Topic: Will GM Crops Actually Save Allotments?

[okra]

I think GM is often unnatural. The case you are citing of the potato uses genes from another form of potato, fair enough, but that's not the case for everything GM.

I don't want to eat GM stuff, I will choose to not buy it and I will resist it being grown near my stuff. I don't trust agri-business  to sufficiently investigate long-term health impacts or the impacts on neighbouring non-GM crops. Farmers near GM crops have reported massive negative impacts - like the heirloom corn growers in North America.

I'd suggest that your site's issues with disease would mostly be through poor cultivation practices from plotholders. Going GM won't change sloppy gardening.

Well said. Why should my choice of being organic be destroyed by other nearby growers.

[campanula]

When the world record potato yields are produced by poor Indian farmers using entirely natural, labour heavy but chemical free mnethods, I suspect we are being told a few porkies about the yeild efficiency of GM foods while good cultivation practices are downplayed because labour cannot be reproduced with a bit of gene-splicing. In other words, it's about the money as usual.

No GM for me, while I will be studying the Bihar methodology of intensive cultivation, weed removal and phased irrigation, not to mention the effects of quick earthing while the stems are still essentially in root mode rather than being sun-ripened into an internal change into stem growth (several days after emergence from soil level).

[Jayb]

When the world record potato yields are produced by poor Indian farmers using entirely natural, labour heavy but chemical free mnethods, I suspect we are being told a few porkies about the yeild efficiency of GM foods while good cultivation practices are downplayed because labour cannot be reproduced with a bit of gene-splicing. In other words, it's about the money as usual.

No GM for me, while I will be studying the Bihar methodology of intensive cultivation, weed removal and phased irrigation, not to mention the effects of quick earthing while the stems are still essentially in root mode rather than being sun-ripened into an internal change into stem growth (several days after emergence from soil level).

Interesting thanks, two links.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/bihar-potato-farmer-sets-new-world-record-332290
http://www.ipipotash.org/en/eifc/2011/27/2