Can GM crops really “feed the world”?
Challenging the Flawed Premise Behind Pushing GMOs into Indian Agriculture
Colin Todhunter
A common claim is that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are essential to agriculture if we are to feed an ever-growing global population. Supporters of genetically engineered (GE) crops argue that by increasing productivity and yields, this technology will also help boost farmers’ incomes and lift many out of poverty.
Although in this article it will be argued that the performance of GE crops to date has been questionable, the main contention is that the pro-GMO lobby, both outside of India and within, has wasted no time in wrenching the issues of hunger and poverty from their political contexts to use notions of ‘helping farmers’ and ‘feeding the world’ as lynchpins of its promotional strategy.
There exists a ‘haughty imperialism’ within the pro-GMO scientific lobby that aggressively pushes for a GMO ‘solution’ which is a distraction from the root causes of poverty, hunger and malnutrition and genuine solutions based on food justice and food sovereignty.
Last year, in the journal Current Science, Dr Deepak Pental, developer of genetically engineered (GE) mustard at Delhi University, responded to a previous paper in the same journal by eminent scientists PC Kesavan and MS Swaminathan which questioned the efficacy of and the need for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture.
Pental argued that the two authors had aligned themselves with environmentalists and ideologues who have mindlessly attacked the use of genetic engineering (GE) technology to improve crops required for meeting the food and nutritional needs of a global population that is predicted to peak at 11.2 billion. Pental added that aspects of the two authors’ analysis are a reflection of their ideological proclivities.
The use of the word ‘mindlessly’ is telling and betrays Pental’s own ideological disposition. His words reflect tired industry-inspired rhetoric that says criticisms of GE technology are driven by ideology not fact.
If hunger and malnutrition are to be tackled effectively, the pro-GMO lobby must put aside this type of rhetoric, which is designed to close down debate. It should accept valid concerns about the GMO paradigm and be willing to consider why the world already produces enough to feed 10 billion people but over two billion are experiencing micronutrient deficiencies (of which 821 million were classed as chronically undernourished in 2018).
Critics: valid concerns or ideologues?
The performance of GE crops has been a hotly contested issue and, as highlighted in Kevasan and Swaminathan’s piece and by others, there is already sufficient evidence to question their efficacy, especially that of herbicide-tolerant crops (which by 2007 already accounted for approximately 80% of biotech-derived crops grown globally) and the devastating impacts on the environment, human health and food security, not least in places like Latin America.
We should not accept the premise that only GE can solve problems in agriculture. In their paper, Kesavan and Swaminathan argue that GE technology is supplementary and must be need based. In more than 99% of cases, they say that time-honoured conventional breeding is sufficient. In this respect, conventional options and innovations that outperform GE must not be overlooked or sidelined in a rush by powerful interests like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to facilitate the introduction of GE crops into global agriculture; crops which are highly financially lucrative for the corporations behind them.
In Europe, robust regulatory mechanisms are in place for GMOs because it is recognised that GE food/crops are not substantially equivalent to their non-GE counterparts. Numerous studies have highlighted the flawed premise of ‘substantial equivalence’.
Furthermore, from the outset of the GMO project, the sidelining of serious concerns about the technology has occurred and despite industry claims to the contrary, there is no scientific consensus on the health impacts of GE crops as noted by Hilbeck et al (Environmental Sciences Europe, 2015).
Adopting a precautionary principle where GE is concerned is therefore a valid approach.
As Hilbeck et al note, both the Cartagena Protocol and Codex share a precautionary approach to GE crops and foods, in that they agree that GE differs from conventional breeding and that safety assessments should be required before GMOs are used in food or released into the environment. There is sufficient reason to hold back on commercialising GE crops and to subject each GMO to independent, transparent environmental, social, economic and health impact evaluations.
Critics’ concerns cannot therefore be brushed aside by claims that ‘the science’ is decided and the ‘facts’ about GE are indisputable. Such claims are merely political posturing and part of a strategy to tip the policy agenda in favour of GE.
In India, various high-level reports have advised against the adoption of GE crops. Appointed by the Supreme Court, the ‘Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report’ (2013) was scathing about India’s prevailing regulatory system and highlighted its inadequacies and serious inherent conflicts of interest. The TEC recommended a 10-year moratorium on the commercial release of all GE crops.
As we have seen with the push to get GE mustard commercialised, the problems described by the TEC persist. Through her numerous submissions to the Supreme Court, Aruna Rodrigues has argued that GE mustard is being pushed through based on outright regulatory delinquency. It must also be noted that this crop is herbicide-tolerant, which, as stated by the TEC, is wholly inappropriate for India with its small biodiverse, multi-cropping farms.
While the above discussion has only scratched the surface, it is fair to say that criticisms of GE technology and various restrictions and moratoriums have not been driven by ‘mindless’ proclivities.
Can GE crops ‘feed the world’?
The ‘gene revolution’ is sometimes regarded as Green Revolution 2.0. The Green Revolution too was sold under the guise of ‘feeding the world’. However, emerging research indicates that in India it merely led to more wheat in the diet, while food productivity per capita showed no increase or actually decreased.
