Rather pay than give in

Where I live we have a lot of organic or near organic farmers and small businesses around us, only one, on the periphery connected to a big name. Most are people with a principled belief in good farming and good practices that produce food in an environmentally sustainable way.

M0nica

Rarely one farmer growing organic. Why should one GM farmer mess the livelihood of many others.

All the GM farmer needs to do is compensate those whose livilihoods he has damaged and continue to do as he is allready doing.

You cannot have your cake and eat it.

Actually organic farmers are as rare as hens teeth in the UK, most would be surrounded, Prince Charles at Highgrove is surrounded, it’s not an issue, but may well be if GM were permitted.
Because Organic is a small minority marketing is a real problem, the well heeled, HRH, Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Bamford, have their own brand, the small growers do veg boxes, that’s really tough, in between there is nothing.

Rarely one farmer growing organic. Why should one GM farmer mess the livelihood of many others.

All the GM farmer needs to do is compensate those whose livilihoods he has damaged and continue to do as he is allready doing.

You cannot have your cake and eat it.

"Should all the surrounding farmers be denied growing GM crops because one farmer wants to grow organic crops.?" The same answer applies as would if one farmer wanted to divert all the water source to irrigate his own crops, using up all the water and leaving his neighbours with none. In th Uk we (mostly) don't have problems with drought, but in some countries that is a big problem (as in Manon Des Sources?)

I agree with Trueblue22 and M0nica.

Sunlit uplands

"The EU brought us peace and unity. I want that to stay."
I don't agree with that.

When we joined, the EU was the EEC and just a tariff free trade block between the Benilux countries. Since then, it has grown too big and introduced countries with totally different economies. We've spent the last few years pouring money into those accession countries to bring them up to the EU levels.

The EU has become a monolith and too big and undemocratic to be manageable. There has also been issues with the movement of people. Many have come here with the best of intentions for a better life, but there are too many that take advantage of our generous liberal hospitality.

All the above has not engendered any sense of peace and closeness towards our European neighbours. Last year's GE was really a referendum on our future relationship with Europe. The silent majority gave us their answer and our Government is trying to enable the decision in the best way it can with an intransigent opponent.

My parents were German, so I have a strong genetic relationship with that country. However, I feel we need to form closer relationships with the rest of the world, especially deepening economic ties with the Commonwealth countries like India, Canada & Australia.

Should all the surrounding farmers be denied growing GM crops because one farmer wants to grow organic crops.? Zero tolerance is unrealistic, you can’t have possibly 10 farmers disadvantaged because one wants to do something different.

If in the case of the EU and others GM crops are banned so there is no conflict, you can’t have both, and I hope we don’t allow GM because that’s going to cause a lot of problems with EU trade.

What about the adage 'The polluter pays'? Shouldn't those using GM compensate the organic farmers, whose crops are devalued and the organic nature of their crops destroyed by the leak of genes from their crops to the organic farmers.

Another adage is 'You cannot be a little bit pregnant' This can be written you cannot be a little bit not organice. A crop is organic or it isn't, ditto with pregnancy.

mokryna

So the court cases in the USA, scientific information published on the web, newspaper articles and counties losing their non GM status are all lies.
Well, I learn something new everyday

There has never been any health or environmental issue involving GM contamination, what has happened is that GM genes have been found in organic crops causing that crop to loose its organic status, serious for the grower who looses money. Some countries, including Canada now have tolerance of contamination, because GM are the economically important crops and there is no public health risk.
It’s a case of the farmer who needs to grow GM to make a living, against the Organic farmer who needs to make a living.

M0nica I am in absolute agreement with you and have been for many years. We need to get soil back into good working order in a natural organic way, not just keep throwing chemical fertiliser on it that ruin soil structure and more and more chemicals have to be used as the soil no longer sustains growth.

We are not going to see a big move to global Organic production, that is a first world issue, given peacetime and favorable weather we can feed the global population - with conventional farming. Even third world countries use chemical fertilizers and insecticides, so that subsistence farmers can grow enough, without that there would be widespread starvation.

There is one small African country that faces famine next year because the government failed to distribute the fertilizer, wether that was incompetence or corruption I can’t comment. Half a million tons sitting in warehouses is causing major unrest and concern, because in that country if you don’t grow your own food you don’t eat.

So the court cases in the USA, scientific information published on the web, newspaper articles and counties losing their non GM status are all lies.
Well, I learn something new everyday

Mokryna.
The theory that GM pollen might affect other crops is an emotional argument that has not happened, the US has been growing GM crops for 30 yrs with no ill effects on plant or animal life, the only affect seen in Humans is obesity and there is an easy cure for that.
There may be regulations in some regions about distance from GM but they don’t apply to EU, we don’t have GM. Separation of GM cereals from conventional is very difficult because they are transported in bulk so they do get mixed. In particular certified Organic feed for livestock is difficult, many animals are fed conventional diets while adhering to the other standards.

