Parish Notices

April 23rd, 2008

Views: 565

Posted by ChrisG at 8:25 am

The quote of the year so far:

It does take resolve to prevail in an epic clash of civilizations, granted, but it also takes resolve to nail your dick to a tree. Telling yourself that you’re nailing it to the Tree of Liberty with the Hammer of Freedom is a logical way to proceed, but that may not be enough, in itself, to protect you from the equally logical consequences.

After last week’s IAAST report, which argued that GM food cannot help solve global food shortages by raising crop yields (and that the problem isn’t a lack of food anyway, but the inefficiencies of liberalised global trade), a study conducted at the University of Kansas suggests that GM soya actually produces lower yields than non-GM. Monsanto reacted immediately by pointing out that actually-existing GM isn’t true GM, and that the hyper-productive version is – once again – just a little further ahead along the highway of inevitable progress – presumably having lunch in a motorway service station with nuclear fusion, molecular assemblers and “stable growth”.

Critics doubt whether the company will achieve this, saying that it requires more complex modification. And Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington – and who was one of the first to predict the current food crisis – said that the physiology of plants was now reaching the limits of the productivity that could be achieved.