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Genetically Modified Crop on the Loose and Evolving in U.S. Midwest
Scientific American ^ | 06 Aug 2010 | David Biello

Posted on 08/09/2010 8:30:57 PM PDT by Palter

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To: PeaceBeWithYou

Thaks, I have. I’m only talking about Transgenic modification, as the main area of interest.

Particular, combining human DNA with plants, and other such modifications, creating ‘new’ species of fauna.


41 posted on 08/09/2010 9:55:33 PM PDT by Palter (Kilroy was here.)
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To: truthfreedom
Isn’t what’s happening here that the canola and the weeds are pollinating each other?

No, but that's the implication.

Re-read the article. They found "canola" aka rape for centuries, not weeds.

A weed is a plant we haven't found a use for yet.

We were given dominion over the land, the fields, the birds and the seas.

/johnny

42 posted on 08/09/2010 9:57:11 PM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: Husker24

They are probably “french kissing” like the mutating microbes in the gulf.


43 posted on 08/09/2010 10:00:39 PM PDT by norge (The amiable dunce is back, wearing a skirt and high heels.)
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To: JRandomFreeper

Where we live. A fertile, wholesome, natural place that isn’t poisoned. A place not overrun by plants that could not exist in nature and can only have been created in labratories with technology that didn’t exist 100 years ago.

Farmers can figure out another way to grow food without resorting to genetic engineering.

Consider that plants were bred to grow on N-P-K. They don’t naturally need only N-P-K. But they were bred to grow on just those 3. Most of the nutrients in heavily farmed soil are gone. NPK gets put back in the soil periodically.

But grass, grains, vegetables, etc are all much more nutritious if the soil in which the plant grows contains a wide variety of minerals.

Sea water contains all minerals. If properly diluted, applications of plain old sea water can be made to the soil. This will replentish the minerals that are long gone from the soils, and will provide humans and animals with the trace minerals that humans and animals need in their food.

But salt water / sea water is free, so Monsanto can’t make the big $$$ there, so farmers really don’t know much about the benefits of sea water.


44 posted on 08/09/2010 10:08:40 PM PDT by truthfreedom
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To: Palter
But Monsanto claims they won't go after those good farmers that just happen to have trace amounts on their fields accidentally and have no plans to use those trace amounts.

Of course their lawyers will have something to say about what constitutes 'trace amounts' and what behavior on the farmer's part, such as normal harvesting without taking the inordinate amount of time necessary to remove the trace amounts, constitutes a violation of their patent.

In short, the farmers are screwed and now evidently humanity.

Over time Monsanto will come up with nastier and nastier pesticides. They will simultaneously breed plants that are immune to these nasty pesticides. Meanwhile Mother Nature will be busy developing noxious weeds that are also resistant to Monsanto's nasty pesticides.

I hope we all like eating noxious weed with endive salad in a warm raspberry viniagrette.

45 posted on 08/09/2010 10:17:30 PM PDT by who_would_fardels_bear (These fragments I have shored against my ruins)
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To: truthfreedom
They don’t naturally need only N-P-K.

No, they also need C, H, and O and a bunch of trace elements.

In fact, CHON makes up most of a plant, and it comes from the atmosphere, mostly.

Always has and always will.

Please provide a source for "Most of the nutrients in heavily farmed soil are gone.

The reason that we don't use gallanium in fertilizer is that plants mostly use CHON and trace elements in very tiny quantities. And gallanium isn't one of them, much. If it was, we'd use it.

Plants used NPK from the beginning in larger quantities. We figured that out. We add that to steward the land we have been given dominion over.

/johnny

46 posted on 08/09/2010 10:22:35 PM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: PeaceBeWithYou

Well, there’s a real difference between breeding and the genetic engineering that Monsanto and others are doing.

I think it’s called gene splicing and it’s completely unnnatural. And that’s what Monsanto has done.

Here’s “The Planet vs Monsanto”
Monsanto’s other main line of products is corn and cotton seeds containing genes for pest-killing toxins produced by the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt. Organic farmers have been spraying these natural pesticides on their crops for decades. Monsanto’s technology puts the stuff right into the plant.


47 posted on 08/09/2010 10:25:23 PM PDT by truthfreedom
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To: JRandomFreeper

Plants take up what’s in the soil. Whether they need them or not.

