Something wicked this way comes: Monsanto Plans to Boost Food Supply

[depakid]

Glowing report in the NY Times:

Monsanto, the leader in agricultural biotechnology, pledged Wednesday to develop seeds that would double the yields of corn, soybeans and cotton by 2030 and would require 30 percent less water, land and energy to grow.

The announcement, coming as world leaders are meeting in Rome to discuss rising food prices and growing food shortages, appears to be aimed at least in part at winning acceptance of genetically modified crops by showing that they can play a major role in feeding the world.

Much of what is in the commitment are things the company was doing anyway, though it now becomes a formal goal.

Monsanto said it had developed its new commitment after consulting farmers, political leaders, academics and advocacy groups as to what needed to be done to increase food production to cope with a rising population and the demand for biofuels without converting more forests into farmland.

Perhaps seeking to avoid controversy, Monsanto’s announcement did not mention the term “genetic engineering.” It referred instead to “other technologies” beyond breeding.

Monsanto’s goal of doubling yields by 2030 over levels in 2000 might require a sharp acceleration in the rate by which agricultural productivity has been increasing. James E. Specht, a soybean genetics expert at the University of Nebraska, said he doubted it could be done.

“The hype-to-reality ratio of that one is essentially infinity,” Mr. Specht said. “Seeing an exponential change in the yield curve is unlikely.”

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/business/worldbusiness/05crop.html?hp

[mikelgb]

1. I wonder if they can create organisms that destroy non-monsanto species...

I wonder

[Poll_Blind]

2. Oh sweet Jesus, man. n/t

PB

[Jackpine Radical]

4. I don't know about that specifically, but I'm sure

that their eventual corporate intent is to monopolize the world's food supply.

I can think of a couple of ways they could accelerate that eventuality, such as producing Frankenfoods that pollenate other nearby unmodified crops and produce infertile seeds.

[DCKit]

8. You know they're working on it.

Kudos to the countries that have banned Monsanto's seeds.

[notesdev]

3. I cringe

when I hear the name "Monsanto". This company is irretrievably associated with one of the most evil concepts I have ever heard in my life, the 'terminator seed'.

[depakid]

5. Taking disaster capitalism to a whole new level

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Exactly.

[Radical Activist]

7. I wonder if Hillary will help them out with this like she has in the past?

I can't believe she even ran as a Democrat.

[orleans]

9. fucking monsanto. n/t

[hunter]

10. What a great idea, make the food supply even more brittle than it already is...

:sarcasm:

Too much money, not enough sense. A deadly combination.

[NNadir]

11. Geeze, one hopes that no yuppies are injured.

I personally am very found of the idea that poor people should starve to death in order to preserve the yuppie way of life.

It's one of the most moral positions one could take.

I have long been an advocate of keeping the world's genome exactly the same as it has always been for all time. This is why I was an early opponent of multicellular animals, vertebrates, trees, and of course, mammals.

[depakid]

12. It's a matter of risk assessment as well as hegemony

through abusive intellectual property laws and trade agreements.

Given your OP on invasive species, one would have expected that you'd be aware of the potential for calamity. While the risk may be low, certain events if they do occur portend unprecedented disaster in the food chain.

[NNadir]

14. Given my emphasis on risk assessment, I find some problems more worthy of attack than others.

From my perspective, the most important environmental issue of these times is poverty and ignorance.

Poverty and food are closely related.

Gene exchange has been a normal feature of life for as long as there has been DNA. It is now widely understood that huge stretches of human DNA are in fact, of viral origins.

I really have no patience for unfocused hysteria.

There is a very, very, very, very large probability that agriculture will collapse because of dangerous fossil fuel waste. There is only a tiny probability that some wayward gene will do what dangerous fossil fuel waste will do.

[Summer93]

13. No good to come of this

After all I have read about how Monstanto operates I am very suspect when they suggest a new way of creating food. The 'terminator seed' is a criminal idea also with the possibility of causing a tremendous amount of damage worldwide.

[kgrandia]

15. Scary

That they can control the food supply like this. The concentration of seed ownership among companies like monsanto scares the shit out of me.

[losthills]

16. There seems to be a key word missing from this report.

"Biofuels"

[diane in sf]

17. "Boost" as a synonym for steal the food supply?