Quote Originally Posted by mcatdog
Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy
That's a pretty interesting idea, and quite a tall order to boot.

It would require a lot of genetic manipulation and experimentation, and we could find ourselves in wunderwaffe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wunderwaffe It is a legitimate idea, but it is also another one of those can't wait till it's too late to try to figure it out things
It's a tall order but we've come a long way already. If it weren't for Norman Borlaug and the green revolution in the 1960s, hundreds of millions of people in Asia probably would have starved to death in the 1970s.

One problem is that lots of environmental groups oppose GM foods and as a result of their activism, the foundations that used to sponsor Borlaug now refuse to fund efforts to bring the green revolution to Africa. It's a disgrace.

I don't want to completely hate on the environmental movement because they've done a lot of great things, i.e. the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, protecting wilderness areas, etc. But their opposition to GM foods and the way they've gotten most of the world to phase out nuclear power have both been terribly counterproductive and I see the effort to stop global warming by draining trillions of dollars from the economy as being along the same lines. They don't seem to realize there are trade-offs with everything and sometimes when you eliminate one thing its replacement is even worse for the environment. If we used GM foods to improve crop yields then it would take less land to feed the human race and more land could be left wild.

BTW ignore my response about nuclear fusion, I thought you said you wanted $100 billion a year spent solely on fusion research because I fail at reading comprehension. I think we agree the most important thing to be done is to spend more money on research, but it's always an uphill battle to get politicians to direct that money to scientists who will use it well as opposed to special interests like the useless ethanol lobby.
There are a couple really worrying things about genetically modified crops. One that bothers me quite a bit, but I guess isnt the most serious, farms become mcdonalds farms. What I mean by this is that if I go get a tomato in naples it will taste just the same as one in chicago. This is do to the big business of genetically modified seed and the fact that big business often leads to monopolies, which it has in this case.

A slightly more serious problem has to do with what exactly the crops are being genetically modified for. High yield is great, but nutritionally empty produce is not. The thing is, produce is sold by weight, not by nutritional content. Therefore the corporations that have a stranglehold on seed production have no interest in making better food, just higher yielding food. From my personal point of view, being a cook, this is a shame; from an objective point of view, this is not all bad, but its certainly far from all good.

Another problem which is closely related to the first one is that there is no profit in variety. CoccoBill mentioned extinction of animals, well through pure profit driven farming thousands of varieties of produce have gone extinct. The problem here is that we are sort of putting all our eggs in one basket. Take the irish potato famine for example. Its proof positive that the less variety in your crop, the more susceptible you are to having your entire crop wiped out.