Globally, the Green Revolution dovetailed with the consolidation of an emerging global food regime based on agro-export mono-cropping (often with non-food commodities taking up prime agricultural land) and (unfair) liberalised trade, linked to sovereign debt repayment and World Bank/IMF structural adjustment-privatisation directives. The outcomes have included a displacement of a food-producing peasantry, the consolidation of Western agri-food oligopolies and the transformation of many countries from food self-sufficiency into food deficit areas.
And yet, the corporations behind this system of dependency and their lobbyists waste no time in spreading the message that this is the route to achieving food security. Their interests lie in ‘business as usual’.
Today, we hear terms like ‘foreign direct investment’ and making India ‘business friendly’, but behind the rhetoric lies the hard-nosed approach of globalised capitalism. The intention is for India’s displaced cultivators to be retrained to work as cheap labour in the West’s offshored plants.
India is to be a fully incorporated subsidiary of global capitalism, with its agri-food sector restructured for the needs of global supply chains and a reserve army of labour that effectively serves to beat workers and unions in the West into submission.
Global food insecurity and malnutrition are not the result of a lack of productivity. As long as these dynamics persist and food injustice remains an inbuilt feature of the global food regime, the rhetoric of GE being necessary for feeding the world will be seen for what it is: bombast.
Although India fares poorly in world hunger assessments, the country has achieved self-sufficiency in food grains and has ensured there is enough food (in terms of calories) available to feed its entire population. It is the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses and millets and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnuts, vegetables, fruit and cotton.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food security is achieved when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
Food security for many Indians remains a distant dream. Large sections of India’s population do not have enough food available to remain healthy nor do they have sufficiently diverse diets that provide adequate levels of micronutrients.
The Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey 2016-18 is the first-ever nationally representative nutrition survey of children and adolescents in India. It found that 35 per cent of children under five were stunted, 22 per cent of school-age children were stunted while 24 per cent of adolescents were thin for their age.
People are not hungry in India because its farmers do not produce enough food. Hunger and malnutrition result from various factors, including inadequate food distribution, (gender) inequality and poverty; in fact, the country continues to export food while millions remain hungry. It’s a case of ‘scarcity’ amid abundance.
Where farmers’ livelihoods are concerned, the pro-GMO lobby says GE will boost productivity and help secure cultivators a better income. Again, this is misleading: it ignores crucial political and economic contexts. Even with bumper harvests, Indian farmers still find themselves in financial distress.
India’s farmers are not experiencing financial hardship due to low productivity. They are reeling from the effects of neoliberal policies, years of neglect and a deliberate strategy to displace smallholder agriculture at the behest of the World Bank and predatory global agri-food corporations.
Little wonder then that the calorie and essential nutrient intake of the rural poor has drastically fallen.
However, aside from putting a positive spin on the questionable performance of GMO agriculture, the pro-GMO lobby, both outside of India and within, has wasted no time in wrenching these issues from their political contexts to use the notions of ‘helping farmers’ and ‘feeding the world’ as lynchpins of its promotional strategy.
GE was never intended to feed the world
Many of the traditional practices of India’s small farmers are now recognised as sophisticated and appropriate for high-productive, sustainable agriculture. It is no surprise therefore that a recent FAO high-level report has called for agroecology and smallholder farmers to be prioritised and invested in to achieve global sustainable food security.
It argues that scaling up agroecology offers potential solutions to many of the world’s most pressing problems, whether, for instance, climate change and carbon storage, soil degradation, water shortages, unemployment or food security.
Agroecological principles represent a shift away from the reductionist yield-output industrial paradigm, which results in among other things enormous pressures on soil and water resources, to a more integrated low-input systems approach to food and agriculture that prioritises local food security, local calorific production, cropping patterns and diverse nutrition production per acre, water table stability, climate resilience, good soil structure and the ability to cope with evolving pests and disease pressures. Such a system would be underpinned by a concept of food sovereignty, based on optimal self-sufficiency, the right to culturally appropriate food and local ownership and stewardship of common resources, such as land, water, soil and seeds.
Traditional production systems rely on the knowledge and expertise of farmers in contrast to imported ‘solutions’. Yet, if we take cotton cultivation in India as an example, farmers continue to be nudged away from traditional methods of farming and are being pushed towards (illegal) GE herbicide-tolerant cotton seeds.
Researchers Glenn Stone and Andrew Flachs note the results of this shift from traditional practices to date does not appear to have benefited farmers. This isn’t about giving farmers ‘choice’ where GE seeds and associated chemicals are concerned. It is more about GE seed companies and weedicide manufacturers seeking to leverage a highly lucrative market.
The potential for herbicide market growth in India is enormous and industry looked for sales to reach USD 800 million by 2019. The objective involves opening India to GE seeds with herbicide tolerance traits, the biotechnology industry’s biggest money maker by far (86 per cent of the world’s GE crop acres in 2015 contain plants resistant to glyphosate or glufosinate and there is a new generation of crops resistant to 2,4-D coming through).
The aim is to break farmers’ traditional pathways and move them onto corporate biotech/chemical treadmills for the benefit of industry.
