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Slideywindows

Member Since: 09 Sep 2016
Location: North Essex
Posts: 1287

I used to have two jobs, one of which was a farmer, which I came into from another type of business.

I found farming to be a strange sort of business.

For instance, I had to buy a hugely expensive machine (a combine) that worked for just 4 weeks of the year, and then sat around doing nothing for the rest of the year. What other business could put up with that kind of dead investment?

I borrowed a lot of money from a Bank, worked for a year for no wages, produced a crop and then it rained for weeks and the crop became almost unsaleable.
I noticed that other businesses had a roof over their product!

The price of my crops fluctuated wildly and unpredictably from one year to the next, depending on whether Australia, Russia or Canada had produced more/less that year.
I could not know or predict this a year earlier, when I planted the crop.

So maybe a bit of subsidy flattens the risks that these businesses take?

I am out of it now, but one thing I do know is that it looks easy from the side of the road!

29th Mar 2017 8:29pm

Cupboard

Member Since: 21 Mar 2014
Location: Suffolk
Posts: 2971

2011 Defender 110 Puma 2.4 HT Corris Grey

On the subject of GM, if you think that the "non GM" crops are in any way more natural you're being misled.

All crops, whether "GM" or "not GM" are genetically modified. Current crops are not the same varieties that we were using 50 years ago and in a lot of cases they're not the same as we had access to 5 years ago. If you look at a crop like maize, 5 years for a variety to be on recommended lists is about all you get. So called non GM crops are being selectively bred to modify the gene pool and that in some cases has meant doing some pretty nasty things to them in order to specifically mutate their genes.

GM is a much more controlled and regulated way of getting to the same end result - so called traditional plant breading is a very imprecise and random way of doing it that leaves far more to chance. Yes, using so called GM you can be an obnoxious company that delibrately includes undesirable traits like sterile crops but actually we rely on a lot of sterile hybrids anyway, surgically modified or not.

We could just stagnate and use the varieties that we had in the 50s but food production would be half what it is now. In my opinion we have to have progress, and to get progress we have a choice between between random changes that we can't control and may have all manner of side effects we don't notice, or targeting specific traits in a more efficient and monitorable way.

31st Mar 2017 7:59am

JJ

Member Since: 18 May 2009
Location: Winchester
Posts: 932

1987 Defender 110 V8 Petrol CSW Corris Grey

Not a fan of the the GM industry and the tired lie they peddle that it will help feed the third world. Crop science is a hugely important way of making sure we get enough food of the right quality from a given area.

GM crops are all about owning the specific seed and controlling it for profit , nothing more.

If the technology was open source , if you couldn't own a crop of rice the idea would die tomorrow, and we would still have enough food in the world to feed a growing population but it is unfortunately man made disasters ( war and lack of distribution) that are the current cause of famine. HR064 Hampshire and Berkshire 4x4 Response

31st Mar 2017 10:09am

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