Genetically Modified Organisms or GMO. GMO is the concept of modifying certain plants to get the best of what we want, such as changing a food so that you wouldn’t have to use pesticides or adding vitamins to make it worth more. But just like anything else, GMO has its pros and cons.
One con is that GMO is badly supplied. Farmers have to buy a new set of seeds every year and this can cause distress amongst them because this increases their costs. While using GMO can replace the usage of pesticides, it is a more expensive alternative. Pesticides are very harmful to the atmosphere and GMOs are adapted so that we don’t have to use pesticides. The cost of both giving these nutrients, making them and selling them It would be cheaper for people because they can get vitamins and minerals for maybe just a slightly higher price.This means that in the short run GMO would be much more effective and cheaper but in the long run, it will cost the farmers much more. It is more expensive for the farmers because they have to buy seeds every year. But it might not be cheaper. The cost of buying pesticides every year can be the same or even less than buying the seeds every year. Many of the big corporation that sell these seed make cheat the farmers out of the money which can incentives these farmers for doing more sustainable farming.
Although it may not be organic, many people can’t afford organic. And many times third world countries cannot afford food with nutrition for their citizen. For example, bread and potatoes aren’t a sustainable diet for humans as we don’t get the right vitamins and minerals that we need to be healthy. GMO has helped in many countries to solve this problem. For example golden rice, we take regular rice and the keratin gene from carrots that give it their pigment. Keratin is also what helps our eyesight which is one of the biggest deficiencies in third world countries. So when they combine it with the golden rices to give the vitamins from keratin to the rice so that third world countries can afford rice and also have the the vitamins for the kids who have these deficiencies.
Most of the revolutions around the world to relate to the idea of cheapening food. The French, Mexican and Russian Revolution. Specifically, how the bread prices reduce in response the economy going down during the French revolution. I think that many times when cheapening food it relates to how the society is built. In case of the French there were drastic class differences and the poor people were impacted the most. But then this relates to how the economy is built up and when debt becomes to big for the country causing social tensions which can affect many farmers who are the ones who really control the food productions and as the cheap money is what’s needed to keep the flow of productivity going. Cheap food can also be based off of cheap nature and the cheap workers. Without cheap workers we can’t make cheap food which messes up our economy of cheap money.
I think how you explained GMO, gave an analysis of the economics of GMO, and even gave a little history. This is a very informative blog post and GMO are something that are super relevant because they may be in the foods we eat everyday, but people rarely think about them. It is interesting to see the differences in short run versus long run of GMO use for farmers.
ReplyDeleteI think it is really interesting how you delve into multiple factors of the economic structure for GMOs. Commonly, people only focus on the costs of making that switch. It is interesting how you talk about other factors such as financial markets, and the history of the government's role in certain economies.
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