Calls for agroecology and highlighting the benefits of traditional, small-scale agriculture are not based on a romantic yearning for the past or ‘the peasantry’. Available evidence suggests that (non-GMO) smallholder farming using low-input methods is more productive in total output than large-scale industrial farms and can be more profitable and resilient to climate change. I
t is for good reason that the FAO high-level report referred to earlier as well as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Prof Hilal Elver, call for investment in this type of agriculture, which is centred on small farms.
Despite the pressures, including the fact that globally industrial agriculture grabs 80 per cent of subsidies and 90 per cent of research funds, smallholder agriculture plays a major role in feeding the world.
That’s a massive quantity of subsidies and funds to support a system that is only made profitable as a result of these financial injections and because agri-food oligopolies externalize the massive health, social and environmental costs of their operations.
But policymakers tend to accept that profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be owners and custodians of natural assets (the ‘commons’). These corporations, their lobbyists and their political representatives have succeeded in cementing a ‘thick legitimacy’ among policy makers for their vision of agriculture.
From World Bank ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ directives to the World Trade Organization ‘agreement on agriculture’ and trade-related intellectual property agreements, international bodies have enshrined the interests of corporations that seek to monopolise seeds, land, water, biodiversity and other natural assets that belong to us all.
These corporations, the promoters of GMO agriculture, are not offering a ‘solution’ for farmers’ impoverishment or hunger; GE seeds are little more than a value capture mechanism.
To evaluate the pro-GMO lobby’s rhetoric that GE is needed to ‘feed the world’, we first need to understand the dynamics of a globalised food system that fuels hunger and malnutrition against a backdrop of (subsidised) food overproduction.
We must acknowledge the destructive, predatory dynamics of capitalism and the need for agri-food giants to maintain profits by seeking out new (foreign) markets and displacing existing systems of production with ones that serve their bottom line. And we need to reject a deceptive ‘haughty imperialism’ within the pro-GMO scientific lobby which aggressively pushes for a GMO ‘solution’.
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Perhaps we could start to feed the world by banning annual crops on sloping ground of any significance, since such ground requires perennials (notably tree crops) to bind soil sufficiently to prevent catastrophic erosion of topsoil from ploughing, exposure to flood surges etc.
There is nothing new in this: a US Professor wrote just that sort of thing in 1950. He believed that sloping ground should be the preserve of tree crops and that ‘traditional crops’ should be limited to flat ground.
Increasing the amount of perennial crop deliverers would of course reduce the amounts of labour required to feed ourselves. It would not eliminate it, but it would eliminate much of the annual planting cycle.
This is just one idea of many which might be compared to GM crops when discussing new approaches to ‘feeding the world’….
We produce enough food to feed billions more than exist at present, but it is distributed according to Market Magic, so some folks gotta die. And that super-sufficiency is about to disappear in the ecological Holocaust.
9 Dec 2014
Jeffrey Smith is the founding executive director of The Institute for Responsible Technology, and one of the world’s foremost experts on the dangers of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and their impact on human health. Jeffrey directed the feature-length documentary, Genetic Roulette, which was awarded the Solari Report 2012 Movie of the Year, and the AwareGuide Transformational Film of the Year. He wrote the world’s best-selling book on GMOs, Seeds of Deception, as well as a book also titled Genetic Roulette, an authoritative work on GMO health dangers. Jeffrey has lectured in nearly 40 countries, has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and Time Magazine, and has appeared on BBC, NPR, and Fox News, among others.
Why you should listen –
Jeffrey comes on Bulletproof Radio to discuss the basics of genetic modification, the unknown effects of genetic engineering, how you can avoid GMOs, and what it will take in order to eliminate the GMO problem from the industry. Enjoy the show!
I have known for many years now that GMO crops require far more water than normal crops and have a significant smaller yield than normal crops, that Roundup and other and other glyphosates used as weed killers also kill the soil, that certain GMO crops can provoke allergy reactions depending on the foreign gene inserted in the plants, along with a swarm of other negative effects of GMOs on health and on inseccts and other fauna, and that permaculture possibly is the best solution.
It’ s part of the mass extermination plan.
It is not a given that human population increases all the time – ‘ever growing population’?
Why do people act as if this is not influenceable.
We cannot enlarge the planet but we can simply stop IVF so we are getting to a reduction without having to kill someone.
The number of people using IVF in the world is minuscule.
GMO isn’t going to feed the world, but it is going to make a lot of money for hard pressed, needy fund managers on Wall Street.
And that’s obviously far more important.
Which is why it’s being pushed on to Africa and Asia by oh-so-humanitarian figures like Gates and Buffett.
Whether we will ever reach 11 billion is open to question.
Birth rates are plummeting globally, not just in Europe where whole countries are dying out, but further afield. Japan, China, Russia, even India and poor countries. 0.98 in South Korea.
World’s population is projected to nearly stop growing by the end of the century
Excerpts:
and
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/worlds-population-is-projected-to-nearly-stop-growing-by-the-end-of-the-century/
The world’s population will approximate to zero by the end of this century of endings. Perhaps that’s what they mean by ‘ ..stop growing’.