Seed companies do take action against those that evade plant royalties it’s not just GM, it’s a trading standards issue, just like music piracy or fake branding of Tee Shirts.

Please correct me but I think that GM pollen cannot be controlled, it is spread on the wind and by insects.

Not only specialize farmers, who have spent years on growing organically grown food will lose their premium but the ordinary non GM farmers will have problems.

The seed companies have patented their GM seeds and when the crops have been crossed pollinated they take the innocent farmer to court because he is reusing the seed from his previous season which they say is now a GM crop.

It may be good to have cheap food for a few years but in the future the seed companies will have a hold on the crops grown everywhere.

Our long term future depends on us being able to grow and rear crops in a manner that respects the environment. Many invasive weeds are a sign of bad farming and soil neglect.

As we have found since the start of the industrial revolution when there is a blind dash for maximum dveelopment at the expense of human, or animal wlefare, after a while we realise what damage a blind dash is making to the world.

From the earliest Factory Acts of the 19th century that limited the exploitation of children down mines and in factories, each industry has gone so far and then been reined in when the cost to humans, animals and the environment is seen as too great. Agriculture has also to meet those limits. There are controls on the use of pesticides, now on biocides, and now we need to look at the damage that a mad dash for industrial agriculture, that is more about money than food, is doing to the land itself.

We are already producing enough food to feed everyone on this planet now and for the forseeable future. By the end of the century, and certainly in the next century we will see human populations falling. Poverty and starvation are political issues, not supply problems. In the Uk we throw away each day, more than enough food to give every single person in this country enough food. It is lack of money that leads to Food Banks, not a scarcity of food

I’m not defending GM although they cannot be grown in the EU, many GM products are being sold in the UK, Maize, Soya and Cotton to name 3. The objective is to reduce chemical use by making the crop resistant to insects and disease or weed control making the crop resistant to glyphosate, instead of much more polluting residual chemicals.

It is likely that GM crops will be allowed to be grown in the UK after we leave the EU because the science says they are safe, it’s only an emotional issue that bans them. The alternative is organic for those that choose and can afford to buy food to different standards.

Animals are sentient beings that, if we are to justify using them for our purposes, need to be provided by living and welfare conditions that are better than they would attain in the wild. Too many intensive animal rearing systems, lead to animals suffering far more than they would in the wild.

I think most people are aware that animals have been interbred and selected for particular characteristics over the centuries, this explains the difference between wild and domesticated memebrs oft he same animal group. However, when we start moving genes between species, we need to be much more careful. It is not just the genes themselves but the means of making genes portable between species can result in them porting themselves to species not in the breeding programme. I beleive this has happened with some field crops, where the gene has ported into the weeds and given it the same resistance to the weedkiller that is meant to kill it as the crop has.

Throughout the world we have serious soil mineral and plant matter depletion caused by us adding everything from fertiliser to pesticides and insecticides to soils unsuitable for the crops we try to grow on them.

If we are to have good crops, healthy food and healthy humans we need to respect our environment not rape it.

Yes GM crops have to use new seed every year and in third world countries that is a problem
BUT
Last year there was a insect attack by “Army Worms” in Africa
causing widespread crop failure. However the GM crops grown in South Africa did not get attacked they were bred to be resistant.

Many do not realize the extent of Hybridisation (non GM) in food, both Poultry and Pigs are largely hybrid, the breeding company own and regulate Foundation Stock and only allow Multiplication Stock outside their control. So if you are a pig farmer you buy their female bloodline, a separate male line, and feed the exact diet in the exact environment.

It’s not just production efficiency that benefits, disease resistance and physical characteristics as well.

Correct, Mokryna. Traditionally they could have, but with GM crops they have to buy seed - a costly exercise for subsistence farmers.

Its humans exploiting the natural world that has led us to the current environmental and health catastrophe.

Farmers cannot use the seed of their GM crop from the previous year.

The difference is the speed with which a species can be modified. With natural evolution and the slow process of keeping back seed from the best prducing plants for growing next year, the altered crops have time to be integrated into the biodiversity of the habitat. When human beings can alter the genetics of a plant under the microscope, and create a thousand micro-plants from one cutting of it, they can swamp the market with one variation and potentially lose the natural diversity.

How long has man been modifying crops and animals.
Nothing new. If he hadn't we would have died out as a species.

David0205

Mokryna

There are several good examples of rules that may change here are a couple
GM foods, at present we cannot grow them because of EU rules, if we did the EU would ban much of our produce
Hormone treated meat, if we imported US beef they would not want it sent to them
Safety at present the”CE” label is an EU standard if we decided to change, again that would be a problem

There are many many more ways we might change, that why they want the right to say no thanks.

If the GM and Hormone treated cheaper food was imported there would be glut of the food UK farmers produce. They would, to find buyers for their produce maybe lower their prices, which could lead to ‘dumping’ in the EU and causing problems for the EU farmers.