The liberal left and food. An unnecessarily complicated relationship

The liberals have always been suspicious about me, and they have good reasons to--they know well that I will depart from many of their views more often than not.  That I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU doesn't convince them that I am a liberal.  A committed liberal is no different from a committed conservative, and they are often no different from a religious fundamentalist either--because I don't worship their gods, I have to be kept at a distance.

Works well for me.  Except that the decisions they make affect my life and the lives of millions of others too.  So, I blog!

First, food and Monsanto.  To the left, Monsanto is like Voldemort.  Perhaps even worse.  A few weeks ago, I blogged about the graffiti on the bike path:

Of course, that is not the only post where I have wondered about such dogmatic opposition to GM food and Monsanto (like here, here, and here.)  Now, I have one more in this post, thanks to this piece on argumentum ad monsantum in the Scientific American blog:

It’s fashionable to think that the conservative parties in America are the science deniers. You certainly wouldn’t have trouble supporting that claim. But liberals are not exempt. Though the denial of evolution, climate change, and stem cell research tends to find a home on the right of the aisle, the denial of vaccine, nuclear power, and genetic modification safety have found a home on the left (though the extent to which each side denies the science is debatable). It makes one wonder: Why do liberals like Maher—psychologically considered open to new ideas—deny the science of GM food while accepting the science in other fields?

You can imagine what happens when you point out to the left how dogmatically ideological they are on some issues, and you point out to the right how dogmatically ideological they are on some issues.  Soon, there is nobody to talk with.   So, I blog! ;)

So, what is the deal with the "Monsanto is evil" religion?

We tend to accept information that confirms our prior beliefs and ignore or discredit information that does not. This confirmation bias settles over our eyes like distorting spectacles for everything we look at. Could this be at the root of the argumentum ad monsantum? It isn’t inconsistent with the trend Maher has shown repeatedly on his show. A liberal opposition to corporate power, to capitalistic considerations of human welfare, could be incorrectly coloring the GM discussion. Perhaps GMOs are the latest casualty in a cognitive battle between confirmation bias and reality.

We continue with the confirmation bias with food deserts.

No, a food desert is not about lack of food in Darfur or one of those places.

Food deserts can be described as geographic areas where residents’ access to affordable, healthy food options (especially fresh fruits and vegetables) is restricted or nonexistent due to the absence of grocery stores within convenient travelling distance. 

An informed person somewhere in India or Tanzania or anywhere on the planet will have a tough time imagining Americans not having access to food.  Not only because it is the land of plenty, but also because there are plenty of social institutions--public and private--to address food insecurity issues.  Keep in mind that food deserts are not the same as food insecurity--there will be an overlap between the two, yes, but the food desert concept is above and beyond the real and serious food insecurity issues.

A simple logic tells me that choices increase with affluence and that the poor have fewer choices.  As in life so is the case with food.  Will it, therefore, surprise us to find that the less affluent have limited access to healthy food options?  Should we worry that Bubba doesn't have access to arugula, and that he eats way too much at the neighboring McDonald's instead, and bypasses the salads there?

Imagine, if you will, how easy politics will be if the liberals and the conservatives alike ditched their dogmatic and ideological passions and, instead, merely looked at how to solve problems.  Oh, wait, I see Ted Cruz coming to attack me with a hardbound edition of the Dr. Seuss collections for merely suggesting this ;)

The radical left. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em!

So, there I was on the bike path, when I noticed graffiti on the path that was actually readable.  Graffiti, normally, is like some awful hieroglyphics, which leave me wondering what the point is if the intended audience cannot get the message.  But then maybe the graffiti artists are not talking to me, eh!

Anyway, this one was readable because it was in simple, no nonsense, English.  In big bold letters, which would have made any eager four year old try to read that out, with the accompanying parent having a tough time helping the kid read!

Thinking of the hapless parents dealing with their kids asking them "what does fuck mean?" reminds me of the "Mr. Robinson" parody skits that Eddie Murphy did in SNL.  Hey little boys and girls, can you use this word in a sentence?

Where was I?

Yes, that graffiti is so Eugene!

People in other places might have other things on their minds, but here in Eugene, we certainly have more than anybody else's share of the radical and the environmental left.  Old timers say that this is nothing, that it ain't the hippie town it once used to be.  Every old timer seems to have at least one favorite hippie story to tell, and as exaggerated as they might seem, well, they are not!

