organic/gm co-existence

[screener]

Cricket tragic, You are right about the source of the energy used to make chemical fertilizer. If a renewable energy is used to produce it, and the rest of the process can be made sustainable, then it would be a sustainable fertilizer. It might even go a long way to becoming an organic approved fertilizer. As you say though it looks like it would be considerably more expensive with forseeable technology.

There is a considerable amount of land in this area, the north-west plains of Canada, that has been removed from grain production, the same is true in countries across the development spectrum. The cost/price squeeze forcing farmers to abandon their farms or change their income source. If the GM seed companies, fertilizer, pesticide, machinery, fuel, grain handling, transportation, banking etc. companies didn't see fit to gang up and take all of the bread, Murray Mcloughlin (sp?) there would be a lot more farmers in production today. There would be a lot more young farmers, and a lot more grain produced. Enough to feed the world, without hesitation.

In the event that a shortfall develops later as the population grows, there is the possibility of cutting back on livestock feeding of grains, as opposed to taking land out of forests, or starving.

[Cricket Tragic]

screener, it is fairer to say that using other energy sources to make fertilizer is more expensive with TODAY’S technology. It may also be more expensive with a new technology, but I am less willing to bet my life savings on that. I doubt the organic industry would see a chemical fertilizer made with renewable energy as appropriate, but as we don’t have one, we can’t test the idea.

I am interested in your statements about cropping land being left idle in Canada. This has not been my experience on the prairies. Equally in the US, CRP land is coming out of conservation programs and back into crop production as a result of the increased prices paid for grain.

I disagree with your assessment that “companies didn't see fit to gang up and take all of the bread… there would be a lot more farmers in production today” on the basis that it just doesn’t make sense if you start to think about it. It would be perfectly possible to farm without use of gas, agrochemicals, banks, GM seed, chemical fertilizer, grain handling companies and petroleum-based transport. A few people still do. It is just that the costs of doing the alternative are so high that most farmers utilize these technologies. Also, until recently, there was plenty of cheap competition. It is the price squeeze that has been the main problem, not the cost squeeze. If grain was worth 3 times what it is today, farmers could afford all sorts of more expensive inputs.

[Grandaddy]

Lordy I'm not reading all that anyway just in case it hasn't been done then remember the conventional farmers are also GM Free. Cross breeding with GM crops would have the commercially detrimental affect of removing the GM free status of conventionally grown crops.

So it's Organic and Conventional farmers that risk losing financially with the current generation of GM crops.

[screener]

Since I have not personally gone out to find a market for gm free food, I couldn't say that there is no price differential between GM and GM free. Even if I could say that there is none, that does not mean that gm free farms should not have space allocated between themselves and gm crops.

There are more reasons than money which would induce conventional farming of non GM crops. Since GM is the unproven, new kid on the block, the responsibility should rest with it's proponents to provide the barrier space.

Cricket tragic said " it just doesn’t make sense if you start to think about it. It would be perfectly possible to farm without use of gas, agrochemicals, banks, GM seed, chemical fertilizer, grain handling companies and petroleum-based transport. A few people still do. It is just that the costs of doing the alternative are so high that most farmers utilize these technologies."

The point of my suggestion was that when the combines take all of the bread, as voiced in Murray Mclaughlins song, they by definition don't leave enough bread for the farmers. Therefore farmers are forced out of the business, hundreds of thousands in North America alone. Certainly it would be possible to farm without such inputs as GM seed, fertilizers, pesticides, fuel, operating loans, etc. The point that society needs to grasp is that there are too few farmers taking care of too much land, operating under too much debt, precisely because those companies see fit to scrape the barrel dry each year.