Right. They’re so concerned about food scarcity. Really? Why is it that concentrate on non-edible crops like cotton, coffee, cocaine and Afghanistan’s favorite opium? They don’t feed anybody but they sure as hell generate a profit.
As far as I’ve seen neoliberal policies have caused more suffering and starvation going back to killing off the buffalo to make way for the railroads and forcing the Sioux to accept punitive treaties to bombing rice paddies in Vietnam.
Another thing as what is currently happening in China, most of Asia ,Africa and pertinently India is that they are forcing villagers and farmers to move to the city to meet the need for factories that produce goods which are sold here in Walmart and Target that no one can afford since glorious capitalism has now destroyed America’s once great industrial base more thoroughly than the continual bombing of Germany and Japan during WW II.
Yes now they say they want to “feed the world” with dangerous GMOs that aside from the additives and preservatives are in many cases are the cause of malnutrition. If they weren’t so dangerous they’d make great comedians.
a friend of mine works for bayer he really is very clever he knows all about global warming and cooling
the coming heat waves the climate cooling and also the climate changing.
he is a tax expert also says these are great times for taxation variations implementations already
he says these new terminator seeds are very good at helping with the goy problem and that the cool thing about these methods are they are slow and quiet
you see the goy host needs to be drained slowly before terminations it is much more benifaecal is it not
my life
yes sir bayer goy vits are yummy pause eat and feel refreshed
like a mountain stream
bill gates and his eugenicks fabian society friends are doing a real good job on the population is it not
Sperm counts have been falling in the western world by 1% a year for decades.
Wonder why.
Wonder if this is an accident.
i know a lot about wind
i know a lot about wind
shirley this gmo thisng is just a marketing issue and an antisemitism issue.
the scum that state this round up stuff is related to the cowboys rounding up the cattle before
slaughter,is just typical of the hate speach and inuendo that is normalcy todays
shirley already it is clear that monsatan should just rename the glyphosatan chemi cull
goy vits using the words vits short for vitamins will clean up this perception problem.
any suggestion the 5g and monsanto are not allowed into the rothschild israel is just spreading
the truth in the cause of khazarian ashkanzim hates
already
The Ashkenazi are absolutely not “Khazarian”. They have been proven by extensive DNA research to descend from the same ancestors as the Sepharads and other Jews on the Y-DNA, and from about 100 women in northern Italy who has converted and married Jews.
https://forward.com/opinion/382967/ashkenazi-jews-are-not-khazars-heres-the-proof/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25079123
More:
https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/history-ideas/2017/09/the-theory-that-ashkenazi-jews-are-descended-from-khazars-is-junk-science/
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2017/10/05/ashkenazi-jews-limited-euro-asian-khazarian-heritage/
And more:
Source:
https://www.irelandisrael.ie/how-many-times-must-we-debunk-the-khazar-nonsense
Etc., etc.
pollution of the well
damage limitation exercise
Zionist agit-prop-how many times must we debunk it?
sure whatever you say sport : )
nudge nudge wink wink say know more
So, all those Jewish Khazars who migrated to eastern Europe after their kingdom’ s decline-where did they go, and with whom did they inter-marry? How is it that Khazr terms like ‘ Kagan’ feature as Jewish names to today. Genetic ‘ tests’ of Jewish heredity are notoriously suspect, like Israeli ‘ archeology’. I would surmise that the Khazars were one of the ancestral groups of Ashkenazi Jews. The whole sordid mess is just used as a justification for the theft of Palestine and the depraved oppression of its people.
There never were any Jewish Khahars, you surmised completely wrong.
Vierotchka, above you post a thesis that the Khazar royalty converted, but here you state that none did, ever. Have you read Schlomo Sand’ s The Invention of the Jewish People’?
The ruling elite of the Khazars was said by Judah Halevi and Abraham ibn Daud to have converted to Rabbinic Judaism in the 8th century, but there is zero evidence of that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/books/24jews.html
Patricia Cohen is one of those Jewish notables who do not like Sand’ s research, because, I suspect, it undermines the racist mythology that underpins the Zionist claim to all Eretz Yisrael, and, necessarily and obviously, the expulsion or barbarous imprisonment of the Palestinian untermenschen. Plenty of other Jews including eminent scholars in the relevant fields find Sand’s theories quite convincing, as Cohen herself notes. You’re gonna believe that which you want to believe.
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&context=humbiol_preprints
and
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Khazar_myth
Genetic ‘studies’ ‘find’ what they want to find. Studies I have perused show that the Jews and Palestinians are pretty closely akin, so does that mean that the Palestinians can stay in Israel? In the nice neighbourhoods.
The Palestinians are the real Jews. The descendants of the Biblical inhabitants of Palestine. Not the Turkic Khazars.
What Turkic Khazars? There is no Turkic Khazar DNA since the Khazars were a collection of different ethnic groups that included Greeks. You don’t know what you’re babbling about.
This is all connected. The following is a clip from last weekend, showing French pompiers (firefighters) going on strike against the government. This was in Strasboug, in northern France…
https://twitter.com/abonin_DNA/status/1218106245036630016
Later last weekend it all got rather violent, with incredible scenes of pompiers and police fighting each other on the streets; not just in Strasbourg but also in Paris and many other cities and towns.
