Comments for fieldquestions

Comment on Bt Cotton is Failing; Blame the Farmers by Glenn

Glenn — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 19:13:37 +0000

Pardon the slow reply; I was waiting for this review to come out. Here is the very latest. So there are 3 major crop pests in the US that are largely (>50%) resistant to one of the Bt toxins used in transgenic plants, and one other pest that shows lower levels of resistance to a Bt toxin. There are also cases of resistance in S. Africa, India, China, The Philippines, and a small bit in Australia. The resistance has most emerged just within the last few years. I don't know of any solid studies of impacts on yields.

Comment on The Animal Lover’s Dilemma by Nickie

Nickie — Wed, 22 May 2013 23:43:19 +0000

Kasey, you stated precisely what I was thinking while reading this article! I, too tried very hard to keep an open mind, and many good, thought-provoking points were made, but you summed up the main problem with this article when you said “The idea that not being able to eliminate all death means we shouldn’t eliminate any death is absurd.” Exactly!!!! Absurd!!!! Scanning through the comments, I was astonished to find that just about every person who chose to leave a response praised the article. I thought I was taking crazy pills! Thank you for speaking up, and you are certainly not alone ! Veganism is all about doing your best to make ethical choices and eliminate as much suffering and death as possible. I also agree that vegans seem to often be the same people who are aware of and choose to boycott products containing palm oil, because we are constantly learning and striving to make better and better choices! That’s the whole point! To say that that is pointless is absolutely ridiculous, as is claiming to love animals and acknowledge that they feel pain and emotion, and then turn around and say it’s completely ethical and acceptable to slaughter them, because it’s the best option. Rock on, Kasey!

Comment on The Myriad Case on Gene Patents: 3 Things to Know by J Thomas

J Thomas — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 03:36:09 +0000

Great job. Thanks for making sense of it.

Comment on The Myriad Case on Gene Patents: 3 Things to Know by Glenn

Glenn — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:22:34 +0000

People point to the 1980 Chakrabarty case as a key; it was actually about patenting a GM bacterium rather than a gene, but it set the stage for gene patents that started within a few years. You clearly aren’t the only one who thinks it makes no sense; the district court judge agreed, and so does the US Dept of Justice (which filed an amicus brief).

Comment on The Myriad Case on Gene Patents: 3 Things to Know by Adams

Adams — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:17:36 +0000

Gene patenting makes no sense to me. When did it even start?

Comment on Two Agricultural Donations by My First Charitable Donation to a For-Profit Business | fieldquestions

My First Charitable Donation to a For-Profit Business | fieldquestions — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:07:05 +0000

[...] ← New Ag Antibiotic Rules: Toothless and Oblivious Two Agricultural Donations → [...]

Comment on Bt Cotton, Remarkable Success, and Four Ugly Facts by Glenn

Glenn — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 22:44:36 +0000

There are several estimates of cotton yields, each with pros and cons. The International Cotton Advisory Board (ICAB) publishes state-specific figures on cotton production, based mainly on records from gins; from these figures they infer yields. The Indian Directorate of Economics and Statistics measures yields from their General Crop Estimation Survey which includes crop cutting experiments on randomly selected areas in fields; from these figures they infer overall production. The USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service estimates production from “information from market and trade sources.” If you look through the published literature, some use the DES numbers but more use the ICAB numbers. I did a comparative analysis a few years ago but never published it (it only goes through 2007): http://fieldquestions.com/?attachment_id=1532

Comment on Bt Cotton is Failing; Blame the Farmers by Dan

Dan — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 02:17:36 +0000

Thank you for your comments. I was in the village for only six weeks and based my comments primarily on what was reported to me by people in the village. The relationship between the rise of Bt cotton and decline of cotton-related economic diversity in the village may be coincidental rather than causal. It could be that the increase in Bt cotton acreage makes aggregating cotton for processing more efficient or cost effective. The fact is that small-scale gins existed in the village before Bt cotton and closed as Bt production increased. I am aware that it is easy to make the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy–I’m just going by what the people in the village told me.
Tractors are indeed expensive, but many of the “bigger” farmers have been leasing and buying acreage from their neighbors, which makes tractors more practical. This trend is coincident with the decrease in health and number of cattle which villagers specifically attributed to less nutritious diet–they pointed out that connection to me; it was not a conclusion I drew independently. There is also a rather intangible sense that these agricultural changes are somehow “modern” and modern is better; it’s an underlying motif in rural areas where I have lived in India, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. Subsistence farmers are acutely aware that minor changes in timing or amount of rainfall can have very serious consequences; the promise of better harvests and more cash–which are the marketing points in Bt cotton–can be very attractive. Ag extension agents with whom I have spoken take a cautious approach toward large-scale transition to Bt cotton (and to mono-cropping in general), but they have limited budgets and personnel which makes balancing the enthusiasm of Bt cotton promoters difficult.
The strongest correlational connection in my comments runs from the decline of local food crop diversity to reliance on commodity foods to changes in health. This trend has been well documented.
Technological innovation inevitably creates change–that is, after all, the point. Unfortunately, we have no way of anticipating the nature, range or extent of the changes. I am not a Luddite (almost, but not quite), but if technology is to be beneficial and not just profitable, it needs to be disseminated in a way that emphasizes benefit rather than profit.
If you are really interested in the effects of changing to Bt cotton culture, it might be best to do some field work. When you’re in the field, “empirical” soon becomes a fuzzy concept. Strict linear causality becomes obscured in the complexity of specific contexts.

Comment on The Myriad Case on Gene Patents: 3 Things to Know by Glenn

Glenn — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:23:19 +0000

Gene patents inhibit research big time -- especially because so much genetic research has to go through so many separate patents protected by "patent thickets." The question is if they stimulate even more than they inhibit, and there is now a lot of research saying NO. Interested readers can look at the nifty Science article on "Anticommons in Biomedical Research" and then peruse the dozens of papers that cited it.

Comment on Bt Cotton is Failing; Blame the Farmers by Glenn

Glenn — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 21:30:57 +0000

Thanks. I am very sensitive to the need to attend to secondary and indirect effects of technological change. But I would have to see some empirical support for this list of claims, and I’m a bit skeptical about some of them. The whole chain of events seems to start with farmers abandoning local gins because they can’t own the Bt seed, but Bt seeds are not patent-protected in India. They may be in the future, but at the present the whole issue of agricultural IP is very unclear.

Another claim that is hard to believe is that farmers are switching to tractors (which are frightfully expensive) because of lack of feed supplements for their cattle (which is pretty cheap).