Gene Edited crops coming to the uk

[Exfarmer]

The tragedy of course is that the whole GM industry was developed in the UK first and the science was lost overseas thanks to the activities of a few well known offenders who were not as they should have been convicted of criminal damage, harrassment and making violent threats to many members of the scientific community and farmers who cooperated. one of this gang has since come out very strongly in favour of GM crops as he has since realised the huge benefits they can bring.
incidentally when they first appeared the soil association were strongly in favour as it would reduce the amount of chemicals used in agricutlute, they had a sudden turn around when they realised that this would reduce their own sales.

 

[neilo]

What’s to stop a chemical company editing in a gene which makes the crop higher yielding but unable to provide a high yield without certain chemicals which they supply.

How would farmers know as it would be all controlled by a fat guy with a mole on his face stroking a white cat.

Nothing at all, the same as it would be fairly easy to engineer a crop that produced sterile seed, preventing anyone from home saving it.

It would also be possible (theoretically at least) to introduce the ability to supply it’s own Nitrogen, like legumes do, into cereal crops, etc. That could be done for the good of humanity, without commercial companies having a stranglehold, if the will was there.

It’s not the technology that’s an issue, but the use of it currently.

 

[Secret Agronomist]

IF this technology allowed reduced use of PPPs and basically replaced the PPPs £ for £ or even if it cost a little more than using fungicides I'm for it. With the likes of potatoes the potential to reduce PPP use and therefore operator and bystander exposure is huge. Unfortunately it wont work like that.

 

[Lowland1]

You do start to wonder who is benefitting from the war in the Ukraine. It’s most certainly not the Ukrainians and probably not the Russians. Multinationals though must be having a great time whether you’re an Oil corporation like BP a grain dealer like Cargill or a weapons producer like General Dynamics you must be laughing all the way to the bank. And now the agrochemical companies are getting in on the act. Obviously telling your own farmers to plant more would be stupid but Bayer can save us all. Telling frightened people they have no option but to allow this is much easier now than it was.
The recipe for increased corporate profits and increased tax revenue. First find a nutter with nuclear weapons prod him a bit til angry second tell his neighbour you are right behind him then stand back and see what happens whilst allowing your friends in the media to span the flames of fear.
As for gene editing i’ve got no problems with it.

 

[BenAdamsAgri]

Gene editing will have absolutely no benefit at all to farmers

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Gene editing will have absolutely no benefit at all to farmers

That's not it's purpose.

The WEF, gathered now in Davos, are supportive of this and other "eventual" developing technologies but you have to ask who will really benefit from any of them?

 

[kiwi pom]

That's exactly what Monsanto and others have done in the USA. There was a widely publicised test case where an organic grower was taken to court for refusing to pay royalty on home saved seed which had cross-pollinated with the GM crop grown by the farmer next door. Their argument was that he should have left a big enough sterile strip around his own land to prevent it. They'd trespassed to take samples from his crop to do DNA testing on and found about 0.2% of their proprietary DNA iirc.


See above!

This is the issue. If the technology was open source, paid for by government, i'd have less issue with it but the main idea behind the commercial developers is to capture even more of the farm income. It seems it's NOT about improving the world, that's just their convenient smokescreen....

I still don't believe any of these seed companies have sued farmers for wind blown volunteers, what they have done is sued farmers who have saved and sown GM seed to produce a crop, be it from the original seeds they bought or collecting wind blown seeds to plant again.
What's unfair about that?
Companies like Monsanto spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop something they can sell, I don't blame them for wanting to get that investment back.
Patents do expire though.

 

[neilo]

Gene editing will have absolutely no benefit at all to farmers

That rather depends who implements it, and to what ends. It could be used for great good, but that requires funding put in from other than big business.
That doesn’t make the technology ‘bad’, just how it’s implemented.

 

[kiwi pom]

Gene editing will have absolutely no benefit at all to farmers

Why not? we breed better cattle, pigs and sheep to give more/better quality milk, meat and wool. Breed better crops to give higher yields or better disease resistance etc. GE just helps speed that process up and make it more efficient.

Mrs KP works in the potato industry, she would love to be able to source a blight resistant potato or develop a variety resistant to the potato psyllid.
Those two things cost farmers a fortune in sprays to control and also the processor as they effect the amount of waste at the factory.
No doubt the seed would be more expensive but the savings in machinery, labour and chemicals would be huge.

 

[Chunka87]

I went around a plant breeding lab in Belgium a couple of years ago and it was amazing what they were saying they could achieve with ge i.e (rape that was completely resistant to flea beetle was one thing and he said that was an easy 1). The scientist said they were hoping that the uk would allow the use of ge soon so it would show the eu what it was missing out on.

 

[Exfarmer]

Why not? we breed better cattle, pigs and sheep to give more/better quality milk, meat and wool. Breed better crops to give higher yields or better disease resistance etc. GE just helps speed that process up and make it more efficient.

Mrs KP works in the potato industry, she would love to be able to source a blight resistant potato or develop a variety resistant to the potato psyllid.
Those two things cost farmers a fortune in sprays to control and also the processor as they effect the amount of waste at the factory.
No doubt the seed would be more expensive but the savings in machinery, labour and chemicals would be huge.

Can easily spray a potato crop 15 times a year for blight!