If Off-Guardian want to be taken seriously they really need to report what’s going on in France, other than the occasional half-arsed opinion piece.
https://twitter.com/laurentbigotfr/status/1218538520270295040
https://twitter.com/laurentbigotfr/status/1218537419454255104
https://twitter.com/laurentbigotfr/status/1218518699830861826
A big shout out to Laurent, because it really takes a lot of balls to go out on the streets of France at the moment and film it.
It takes a total lack of balls for a supposedly ‘alternate’ web site like Off-Guardian not to properly report what’s going on in France at the moment.
This is history in the fast lane.
Wake-up.
So why not write a piece and send it to offguardian, if you know what is going on? One can’t expect others to do everything… as I understand it, this is not a media corporation with resources to hire reporters etc.
The short response is “No”. A longer response is to consider the question bogus. Nobody up there is interested in “feeding the world”. The rich are interested in getting richer and they will pick on any scamming and sloganeering that will do it. Hence “feeding the world”.
The rich are interested in controlling the ‘useless eaters’ by controlling the food supply, and in eventually exterminating them by bio-warfare, as we see in another trial run in China.
Max Igan – The Deliberate Burning Of Australia
Evil disinformation GARBAGE.
Talking to yourself again Le Sarc…….
Igan is, in my opinion, plainly insane, a perennial problem on the Right. The police, the fire authorities the fire-fighters etc have ALL declared that the fires are caused by the fire conditions, the dryness, the high temperatures, the strong winds and lightning without rain. To argue otherwise on the basis of NOTHING but morally insane Rightwing denialist fanaticism, in the face of a fire Holocaust, is, of course, deranged and wicked.
Here you go again. Your opening salvo is an ad hominem attack. Fires caused by dryness and high temperatures…….. It’s Australia doh……. So Australia was never dry or hot before C02 – a negligible greenhouse gas increased a little bit.
The main point Egan is making and is that years and years of not allowing controlled burning has (because that would release the evil C02) allowed the fuel load to build up until…Controlled burns allowed animals to escape. And please don’t appropriate the fire fighters – they blame the government not ‘climate change’.
But hey that’s plain nonsense eh. To complicated eh. It’s much simpler to use words like holocaust, denial, right wing, fanaticism, deranged, wicked. And they call XR a death cult and climate changers cultists…… I wonder why.
It’ s not ‘ ad hominem’-it’ s a description of a malignant type, the hard Rightwing disinformer. They might be your friends, but they are not mine. As for heat and dry, doh-the current levels of aridity in the current drought, and temperatures reached (2019 the worst recorded in both, in 200 years of White settlement)are UNPRECEDENTED in recorded history. DOH!!!!
The vicious lie that controlled hazard reduction burns have ‘not been allowed’ , is a Big Lie that Hitler would have approved. Burns have increased for years, when conditions are safe, which they have become less and less as the climate has warmed, even in winter. And the fire authorities pleaded for a meeting with your mate, Smoko Morrison, our Pentecostal denialist PM, in early 2019, because, as they said, climate change had made the coming fire season the most dangerous ever, as it has proved.
That in the face of science, expert opinion and the facts of a hideous fire season, that Rightwing fanatics (denialists are only Rightwing, even if some pose as other, or deny it)still lie, misrepresent, disinform and generally act as if they welcome the coming climate Holocaust, is proof positive of their moral, spiritual and intellectual perfidy.
I think you need to calm down. Your language is so hate filled and based on assumptions whilst at the same time you claim the moral, spiritual and intellectual high ground.
Do you really believe that everyone challenging carbon based climate change is a hard right wing disinformer?
Prove me wrong – I am more than willing to change my mind – but please provide some evidence to back up what you say. Start with the data that backs up your claim that the current drought and temperatures are unprecedented in recorded history.
A hard Right disinformer of a Duning-Krugerite. May I remind you that the fate of billions of human beings is hanging in the balance? As for data on the current drought and record temperatures, simply consult the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
Cultists like Moonies and Scientologists and Global Warmers don’t need evidence. They just have to recite their catechism and articles of faith. No evidence necessary.
That is an exact description of totally ignorant climate change and global warming deniers.
There are certain trees and plants whose seeds can only germinate when there is a bush fire. Bush fires are part of a natural cycle. Nothing to do with polar bears, little Greta, or quack pseudo religious cults like global warming.
Here you go Richard, hard evidence, just for you. This is part one, go to the host and watch up to part six, then write back and apologise for the fact you have lied.
Australian Fire Series Part 1: Australia – Wake Up Or Die!
Makes sense. 43,000 fracking wells using up millions of gallons each. Rivers emptied for private dams. Cue Little Greta and her Global Warming Rabbit Hole.