It’s not that the Plants need the nutrients. Humans need the nutrients.

It’s not a farming issue as much as a public health issue. We used to get trace minerals from plants and from the animals that ate those plants. Those trace minerals have been taken up by the plants from the soil and eaten by us a long time ago.

We need those trace elements. Scientifically, we might not even know why. But we do need them.


48 posted on 08/09/2010 10:29:50 PM PDT by truthfreedom
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To: truthfreedom
Scientifically, we might not even know why.

That pretty much says it all about your opinion. No science, no biblical backing, just feeling.

And, no, actually not all trace elements are taken up by plants.

Billions of people in the world require fats and carbs to survive. Yes, they require some trace elements. How much of what isn't settled.

The follow through to your ideal is to kill off a lot of humans for lack of fats and carbs, over your feeling about trace elements.

Because without modern agriculture, lots of folks die. Badly.

/johnny

49 posted on 08/09/2010 10:36:37 PM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: truthfreedom

The addition of salt to soil kills plants. Forever.

dumb idea.


50 posted on 08/09/2010 10:36:51 PM PDT by mamelukesabre (Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum (If you want peace prepare for war))
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To: JRandomFreeper

Escaped populations of such transgenic plants have generally died out quickly without continual replenishment from stray farm seeds in places such as Canada, but canola is capable of hybridizing with at least two—and possibly as many as eight—wild weed species in North America, including field mustard (Brassica rapa), which is a known agricultural pest. “Not only is it going to jump out of cultivation; there are sexually compatible weeds all over North America,” Sagers says.

What they’re saying is that it’s going to happen. They aren’t saying that it has happened already.

So, yeah, I guess I was being vague or inaccurate when I said “happening here” What’s “projected to happen here” is more precise. What I meant was mostly “what they’re talking about here is that ...”


51 posted on 08/09/2010 10:39:31 PM PDT by truthfreedom
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To: truthfreedom

They are spreading FUD, as usual.


52 posted on 08/09/2010 10:48:19 PM PDT by PeaceBeWithYou (De Oppresso Liber! (50 million and counting in Afganistan and Iraq))
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To: JRandomFreeper

No, I’m saying nothing about feeling.

What I’m saying is that, GOD (since you’re looking for biblical backing) put those minerals in the soil for us to eat for a reason. Man is just beginning to understand the various functions all of the various minerals play in our bodies.
We know a decent amount the role many minerals play, but we don’t know everything. We haven’t studied it enough.

But what we do know is that every so often more new information comes out describing the functions of minerals in the body. Since this information comes out periodically, in dribs or drabs, and has been for a while, it is more reasonable to assume that more information is coming, rather than to assume that we have fully completely the process of discovering the specific role that minerals play in the body.


53 posted on 08/09/2010 10:52:33 PM PDT by truthfreedom
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To: Palter

I’ve been harvesting seeds from the garden this year. Not sure if it’s true, but a friend told me I’ll get bigger yields from second generation plants.


54 posted on 08/09/2010 10:55:41 PM PDT by airborne (Why is it we won't allow the Bible in school, but we will in prison? Think about it.)
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To: mamelukesabre

Wrong.

Drink 20 gallons of water, regular bottled water, real quick.

You’d die.

Does that make water poison?

I just did a test. I grew wheatgrass. Watered one bunch with regular fresh water, and the other bunch with seawater diluted 20 parts fresh water - 1 part sea water. They both grew about the same.

The advantage isn’t in the yields, although some say that it does improve yields, its that the plants are taking in the minerals from the seawater. You put it on grasses that animals eat, the grasses pull in the trace minerals - all of them, the animals eat the enriched grasses, and their tissues will contain those trace minerals. All grasses, grains, vegetables, will benefit from the additional trace minerals, although it appears that grasses / grains take up more of those trace minerals than most vegetables do.


55 posted on 08/09/2010 11:00:55 PM PDT by truthfreedom
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To: JRandomFreeper
How do the mechanics of your mass starvation thing work?


GM grain does not reproduce, which is why Monsanto is pushing it so they can have a monopoly, but ...

GM grain has been show to be detrimental to live stock and other recipients of this ‘food’. They will eventually suffer from inability to reproduce, and die off. GM grain is a biological time bomb that will destroy the natural life cycle.

