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With GMOs, There is No Ubuntu

posted by martyb on Thursday November 16 2017, @01:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the speaking-of-bill-gates dept.

canopic jug writes:

Retired judge Justice Patrick Tabaro writes of a proposed law in Uganda that looks to adversely affect its independence and, specifically, what is starting to be called these days "food security".

[...] science is not a magic wand for solving man's food security concerns, but must be applied in accordance with Ubuntu (humaneness).

[...] Since the advent of civilization, peasants have had capacity to plant their own seeds. With the advent of GMO farming, the peasants who constitute 70 per cent of the population have their fate sealed; they may fall into the debt trap, fail to service bank loans and will be in danger of losing their cherished land holdings to financial institutions – and this may entail food insecurity for everyone.

[...] God forbid that anyone should be targeting our scientists to make us vulnerable for easy domination.

He concludes that [w]ith GMOs, there is no Ubuntu, (human nature, humanness, humanity, virtue, goodness, and kindness).

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @06:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2017, @06:46PM (#597810)

    GMO is more useful for producing monopolies and "lock-in". GMO isn't even necessary to produce high yields whether in Netherlands: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/ [nationalgeographic.com]

    By contrast, the latest achievements in the venerable science of molecular breeding—which introduces no foreign genes—can deliver remarkable gains in five to 10 years, with development costs as low as $100,000 and seldom more than a million dollars. It is a direct descendant of methods employed by farmers in the Fertile Crescent 10,000 years ago.

    Or India: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/may/13/miracle-grow-indian-rice-farmer-sri-system-rice-intensification-record-crop [theguardian.com]
    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/feb/16/india-rice-farmers-revolution [theguardian.com]

    This was not six or even 10 or 20 tonnes. Kumar, a shy young farmer in Nalanda district of India's poorest state Bihar, had – using only farmyard manure and without any herbicides – grown an astonishing 22.4 tonnes of rice on one hectare of land. This was a world record and with rice the staple food of more than half the world's population of seven billion, big news.

    It beat not just the 19.4 tonnes achieved by the "father of rice", the Chinese agricultural scientist Yuan Longping, but the World Bank-funded scientists at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, and anything achieved by the biggest European and American seed and GM companies.

    Some of the methods might be more labor intensive but I heard robots and automation were going to take away most jobs right?