The folks on the left think I am one of 'em Republicans, while from the right they view me as a damn liberal.  I can't live with either, and can't live without either.  But, any day, I would rather live in a hippie town than at Stepford ;)

And there was another:

More vocabulary lessons for little boys and girls.  This one is a mix of politeness--"I am discouraged"--and the big verb there--"rapes."  You think it was a result of some serious thinking by the graffiti protester?  I don't think so ;)

Monsanto has made quite some enemies.  At this rate, pretty soon, perhaps the thesaurus will include Monsanto as a synonym for evil! As I have blogged before, in plenty, such extreme positions, however, prevent us from engaging in constructive discussions on genetic modification and the undeniable future demand for agricultural products. (Two, within the last two months alone: here and here)

I suppose it takes all kinds of people to make up this world.  If everybody were like me, it will be one hell of a boring planet of non-drinking, non-socializing, hermit bloggers!  But then that will be a neat way to keep the aliens from ever visiting us!

Genetically modified bullshit! The Oregon wheat story

Professor Harry Frankfurt observed that one reason, among many, for the astounding growth in bullshit, which we mostly tolerate, comes from the fact that in a democracy we the people are pretty much expected to have opinions on everything.  Whether we know anything or not is immaterial.

This blog is, perhaps, a wonderful illustration of his point--every post is more bullshit, it seems like, because I opine on so many issues. Surely, I am bullshitting, right?

A few weeks ago, it was big news in my part of the world when researchers found that wheat from a certain farm tested positive for genetic modification.

On May 1, with GMO-positive test results in hand, Mallory-Smith contacted the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s  Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to tell them that unapproved seeds which had been engineered 14 years beforehand by one of the biggest agricultural companies in the world, Monsanto, had somehow found their way into a wheat field in Oregon. And on May 29, the USDA alerted the public about the genetically modified wheat’s presence in Oregon.

Ah, Monsanto. So much has been said and written about this company that I now have no idea how much of  anything is true anymore.

So, what the heck is this GM-wheat?

click to enlarge

If Monsanto destroyed, back in 2011, all the experimental seeds that were developed then how come this Oregon presence?

“It would be nice to know how the wheat got there,” Rowe says. “We don’t want to solve the wrong problem and waste a bunch of effort because of speculation.” 

We don't know!

So, GM crop is the issue?  GM crops are not grown?

Not!

Three years ago, I blogged about this chart from The Economist:

That was three years ago!

Oh, it is ok in other countries but not here in the US?

Not!

Here's the full list of food crops for which you can find GMO varieties: Corn, soybeans, cotton (for oil), canola (also a source of oil), squash, and papaya. You could also include sugar beets, which aren't eaten directly, but refined into sugar. There's also GMO alfalfa, but that goes to feed animals, not for sprouts that people eat. That leaves quite a lot of your garden untouched.
GMO versions of tomatoes, potatoes, and rice have been created and approved by government regulators, but they aren't commercially available.

So, a recap.  GM crops are grown in many countries. In the US, too.  But, we have a problem with GM wheat.  Really?  Is GM bad?

Not!

The GMO story has become mired in the eco-wrecking narrative of industrial agriculture, and that is too bad for those who understand the real risks of climate change and discern our desperate need for innovation. And while the blue-sky hype of a genetically secured food supply has not become a reality, there have been a few breakthroughs. Even as climate change has increased the prevalence of many plant diseases, the new science can take credit for genetic inoculations that saved Hawaii’s papaya business. It’s also led to flood-resistant rice, created by Pamela Ronald of the University of California–Davis.

Confused enough?  Welcome to my club!  Do you now see why I bullshit, a lot?

So, can we do anything constructive?

GMO agriculture relies on the relatively new science of bioinformatics (a mixture of bio- and information science), which means that DNA sequences look a lot more like software code than a vegetable garden. And if Monsanto is the Microsoft of food supply—raking in the rent on bites instead of bytes—perhaps the time has come for the agricultural equivalent of Linux, the open-source operating system that made computer programming a communal effort.

Imagine if we made this a ballot issue, and we voters have to cast a yes/no.  Aren't you convinced by now that most of our votes will not be based on any scientific understanding and, instead, an overwhelming majority of us will rely on good ol' bullshit?

It is a surprise that we have come this far with democratized bullshit. Let us see how much more we can extend it!

The spread of GM crops

Hey, the Economist is also on to the GM crop issue--I suppose there are lots of people who understand that there is more to the world than being preoccupied with the US, Western Europe, AfPak, and Iraq
Anyway, the Economist makes points that provide a larger context than my comments on the Bt-brinjal controversy in India.
The magazine notes:

in Europe, opposition to GM food appears as strong as ever, despite increasingly strident scientific dissent. The European arm of Greenpeace, a green pressure group, still denounces the technology and gloats about a decline of over a tenth in cultivation of GM crops in Europe last year. Sir David King, a former scientific adviser to the British government, argues that the unjustified vilification of GM is leading to needless deaths. He thinks the delay in the introduction of flood-resistant GM rice, for example, has condemned many in the poor world to starvation.

