Hi Mule, yes I know about permaculture. I can walk down the road and see one (a long walk I have to admit). Permaculture cannot deliver the same yield every year as more intensive agricultural systems. This means if the world shifted to permaculture, the whole world would have to be put under permaculture to produce enough food. The local permaculture has a wide array of plants and animals, but excepting a few trees and migratory birds, the species are all imported. We would be replacing natural ecosystems with complex introduced ecosystems.

Frankly, the rationale for GM crops (as indeed for any other agricultural advance) is not feeding the world. Feeding the world is a useful byproduct. Farmers everywhere adopt practices that make farmers more money, that make farming easier and that protect the farming resource.

So you think GM is morally wrong without knowing any specifics? To me this is an odd way of proceeding. Do you commonly make moral decisions without knowing the specifics? Economic studies of GM crops world wide have demonstrated that the biggest winners have been farmers, followed by consumers and the technology developers come in third.

In fact, Roundup Ready crops in Canada, US, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Romania and elsewhere have benefited the environment by facilitating the adoption of no-till agriculture. No-till reduces soil erosion, improves soil health, increases soil carbon and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. No bad environmental benefits if you ask me. Tillage is the second largest cause of soil degradation after over grazing.

As to Roundup Ready encouraging more pesticide use, what it does is encourage a change in pesticide use. This might be for example, away from atrazine to Roundup. Whether there is more or less depends on the relative use rates of the various pesticides. In Australian canola production at the moment up to 2 kg of triazine herbicides is typically used, along with up to 1 kg of trifluralin plus some clethodim. This might all be replaced by up to 1 kg of glyphosate. Glyphosate has a much better environmental profile than the herbicides it replaces.

Hi agronomist, firstly, thanks for comments. Good debate :)
" Permaculture cannot deliver the same yield every year as more intensive agricultural systems. " - is that just opinion or scientifically evaluated? By its nature, permaculture is far more intensive than monocultures due to a range of species habits and forms which allows more biomass per square metre.

" We would be replacing natural ecosystems with complex introduced ecosystems. " - !! What is happening right now all over the developing world with monocultures? Exactly that (except not complex at all).

"Frankly, the rationale for GM crops (as indeed for any other agricultural advance) is not feeding the world. " - thats not what you said before, or what is being rammed by the lobby groups.

" So you think GM is morally wrong without knowing any specifics? " I do know some specifics , enough to know i dont want some scientists polutting the world's gene pool out of the failures of monoculture farming.

" No-till reduces soil erosion, improves soil health, increases soil carbon and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. " yes, over-tillage does cause the above. But roundup does not improve soil health, it makes it worse. Soil microrganisms rely on sugars exuded from plants' roots. Roundup directly affects soil microbiology too

http://environmentalcommons.org/glyphosate.pdf
http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/programs/ecology_of_western_forests/publications/publications/2001_sdarticle.pdf

That was a very quick google.

Instead of Roundup killing everthing green except the mutant crop, how about education on soil erosion and crop rotation, soil microbiology, organic matter and water management?

You may be correct about less use of nastier chemicals, and this would be a good thing... except for the thought of all that glyphosate on my food!

Hi Mule, permaculture may produce more biomass, but we don’t eat biomass. Even the advocates of permaculture agree that its production is much lower than more intensive agriculture. They maintain that the ecological benefits and low inputs are worth the reduced yields.

I don’t think I said that GM was about feeding the world. It is a piece of the puzzle yes, because it can allow more food to be produced from less land, but other technology needs to be used as well.

Do you also have a moral objection to the introduction of plant species from other places in the world’s polluting the plant gene pool? Should you Australians give up all European, Asian and American crop species and just stick to Australian natives? What about moving natives from one locality to another?

Did you read that second link you gave? Let me quote:

“…toxicity was not expressed when glyphosate was added directly to soil, however. Microbial respiration was unchanged at expected field concentrations (5-50 microg/g), regardless of soil, and was stimulated by concentrations up to 100-fold.”

And:

“Long-term, repeated applications of glyphosate had minimal effect on seasonal microbial characteristics despite substantial changes in vegetation and growth.”

Doesn’t support your claim of glyphosate affecting soil microbiology. Your first link misquoted a paper. What the paper actually said was there were no differences in microbial composition in the first few weeks after application and a difference was only apparent at longer time periods. If glyphosate was having a direct effect on soil microbiology you would expect that to happen before 6 weeks had passed.

Too late to halt now with labor in the states giving the go ahead for crops.

Greening yelling and thus supporting labor.

No change now so you have dealt your cards so thats what you get.

Since most people have no care of standing up for themselves but parties, what you get is dictatorship so enjoy.

Hi agronomist

From your first response to my post " Hi Mule, You are aware of course that there are 6.6 million people in the world that all need feeding. If we don't seek to maximize production from agricultural land, we will need more land to feed these people. "

Yes i did look at the second link , did you?

(page 4)
3. Results
... Addition of glyphosate to culture media resulted in a reduction in culturable bacteria and fungi. Fungi were particularly sensitive. (Table 2)
Pls read on from there.

Which permaculture advocates claim large-scale monocultures are more productive per hectare? It might be easy to make food with tractors, harvesters, trucks, pest/herbicides and artificial ferts but it i dont think more efficient per hectare given similar inputs. I think the comparison is irrelevant though. The difference is that you cant really harvest permaculture with machines. It's intention is self-sustainability without constant automation, therefore permaculture only really works with intensive manual labour which could be provided by people living on or near site. I just dont think using the 'feed the world' excuse for GM is reasonable - why not provide them with social stability, farming education and good seed stock?

The Mule, it might be worth noting that not everyone aspires to intensive manual labour. If we look at the millions of people moving from rural areas to urban centres in China for a "better" life I can only surmise they haven't been particularly happy with their lot.

Recently agriculture lost its position as worlds largest employer of people, now overtaken by the service industry.
Essentially even if permaculture was the answer, there wouldn't be enough willing participants listening to the question.