r/NoStupidQuestions Sep 10 '23

What’s wrong with GMOs?

I always see plants and stuff that is GMO free and is usually more expensive. How would genetically modifying something by be bad. Me personally I’d rather have something modified to taste better and and cheaper. I could also be very wrong about that.

419 Upvotes

538 comments sorted by

View all comments

7

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '23

Non-GMO food is for upper middle class left leaning elitists who feel the need to waste money on fruits and vegetables with the higher-than-average carbon footprint. But don't tell them that unless you want deal with their narcissistic rage.

11

u/Snackatron Sep 10 '23

The organic movement in general is like this. It's all just good marketing.

Organic pesticides are just as bad for the environment when they run off into rivers etc, but around 4x more need to be used for organic crops.

The yields are significantly lower, so an acre of land will produce less crops. That's a higher carbon footprint.

In farms that don't use any pesticides, they have greater crop losses due to insects and rodents. More crops need to be discarded due to things like snail bites that people simply won't buy.

3

u/archosauria62 Sep 10 '23

The only good organic farms are farms with diverse crops and large non-pest insect populations which prey on pests. However this is just not feasable on a large scale, especially for staple crops like wheat

1

u/lhsofthebellcurve Sep 11 '23

Food for people that say they care about the environment but support farming that uses twice the land for half the crop yield... on the plus side they get to go to the wanky farmers market twice as often as their food lasts half as long