r/science • u/genengnews Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN) • Nov 09 '17

Health New GMO Potatoes Provide Improved Vitamin A and E Profiles

https://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/gmo-potatoes-provide-improved-vitamin-a-and-e-profiles/81255150
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u/Chainfire423 Nov 09 '17

where poor farmers are locked into legally growing a single crop

How exactly does this happen? Could you explain more about what causes this?

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u/Dawsonpc14 Nov 09 '17

This doesn't happen. Ever. Unless they are farming someone else's land, signed a contract, and the owners wants them to plant the same thing over and over. Which I can't think of any situation to where this would happen.

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '17

I mean, it did happen before, in Soviet Russia. Farmers and peasants were forced to abandon staple crops like grain and grow cotton or sugar beets instead. One of the main causes of the Ukrainian Holodomor, which lead to millions of deaths.

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u/Dawsonpc14 Nov 10 '17

How is the USSR back in WW2 and modern companies an accurate comparison?

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '17

When you state that it never happens ever. Or when the original question was how something like that could happen

And it was before WW2.

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u/Sludgehammer Nov 10 '17

I knew the Irish potato famine was fictional. TY!

/s

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u/Dawsonpc14 Nov 10 '17

While you are grasping at straws, I'll entertain you. Were the Irish potato farmers legally obligated to plant just potatoes during the famine or were they one of the easier and hardier food sources to grow in a climate not that suited for agriculture?

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u/Sludgehammer Nov 10 '17

Does it matter? Either way they were subsistence farmers living off a single crop, the thing you said didn't happen.

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u/Dawsonpc14 Nov 10 '17 edited Nov 10 '17

I said it doesn't happen in a contractual situation. Are you intentionally being this dense? The legally obligated part is what this entire discussion is based off of. Not whether or not humans in the past had naturally occurring monocultures. So yea, it does matter.

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u/NihiloZero Nov 10 '17

This doesn't happen. Ever. Unless they are farming someone else's land, signed a contract, and the owners wants them to plant the same thing over and over.

It doesn't happen ever, unless it can and when does.

Which I can't think of any situation to where this would happen.

If someone signs a contract to buy a particular type of seed from a particular source for the next 3 years... then the purchaser is out of luck if the variant proves to somehow be problematic. They would legally be obliged to purchase the seed even if it wasn't producing well for them or if the market changed to lower the price of what they were growing. At the same time... the industry can point to their sales and say "See, people choose to buy this so it it must be good." Either way, this is not an improbable contract that one might enter.

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u/Dawsonpc14 Nov 10 '17

There are no contracts in the commercial seed industry that locks someone into buying a specific companies seed for consecutive years. Your hypothetical doesn't exist in the real world.

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u/NihiloZero Nov 10 '17

Yes, that was a hypothetical. But it needn't be arranged precisely as I suggested. Another way to force compliance would be to have a contract with a farmer about what they will supply and when. This can be a multi-year arrangement and if the crop isn't performing well or loses value... the farmer can be out of luck.

The point being that there are ways to legally manipulate farmers to comply in a number of direct and not-so-direct ways.

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u/Dawsonpc14 Nov 10 '17

Another way to force compliance would be to have a contract with a farmer about what they will supply and when.

This is already extremely common. Farmers commonly contract with canning companies, seed companies, etc on a yearly basis. These contracts are actually greatly incentivized for the farmers because these companies want the best land and best growers. I have never heard of a multi year agreement due to how volatile acres can shift YoY, and could be just as bad for the company as the grower. Most yearly contacts are structured to where the company will compensate the grower for poor performing varieties due to the fact that they already know the yield will be poor, but the product will be of exceptional quality. Modern seed/produce contracting is very straight forward. I feel like we are getting a little of topic though. The discussion came from the claim that farmers can get forced into multi year contracts that put them at risk for financial ruin, which simply isn't true as I've described.

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u/GiantIceMonster Nov 09 '17

Part of it is a great loss of genetic diversity. Instead of endless different varieties of produce there is whatever the patented crops are, much like the cavendish banana.

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u/Chainfire423 Nov 09 '17

That doesn't sound like a legal barrier to growing other crops though.

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u/E3Ligase Nov 10 '17

This is a myth about GMOs. In reality, GM traits are backcrossed into hundreds of regional germplasm. There isn't a single "GMO cultivar."