The ecological crisis is the End-Stage of capitalist neoplasia.Symptoms and exacerbations like water theft and fracking are bad enough, but here in Australia the central feature of this climate season is climate change. Years of deep, deep, drought, 2019 the hottest and driest year in 200 plus years of records. Hazard reduction burns, although a record, not carried out completely because fire conditions were too dangerous even in winter. The hottest day ever recorded here, 41.9 averaged Celsius over the whole country, over one degree Celsius higher that the previous record (also broken the previous day). 49 Celsius in Sydney’ s outer suburbs. So the fire conditions indices break record after record, yet Rightwing lunatics blame it on non-existent arsonists, and indulge their racist and fascism by blaming Greens, Moslems even Chinese. Rationality, science and evidence versus Rightwing moral and intellectual insanity and derangement.
You are a 100% confirmed shill
Your type loath facts as a vampire fears Holy Water.
it seems a mixture of informed and well-grounded opposition to floodplain harvesting and use of water resources for fracking, and anti-agenda 21 conspiracy theory (associated with amongst others the Tea Party in the USA). Is he also a climate sceptic? Opposition to fracking and watercourse abstraction should be aligned with climate change activism not in opposition to it, even if the contribution of climate change to the fires is being exaggerated to distract attention away from water theft and fracking.
A sensible contribution, but the role of climate destabilisation in the fire Holocaust in Australia is NOT being exaggerated All the fire authorities, the forest ecologists, the experts of fire behaviour and the fire-fighters themselves point the finger unerringly at the climate conditions ie years of drought, record temperatures, strong winds, dry lightning etc, and opposed to them are the usual rabble or hard Right fanatics with their shop-worn lies, peddled night after night on Murdoch’s Skynews sewer, and day after day in his villainous rags, led by the ‘ Australian’.
Strange how little Greta and her fan club have nothing whatever to say about fracking, GMO, or the big tax dodging corporations. Probably don’t want to upset Soros and all the big donors.
My dear friend-the final nail in the human coffin is the dominance of a Right so insanely wicked that THEY lie, or peddle Rightwing lies because they are too stupid and ignorant to realise that they have been conned, about the ecological Holocaust that is about to take us all out. When I have a choice between the opinions of science, the fire-fighters, the ecological community and locals, and a mob of Rightwing fanatics driven to hysteria by the Murdoch cancer, I find the choice quite easy, really.
So when is Off G going to start running articles which confirm categorically that weather engineering is real, chemtrails are real, ad lots of smug pricks need to eat some humble pie? Any time soon? Bueller?…….Bueller?
What’s Really Happening With the Australian Fires
Geoengineering (apart from rather unsuccessful cloud seeding) does not exist except in propositions and insane patents.
Chemtrails do absolutely not exist.
Educate yourself by exploring that site completely:
https://contrailscience.com/
Another 100% confirmed shill. This gets boring picking you lot off. Easy game though
Funny how an ostensibly ‘ Leftish’ site like this is so full of the most boorish denialist oafs. That the denialist industry has been so cunning as to convince some that it is the Bosses controlling climate science and science in general, really, and the evidence from reality, when the Bosses’ greatest repository of loot, by far, is the fossil fuel business, is a real, dark, victory. Makes Pyrrhus look like a beginner.
You would have trouble picking your nose, let alone picking off the non Dunning-Krugerites.
Yeah, ‘smug pricks’ like ALL the fire authorities, the firefighters, forest ecologists, meteorologists, climate scientists, locals affected by the fires etc, all of whom state the bleeding obvious, that the Rightwing denialist fanatics cannot swallow due to their mental and spiritual illnesses. That the long and deep drought, the record temperatures, the strong winds, the dry lightning etc, are the causes of the fire Holocaust, nothing else.
You suck
You are so nothing but a cheap shill, like a dirty little crack-whore, but with a bit less class, because instead of selling your body for money, you sell your soul to the Devil instead
I’m not the one working to exterminate humanity and most Life on Earth by peddling denialist lies, now am I. I’ll leave that to the Dunning-Krugerites.
Memes are a dead giveaway for a shill. Organised, pre prepared and usually found on Facebook and Twitter. Hey Mucho I just challenged Le Sarc to come up with some data. How long do you think I will wait? Do you think the data will come from the IPCC?
People should just watch the videos I linked to and judge for themselves, the evidence is there, in abundance. Calling Max Igan rightwing is such an inversion of the truth that it becomes very clear, very quickly that these posters Richard and Veri are just a couple of low-grade disinfo agents, who are paid to disrupt genuine debate/research. This is the world being created by the criminals Max Igan speaks of so eloquently. People need to really wake up to this, we are ruled by criminals, that is why there is poison in your food, that is why the world is so polluted, that is why you are getting 5G and all the current wireless shit using microwaves and millimeter waves which are 100% detrimental to health with no regard for our health……the criminals set the standards in this industry, that is why there are illegal wars, that is why you are under constant surveillance…….I could go on and on. We are ruled by vicious criminals and people owe it to themselves and everyone and everything else to acknowledge this and demand change.
demand/enact change.
This just about sums it up…
That’s not propaganda. It is science and those intelligent enough to understand it and not afflicted by paranoid delusions and pig ignorance and incomprehension.
