
Sounds like Flavr Savrs were just a failure. I don't see anything about alarmists.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice
The controversy section is very telling. While not directly quoted in the article, I've seen/heard people argue, "It hasn't been proven safe!" Well, yeah? Of course it hasn't. Nothing is ever proven safe, really. It'd be much easier to demonstrate the benefits if, you know, they actually let trials go forward.
Some trials have been started, but people keep protesting and doing stuff like burning the fields.
That's not the reason why Golden Rice has been a failure[1]:
> While activists did destroy one Golden Rice test plot in a 2013 protest, it is unlikely that this action had any significant impact on the approval of Golden Rice.
> “Destroying test plots is a dubious way to express opposition, but this was only one small plot out of many plots in multiple locations over many years,” he said.
Rather:
> As Stone and Glover note in the article, researchers continue to have problems developing beta carotene-enriched strains that yield as well as non-GMO strains already being grown by farmers.
[1] https://source.wustl.edu/2016/06/genetically-modified-golden...
Dicamba is a herbicide, not a pesticide.
Using Dicamba or Glyphosphate leads to less herbicide use. Because the soybeans or maize has been modified specifically to tolerate dicamba or glyphosphate and that those herbicides kill pretty much anything that is green, they don't have to use a lot of it.
If we didn't have broad spectrum herbicides, farmers would have to use many narrow spectrum herbicides to kill weeds of different varieties. More herbicide, not less.
>If we didn't have broad spectrum herbicides, farmers would have to use many narrow spectrum herbicides to kill weeds of different varieties. More herbicide, not less.
The reverse is true. Narrow application of herbicides to just the weed plants encroaching upon a field results in far less herbicide application then spraying entire fields as a matter of practice.
1. Overuse of pesticides leads to tolerance which leads to an escalation which is some of what you see in this article.
2. One or two large corporations controling the vast majority of food production for the US. Gains in farming are awesome, but they shouldn't be at the expense of autonomy of the farmers who bring us the food.