Ask your self these questions: Is the genetic code in the cells of organisms and higher forms of life completely reconstructed for each cell irrespective of the genetic DNA of nutrients? To put it another way, does nature provide a ‘matched set’ genetically speaking in the DNA cell structure of lower life forms to higher forms. If so can GM lower cells beneficially support higher life forms cells? Or will the altered GM DNA be incorporated with adveerse side effects. Has biology shown that cell DNA is completely reconstructed accurately without regard to the nutrient’s DNA composition?
Just asking?

56 posted on 08/09/2010 11:13:37 PM PDT by J Edgar
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To: truthfreedom

try reading a little more and opining less.

some plants are a little more tolerant of salt than others. watering cropland with salt water will render the land USELESS to the more salt sensitive crops, FOREVER.

Really a dumb idea.

We already have a problem with using groundwater as irrigation water. Ground water contains more minerals than rain water does. Years and years of groundwater irrigation has increased the salinity of the soil, and hence decreased the fertility of the soil.

And you want to use sea water.

dumb. really really dumb.

And as for your asinine little experiment, no comment. I’ll let you figure out yourself why it is so dumb. That’s the only way you are going to learn anything, apparently.


57 posted on 08/09/2010 11:16:32 PM PDT by mamelukesabre (Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum (If you want peace prepare for war))
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To: truthfreedom

http://www.pcdf.org/meadows/potato.htm

“Breaking the species barrier. Nature doesn’t normally mix the genes of bacteria and potatoes, or frogs and lettuces, or pigs and people. A species barrier prevents sunflowers from mating with chimpanzees. The barrier isn’t absolute, especially not with bacteria and viruses. But, contrary to the claims of biotech companies, moving genes from any species to any species is not just a small extension of the age-old human practice of breeding new varieties of roses or cattle. It’s a whole new twist in evolution.”

And, I should add, playing God.


58 posted on 08/09/2010 11:22:39 PM PDT by truthfreedom
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To: mamelukesabre

People have done this before. I didn’t invent this.
Look up Dr. Maynard Murray. There are many farmers who add sea salt to their crops, grassland, etc.

http://www.amazon.com/Sea-Energy-Agriculture-Maynard-Murray/dp/091131170X
That’s a link to “Sea Energy Agriculture” by Murray.

From the “Product Description”

Product Description
Maynard Murray was a medical doctor who researched the crucial importance of minerals - especially trace elements - to plants and animals. Beginning in 1938 and continuing through the 1950s, Dr. Murray used sea solids - mineral salts remaining after water is evaporated from ocean water - as fertilizer on a variety of vegetables, fruits and grains. His extensive experiments demonstrated repeatedly and conclusively that plants fertilized with sea solids and animals fed sea-solid-fertilized feeds grow stronger and more resistant to disease.

Sea Energy Agriculture recounts Murray’s experiments and presents his astounding conclusions. The work of this eco-pioneer was largely ignored during his lifetime, and his book became a lost classic - out-of-print for more than 25 years. Now this rare volume is once again available, with a new foreward and afterword by the founder of Acres U.S.A., Charles Walters.

It’s a rare practice, but not unknown or unstudied.


59 posted on 08/09/2010 11:28:52 PM PDT by truthfreedom
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To: J Edgar; JRandomFreeper
Is the genetic code in the cells of organisms and higher forms of life completely reconstructed for each cell irrespective of the genetic DNA of nutrients?

Yes.

No organismal DNA is constructed from DNA bases in food. Most of your body fat is stored dietary fat, but DNA and RNA is made from scratch. It's not recycled DNA from the diet. You do, however, have a lot of foreign DNA in you courtesy of viruses.

Besides, if a crop is made to not reproduce by seed, the alterations are at the gene level, not the DNA base level. That is, they may have knocked out viability of seeds, but it was done by splicing in or deleting parts of genes necessary for viable seeds (or by finding ways of methylating certain genes or regions of genes necessary for producing viable seeds), not by using any kind of unique DNA base (A, G, C, T) that will spread via food throughout the whole animal/plant kingdoms and prevent anything from reproducing.
60 posted on 08/09/2010 11:32:22 PM PDT by aruanan (Ph.D. in Human Nutrition/Nutritional Biology, Post Doc in Molecular Neurobiology)
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