I agree that part of the Food Desert problem is due to the time-cost of making fresh food. But that's a macroeconomics problem, not a supply problem! Making more, cheaper junk food doesn't address the health issues or the quality-of-life impact caused by not having anything but junk food to eat.
I completely and utterly disagree that I'm "giving cover" to the people that I called (and you quoted) "DONT EAT THE SCIENCE". That's open mockery of their Luddite ways, and I come down hard on them in these discussions. I loathe their ignorance-wrapped-in-smugness attitude. But by the same token, I have no love for the people who love GMO because "It's SCIENCE!" (you know, the ones who downvote my comments on this subject), without thinking about what problems they're actually trying to solve.
Solving problems that don't actually exist is why many startups fail. There's indirection going on here. As I've said repeatedly, the problem GMOs solve isn't food supply, because we don't have a food supply problem. The population of the Earth has doubled in 50 years, and food costs have dropped 50% over that same period. Does this sound like desperate measure time? No, it sounds like what we've been doing has been tremendously successful at making food more available and less expensive.
So the the problem GMO solves isn't making more food - it's making more money for Monsanto. Is this what we really want as a society? More concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a business model that can and does buy governments? For all the self-styled libertarianism around here, people sure are eager to hand massive corporations that don't act in their interests even more power. Me, I think that's stupid.
Again, what problem are you trying to solve? And does that problem actually exist? If you start with a solution that stimulates your nerd fantasies, and then defend that solution instead of reframing the problem, you're probably wrong.
Loss of biodiversity is an observable problem. Monocropping damaging the soil is an observable problem (and is nitrogen fertilizer and Roundup a solution?). Cash crops bringing outside money and political abuse into developing countries is an observable problem - one far more directly involved in third world hunger than crop yields. I'm after the real problems of the food chain. Are you?
I completely and utterly disagree that I'm "giving cover" to the people that I called (and you quoted) "DONT EAT THE SCIENCE". That's open mockery of their Luddite ways, and I come down hard on them in these discussions. I loathe their ignorance-wrapped-in-smugness attitude. But by the same token, I have no love for the people who love GMO because "It's SCIENCE!" (you know, the ones who downvote my comments on this subject), without thinking about what problems they're actually trying to solve.
Solving problems that don't actually exist is why many startups fail. There's indirection going on here. As I've said repeatedly, the problem GMOs solve isn't food supply, because we don't have a food supply problem. The population of the Earth has doubled in 50 years, and food costs have dropped 50% over that same period. Does this sound like desperate measure time? No, it sounds like what we've been doing has been tremendously successful at making food more available and less expensive.
So the the problem GMO solves isn't making more food - it's making more money for Monsanto. Is this what we really want as a society? More concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a business model that can and does buy governments? For all the self-styled libertarianism around here, people sure are eager to hand massive corporations that don't act in their interests even more power. Me, I think that's stupid.
Again, what problem are you trying to solve? And does that problem actually exist? If you start with a solution that stimulates your nerd fantasies, and then defend that solution instead of reframing the problem, you're probably wrong.
Loss of biodiversity is an observable problem. Monocropping damaging the soil is an observable problem (and is nitrogen fertilizer and Roundup a solution?). Cash crops bringing outside money and political abuse into developing countries is an observable problem - one far more directly involved in third world hunger than crop yields. I'm after the real problems of the food chain. Are you?