Good for them - Genetic Engineering will only ever be as good as the Engineers, and I don't think many are capable of looking far enough ahead at possible problems.

Come on Chavez. Fair play to you. More power to your elbow. Nobody with any sense wants or needs gmos.

What!!?? Why? As long as no one is producing glowing green vegetables whats the big deal. Is it bad to design something that would require less water, more resistance to bugs and temperature? Or even require less fertilizer? Humans have been engineering plants for 1000's of years. Why is this any different?

As an avid environmentalist and a molecular biologist, I find that many environmentalists have misconceptions about genetically modified food. The reality is the genetically modified food holds extremely high value, because many modifications that reduce the cost of crop cultivation are also good for the environment. Genetically altered crops hold the promise of using much less pesticides and herbicides, more efficient use of farm land, reducing the amount of petroleum required per ton, reducing erosion due to over tilling, and reducing deforestation due to nutrient depletion.

GM crops that have engineered toxins or other defenses against pest and weeds mean that farmers have to use less environmentally damaging chemicals on their crops.

GM crops that are able to grow more efficeintly allow farmers to produce the same amount of product within a smaller area, which leads to less overall petroleum being used to produce the crop.

GM crops that are designed to produce essential nutrients themselves cut down on the amount of tilling needed to be performed. Tilling decreases the amount of high quality top soil that is lost to erosion (and the chemicals in that soil that get washed into basins). They would also prevent nutrient depletion, so that farmers in sensitive areas like the rainforest would not have to move their farm to a new area every 5 years.

GM crops can produce nutrients that people in poor countries are deficient in.

GM crops can also be designed to use less water, which is obviously very important.

If people weren't so rabidly anti-gm, we'd already be seeing these benefits. GM is where we need to go to have more environmentally friendly farming practices. Several arguments that people commonly use against GM are just plain wrong, because people are uninformed about either the GM business or GM science. The one main argument that is valid is that of gene transfer between species. But, this happens in ‘natural’ plants as well, and I think the benefits outweigh the negatives.

The reason I put ‘natural’ in quotes, is because almost all of our cash crops were invented by humans, and they aren’t natural at all. That’s right. America’s two biggest cereal crops, wheat and corn did not exist before humans. The plants they were derived from have almost no resemblance to the modern forms we use now. They are all the product of ancient, human directed genetic modifications.

It really kills me to see ‘environmentalists’ fighting against something that has the potential to help the Earth, while at the same time standing behind things like states promoting Ethanol production, which is really just an indirect subsidy that promotes using more energy to grow more corn that we don't really need.

END RANT

The New Internationalist had an entire issue dedicated to Venezuela and Chavez. Issue 391. Check it out.

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editor note: There's also an interview with him here (you can skip the intro if you just want the interview).

To JiltedCitizen

The degree of change that GMO implies is far more drastic than what would have been going on 1000 years ago.

There is a special balance that has evolved over millions of years, adding drastic changes to the way an organizm lives could have huge impacts on other organisms. For example asume you make wheat resistant to bugs and able to live with less water creating a "super plant" Say that plant reproduces outside the semi controlled environment it is in. There is a chance it could choke out other native plants in the area say maybe a local plant that a certain species of animal dependeds on, the chain from there could easily continue. Ecosystems are self balanceing and change and evolve within themselves similar to an organism. Introducing a radical new variable is never a good thing. Take a look at what zebra muscles are doing to north american waterways; utterly destroying and choking out everything because they have no predaters or checks or balances to keep them under control.

It is the same idea with GMO's , introducing something that doesn't belong or hasn't evolved natually with its surroundings. There are soo many variables to look at and that are unknown that it is impossible to account for every situation that could arise.

another example is DDT, engineers created it in the lab and tested it in the lab. It killed bugs, good, and it left the plant intact, good, but other factors where overlooked or ignored and now wildlife and humans are still feeling the negative impacts today.

There is soo much humans dont understand about the earth (not saying i fully understand it either). It is built to balance and has balanced itself up until the last 100 or so years. Humans now have the power to upset the balance and have been doing so all over the place. GMO's are just another weight added to one side of the scale.

The Earth was not built to balance. Species and Geographies have constantly been eliminated or changed or replaced, for billions of years.

But for the short-term, we should definitely keep a close eye on the ethics of rapidly developing a technology that can prove unsafe. Hurray for Venezuela - one step in a good direction.

"As an avid environmentalist and a molecular biologist, I find that many environmentalists have misconceptions about genetically modified food."

I think that a lot of people are against the current proposed model of deployment of GMOs, but not necessarily all GMOs. Same with globalisation: It's possible to be against the current proposed model yet be for another model.

The problem with the current way of doing thing is that it seems like most corporations that develop and use GMOs only have a short-sighted profit motive and don't look at things holistically. They also underestimate what we don't know about nature and the complex inter-relations between everything. They think they are in control, but really, things can go bad without the possibility of going back.

I would highly recommend a movie called The Future of Food on the subject of GMOs. I have known environmentalists who are very pro-GMO, but have serious concerns about them and the complete carelessness with which they have been introduced to the food market and into various eco-systems. While I don't rule out the possibility that they could be beneficial long-term, I don't think that their current use is at all appropriate.

Please, check out The Future of Food. Everyone.

The big problem with gmo's is we just don't know what the impact will be. That being the case, everyone should have the right to choose whether or not they want to subject themselves and their children to this "experiment". Mandatory labelling is something North Americans should be screeming for.

While I certainly agree GMOs look rosy, it's because fallible humans, driven by timelines with little slip bit in, forced by corporations hungry for profit, that the whole thing becomes shaky.

A perfectly executed, perfectly tested GMO could be a great thing. But as everyone knows, nothing's perfect. How do you test for scenarios that are unlikely to come up? How high a fidelity are your simulations when none of them can come close to the complexity of reality? I have a lot of cynicism (most of it well earned) when it comes to large, multinational corporations claiming everything will be wonderful. Who thought CFCs would be so bad? DDT (as someone else mentioned)? PCBs? Nanoparticles finding their ways into jeans and skis (and a slew more things daily)? How long do we want this list to be?

To me, people should lean on the Precautionary principle (wiki it...). If it's difficult to put the genie back in the bottle, a lot of thought (and research, and long and arduous testing) should go into pulling the cork! Letting guys who stand to make a few bucks are the worst contenders for cork pullers, IMHO :) !

The most important thing about GMO crops in my mind is the ability for the companies that have modified the seed stock to "own" that seed stock through patents. This process is eating away at the already thin bottom line of farmers worldwide. Do we really need one or two companies owning all of the food stores, specifically staple grains, on the planet. Think about it. The economics of GMO is a bad idea no matter what you think of the environmental impacts. When a company can sue a farmer for stealing seed because of cross pollination ( the precedent has already been set.. see Canada) we have to slow down and consider the consequences.

I agree with Sly above - it's the economic implementation that's the problem, it seems. My knowledge about this subject is superficial, but I understand that certain companies engineer plants for resistance to specific pesticides of their own design, forcing reliance on a single corporation.

Global, non-profit cooperative? Ahem..