How is it that your type can comprehend that massive pollution exists across the world, but deny greenhouse gas pollution? The Igan tripe is sub-moronic disinfo, long ago utterly refuted. The vicious criminals you so correctly acknowledge as the rulers of the planet, are the very creatures who produce the denialist lies and disinformation that you have swallowed. Why should any sane person not suspect you of being a fraud, actually working for the fossil fuel omnicidists, or a Dunning-Krugerite of some extremity.
What a fate for a species that had the audacity to call itself sapiens ie ‘wise’. To be destroyed by the dumbest among us.
Chops, the data is copious and comes from NASA, Hadley/CRUT, GISS etc, ALL the Academies of Science and scientific societies on Earth, the Bureaux of Meteorology throughout the world and the peer reviewed research of thousands of climate scientists. I’ d suggest you start there, but I doubt that you would comprehend it.
How much time do you spend writing your hate filled bile. Surely you could take a few minutes to actually post the data here or maybe it’s because there is no data to post or if you were to do so then it could then expose it for what it so obviously is – a hoax.
On second thoughts based on your previous form I won’t hold my breath.
Go on Dick – I will show you mine if you show me yours- is that enough ‘Science’ for ya.
https://realclimatescience.com/2019/12/australian-drought/
As I said, Chops, simply consult the Australian Bureau of Meteorology website. Is that too hard, or will you have trouble understanding the tables and charts. Back to SkyNews for you, where they ‘keep it simple for the stupid’.
‘ The cheaper the hood, the gaudier the patter’.
Along with financial and energy controls comes food control. Engdah’s ‘Seeds of Destuction’ lays this out as Gov-Corp Policy as the ‘Green Revolution’ onwards.
The ‘Expert Scientific’ (sic) positing of the ‘Problem’ sets the frame of ‘justification’ or even ‘moral necessity’ to ‘act’, as interventions that override and undermine existing structures of support – deemed ‘inadequate’ in the diagnosis of ‘Problem’.
As our minds are freed from a pseudo-religious identity in ‘scientism’ as a cover story for Corp-Gov possession and control of technology – (markets and weapons that operate the persistence of the need for more markets and weapons – and which then provide a fantasy of possession and control at expense of dispossession and loss of relational trust and cooperation, we can recognise the cover story as the characteristic reversal of projected intent.
Ie GM crops are intended to starve the world – into submission and compliance – or even of culling.
Taking the real potentials for financial crash, energy starvation via unplugging or denial of carbon-based fuels and the inadequacies of ‘renewables’ (as well as denial of truly new sources of energy from open development), and lack of food as a result of replacing farmers with Agri-Corp that is effectively no less a means of leverage than banking – we have the opportunity for anthropogenic mass extinction by DESIGN – as part of the pervasive idea of interjecting and overriding our Relational Nature with ‘new world thinking’ of incentivised possession and control so as to replace Life with systemic mechanisms whose levers hold the fantasy of ‘total control’ as victory and indeed vengeance upon a hated life, a hated humanity and blind addiction to a sense of power over them as if set apart and special – even ‘as gods’.
If it was REAL – it would not be given coverage by a captured media. Not that leaks cannot and do not happen – but are very rarely sustained – and where a movement is deemed to cost more to block than to give way to, a form of ju-jitso – gives way in order to capture the minds of those who believe they have won. And as a token for the maintaining of the illusion of progressive freedom.
The idea of ‘centralised control’ is a usurping of relational being by an imposition and interjection of coercion rather than movements resulting from listening to all the forces or needs involved and allowing the balance points of society to be maintained as a cooperative willingness that holds order regardless of propensities for conflict.
“Two misconceptions seem to waylay efforts to address the global food crisis: the first is the idea that we need massive amounts of additional food production; the second is that we need to innovate for better storage to reduce spoilage. There is enough food grown every year to feed our growing planet, and cost-effective, tested technologies are readily available to improve storage. It’s time to put them to work, and focus our innovation effort on how best to get that saved food into the hands of the hungry.”
https://www.bettermeetsreality.com/is-there-currently-enough-food-in-the-world-to-feed-everyone
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241746569_We_Already_Grow_Enough_Food_for_10_Billion_People_and_Still_Can't_End_Hunger
Once GMO takes over with their patented tolerant seeds that can only be sold by themselves!!! Then GMO companies will have the seed supply monopoly and can name their prices (giving discounts to bulk farmers, and discriminating against small farmers) because no other supplier will be allowed! Small farmers will no longer be able to collect their own surplus seed stock for next years harvest! Local farmers won’t be able to self engineer natural selection improvements according to their unique environment! Finally the natural environment will be weed killer poisoned with who knows what consequences! (By definition: Only GMO PLANTS TOLERATE their weed killers)
One of the capitalists’ typically Evil tactics has been to buy up seed companies and remove many varieties of vegetables and fruit from circulation. They have even gotten their political stooges in some places to ban seed sharing of ‘ heirloom’ types. This deliberate narrowing of the seed resource is a typical capitalist crime against Life, and leaves us at more risk of crop failure through plant disease.
Actually, herbicide resistant super-weeds tolerate the Roundup, too.
The result of rapid evolution of the weeds.
Human weeds are rapidly devolving at the same time. Denying the ecological Holocaust as it occurs right before our eyes really plumbs some Hellish depths, possibly never descended to before.
