Disculpa que no escriba en ingles, pero mi habilidad escrita es bastante limitada.

El problema con los GMO no es tanto la cuestion de variedad genetica o su manipulacion, ya que como bien dices esto cambia constantemente, incluso nuestros ancestros veian como cruzando 2 especies de la misma planta, salia una mejor. Desde epocas antiguas se ha practicado la hibridacion. El problema viene cuando empiezas a cruzar genes de distintas especies, insertando genes animales en plantas para darles ciertas caracteristicas deseadas para la produccion, pero de lo cual no se saben los efectos a largo plazo, he ahí el problema.

En cuando a lo de Monsanto, espero que realmente no les creas, esta es una de las corporaciones mas subrepticias y con mayor poder a nivel mundial. Dos cosas pueden dar un enorme poder en este mundo, el dinero y los alimentos, Rotschild dijo dame el poder de imprimir el dinero y no me importara quien gobierne” o algo parecido y lo mismo va para los alimentos.

Te recomiendo fuertemente una pelicula-documental, “Le monde selon Monsanto”.

Saludos

Commercial agriculture can create the economies of scale to forge a resilient agricultural sector, specially since the huge investment in infrastructure and capital need to get even modest tractors and revitalise tired land. The organic crops are debatable as best, because, even if they do not drain the soil as much, they do not produce per Ha nearly as much, so you need more land, and they are more vulnerable to pests. GM crops also put less stress in the soil. About the other threats you mentioned, the apparent shrinking of the genetic pool is due that GE requires a lot of investment and none can be done either in the EU or Africa, hence limiting the research on a bigger varietal. Current crops, event organic ones, have nothing to do with the crops farmed even 80 years ago due to artificial selection, so the genetic pool is constantly manipulated.

Promoting a vegetarian regime, something that requires a lot of education and resources to inform what is a correct vegetarian regime, goes exactly against one of the main phenomena pressuring prices up; Asians are eating more proteins and they see it as a sign of progress. I cannot see a fast or cheap way to reverse this trend until at least a generation shakes this image off. Promoting population control policies is something the Humankind have been doing since the sixties, even at the extremes of the Only-Child policy in China, and we are already getting results, but is not only how many we are, but that those already here are eating better and more.

I agree that there are enough calories in the world today and that everything seems a problem of distribution, but we are not short of calories but nutrients. anybody can eat 2,400 calories daily of Corncraps© and be obese and anemic. I do not see people not wanting sharing the food fairly, what I do not see is the huge distribution systems needed to move food around, specially fresh food!

Now, you agreed with me in ending subsides, and although you try to promote the veggie agenda, you did not bash cars, so I am afraid you do not qualify as a neo hippie. Better luck next time 8D

Commercial agriculture: Organic farming can be done in moderately large scales. It seems more inefficient, but it does not drain the soil of nutrients as quickly, so its long-term productivity increases. It also contributes to a more resilient global agricultural system, as pests and disease do not spread as widely as with the huge corporations that are in charge of commercial agriculture (even if you say they are not).

GM crops: You mention terminator seeds, but these are only one of the problems of using GM crops. Again, a decrease in global resilience is a greater concern, as is the shrinking of the genetic pool of our crops.

There are two (longer-term) measures we can take to address the problem of food supply that do not run into these problems: promoting a vegetarian or mostly-vegetarian diet, and promoting population control policies (it doesn’t matter how much we exploit the soil, at one point we *will* be too many if we don’t stop breeding so much).

Food shortage is also a problem of inequality. A good part of the world is starving, another good part is obese. Currently we produce enough calories and nutrients to feed everybody, we just don’t want to share them fairly.

Now go ahead and call me a neo-hippie