I tell you, we need to seriously start thinking about feeding 9 billion people

The eggplant war in India

An eggplant war is going on in India, with immense implications for agriculture.

Familiarity with “eggplant parmigiana” might tempt us to think that the crop originated in Italy.  However, it is India that is the geographic home for this vegetable, where it has been cultivated for hundreds of years. 

However, it is not referred to as eggplant in its native habitat—the name there is “brinjal” in the English language.  In the Tamil language that I grew up speaking at home, this vegetable is called “kaththarikai.”   

When we were young, my siblings never cared for the brinjal dishes, which meant that I could eat that much more of my mother’s tasty preparations.  However, mom rarely cooks this anymore because dad has suddenly become allergic to this vegetable after almost 80 years of enjoying it in various forms!  A small helping of brinjal immediately translates to rashes that then take at least a fortnight to go away.

It is a bizarre coincidence that dad’s eggplant allergy started about the same time that India started debating whether or not to allow the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) brinjal.  Of course, this correlation has no causation at all.  But, I suspect that it is all the more the reason for dad to write off brinjal for the rest of his life. 

The goals of genetic modification to this native vegetable are straightforward.  Bt-Brinjal, as the GM variety is known, is a trans-genic brinjal that was developed by the global leader in this field, Monsanto, through its subsidiary.  The idea is that introducing the soil bacterium Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt) into the genetic structure will make the plant more pest-resistant because the insects that attack the plant will, in turn, fall victim to the Bt toxin.  This approach will, theoretically, increase yields and reduce the need for synthetic pesticides.    

The opposition to this Bt-brinjal is along the same lines of concerns over any GM crop.  Do we know enough about how it might affect human health?  Will the GM crop drive out the native strains?

For now, the federal government has imposed a moratorium, and the statement issued by the Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, reflects the concerns of those who oppose Bt-brinjal.  The minister, whose graduate studies in science and public policy were at MIT and Carnegie Mellon University, declared that the moratorium will be in place “till such time independent scientific studies establish, to the satisfaction of both the public and professionals, the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment, including the rich genetic wealth existing in brinjal in our country.”

However, this Bt-brinjal war represents a much larger issue.  Demand for fruits and vegetables will increase in this largely vegetarian country of more than a billion people not merely because of the large population but because of the growing affluence. 

In meat-eating lower-income countries undergoing economic growth and development, studies show that increasing affluence triggers growth in the demand for meat.  In China, for instance, thanks to the rapid economic growth, per capita meat consumption more than doubled in a short period between 1985 and 2000, according the estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization.     

In the case of India, the affordability of the growing middle class will quickly translate into greater demand for vegetables and fruits, even more than the growth in meat consumption.  But, conventional agricultural practices will not be able to satisfy this affluence-driven consumption.  At the same time, there is a limit to which fertilizers and other modern agricultural practices can increase yields.  Further, people in India—and in the rest of world, including here in the US—are also a tad worried about dependence on chemicals in the food chain. 

So, to a large extent, this war over Bt-brinjal is more than about the brinjal productivity itself.  This is also setting the stage for decisions that will have to be made regarding a whole range of crops that are viable candidates for genetic modification as a route for increasing productivity. 

Well, I know at least one person who is relieved to be on the sidelines of this Bt-brinjal war—my father, who has stopped eating kaththarikai!

Will we be able to feed 9.5 billion people?

The Aspen Ideas Festival is over. You nor I went to that one means that apparently we did not have ideas that anybody wanted to listen to, or we did not have the money to listen to those with ideas! Oh well ....

James Fallows was one of those that the attendees wanted to listen to, and has blogged about a session he moderated; it was on "Feeding the World's Billions." Fallows writes:

Sample alarming fact: if the world population eventually tops out at 9.5 billion, 50% more than now, total food production will probably have to grow by 200%, as people eat higher up the food chain and demand more and more meat. The challenge, as several panelists put it, was to produce three times as much food on no more than the current amount of agricultural land. (About why it won't just work to cut down all remaining forests to grow food, see here.)

Sample specific solution-possibilities, or at least interesting facts: Average yields in U.S. farms are roughly three times as high as the overall average for Mexico, India, and Brazil. If those countries got to even two-thirds of the US level, it would make a huge difference in closing the "grain gap." Also: a huge share of the world's food output is wasted -- in the developing world because it rots and spoils before it can get to market, and in the US to a significant degree because of restaurant waste. Thus easy opportunities for gain.

I am sure the neo-Malthusians will be all over this one in no time at all ....