I can’t help but imagine that genetic manipulation will be used to turn crops into annuals, making the purchase of seeds crucial. All done under the guise of herbicide resistance. Do people think this will happen?
As sure as night follows day, Colin Todhunter manages to center article xxx here about GMOs around …… India only!
He is lobbying his own meme of GMOs are bad, but only in India.
Emphasis added:
You really are full of crap Anton. And your attempts at distortion and diversion are starting to look mighty suspicious.
‘Starting’ to look suspicious?? My God, you are tolerant. I imagine Todhunter once dared to speculate that Palestinians are, in fact, human beings, not ‘ two-legged animals’ as the Zionists declare, hence Ant’ s hatred.
The Palestinians are coming up in the animal world. According to Begin, they were cockroaches. According to Shaked, who wanted to exterminate all Palestinian mothers, they were snakes. And of course the rest of the goys are donkeys.
Other Zionist epithets for the Palestinians are ‘human dust’ to be blown away and ‘ cancer’, probably Ant’ s favourite I would guess.
And as assuredly as day follows night, every time an article by Colin Todhunter on the use of GM crops in India appears at Off-Guardian, out comes a complaint by Antonym – notorious for wanting to insert his/her Islamophobic biases into every discussion thread – that Todhunter concentrates only on GE-related issues in India.
If Todhunter were to write something on GE-related issues in, say, Pakistan or Bangladesh, imagine the reaction from Antonym’s corner.
GMOs have nothing to do with Islam; India has little to do with GMOs.
Non of this stops the droves of ill informed Western India baiters writing negatively – to their own detriment.
Little to do with India? What planet are you living on?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190225100726.htm
7 Nov 2017
Vandana Shiva, the world-renowned activist and author described by Bill Moyers as a “rock star” of the anti-GMO movement, visits UNC Asheville. After earning a bachelor’s degree in physics, a master’s in the philosophy of science, and Ph.D. in philosophy, Shiva came to focus on environmental and social issues, becoming a leading activist working to promote biodiversity, especially native seed, and promoting fair trade and organic farming. She is the founder of the Navdanya movement in India, which has established 60 seed banks and contributed to the conservation of more than 3000 rice varieties. She is on India’s National Board of Organic Standards and chairs the Commission on the Future of Food in Tuscany, Italy.
Shiva’s advocacy and writing, including her books, Ecofeminism and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development, tie in gender and environmental issues. She is a founding board member of the Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO), established by the late U.S. Congresswoman Bella Abzug. Shiva’s most recent book is Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability and Peace.
The Rich Allure of a Peasant Champion
Vandana Shiva speaks for US $ 40,000 plus business class ticket from Delhi.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/the-rich-allure-of-a-peasant-champion#.VG7vKfmUeSo
A small part of that money covers her expenses, the rest goes into her and other similar foundations which are doing excellent work, your smearing attempt notwithstanding.
Yep-Ant’ s got a few shekels invested in GE crops. No doubt about it. And Vandana sends her thanks-being slimed by a racist bigot like you, is a real testament to her moral standing.
24 May 2015
An estimated 290,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in 20 years. Small farms used to be the country’s economic backbone, but now owners struggle to make even a meager profit and drown in debt. For some, the pressure is too much. Many blame GMO cotton for the failing farms, having cornered the market and replaced organic crops; they have failed to live up to expectations.
I live in India and know that suicide is quite common here; most people here do believe in reincarnation remember – not that suicide is beneficial for that!
January 23, 2020 Gurneel Kaur
The latest data released by the NCRB report revealed that 10349 farmers suicides in India in 2018. That means 28 farmers killed themselves every day in 2018.
https://www.grainmart.in/news/10349-farmer-suicides-in-india-in-2018-ncrb-report/
The fact that you live in India is irrelevant, it by no means make you an expert.
How many of the 22 officially recognized languages in India do you master?
Have you also mastered the Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu languages?
Didn’t think so.
Note Antonym’ s casual indifference to the suffering of others, his lack of compassion. They are among his most marked features, alas.
Most Evil comment for quite some time. The utter lack of any human sympathy or compassion for the goyim, with an added sneer at their religious beliefs, is simply filthy.
30 Mar 2019
This week Monsanto/Bayer AG was ordered by a California federal court to pay $80 million to Edwin Hardeman after a jury found its weed killer, Roundup, caused his cancer. The case is just one of thousands of lawsuits filed against the company over plaintiff’s use of the glyphosate-based herbicide. In 2015, the World Health Organization classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans. The Food and Drug Administration has concluded the herbicide is not likely carcinogenic to humans. In August 2018, a jury in California state court awarded a school’s groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, nearly $289 million in damages. The verdict was later reduced to $78 million and is on appeal. In this conversation with Chris Hedges, environmental activist and author, Vandana Shiva, talks about Monsanto/Bayer AG and other big AG players interests in India and her fight to protect life forms, seed varieties and farmers.
You reckon that you’ ve got India under the thumb, don’ t you Ant? A fellow Islamophobe regime, mass repressing Moslems, your, and Bibi’s, wet-dream. Zionism and Hindutva fascism, a match made in Hell.