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Risk Expert: GMOs Could Destroy the Planet
Related:
The Government Hack Trying to Squash Discussion of Government Corruption – Cass Sunstein – Doesn’t Understand BASIC Math Or Law
Risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb predicted the 2008 financial crisis, by pointing out that commonly-used risk models were wrong. Distinguished professor of risk engineering at New York University, author of best-sellers The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, Taleb became financially independent after the crash of 1987, and wealthy during the 2008 financial crisis.
Now, Taleb is using his statistical risk acumen to take on genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Taleb’s conclusion: GMOs could cause “an irreversible termination of life at some scale, which could be the planet.”
Sound crazy?
Sure it does … but only because we don’t understand statistics, and so we have no handle on what’s risky and what’s not.
Taleb and his 2 co-authors write in a new draft paper:
For nature, the “ruin” is ecocide: an irreversible termination of life at some scale, which could be the planet.
***
Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs fall squarely under [the precautionary principle, i.e. the rule that we should err on the side of caution if something is really dangerous] not because of the harm to the consumer because of their systemic risk on the system.
Top-down modifications to the system (through GMOs) are categorically and statistically different from bottom up ones (regular farming, progressive tinkering with crops, etc.) There is no comparison between the tinkering of selective breeding and the top-down engineering of arbitrarily taking a gene from an organism and putting it into another. Saying that such a product is natural misses the statistical process by which things become ”natural”. [i.e. evolving over thousands of years in a natural ecosystem, or at least breeding over several generations.]
What people miss is that the modification of crops impacts everyone and exports the error from the local to the global. I do not wish to pay—or have my descendants pay—for errors by executives of Monsanto. We should exert the precautionary principle there—our non-naive version—simply because we would only discover errors after considerable and irreversible environmental damage.
Taleb shreds GMO-boosters – including biologists – who don’t understand basic statistics:
Calling the GMO approach “scientific” betrays a very poor—indeed warped—understanding of probabilistic payoffs and risk management.
***
It became popular to claim irrationality for GMO and other skepticism on the part of the general public —not realizing that there is in fact an ”expert problem” and such skepticism is healthy and even necessary for survival. For instance, in The Rational Animal, the author pathologize people for not accepting GMOs although ”the World Health Organization has never found evidence of ill effects” a standard confusion of evidence of absence and absence of evidence. Such a pathologizing is similar to behavioral researchers labeling hyperbolic discounting as ”irrational” when in fact it is largely the researcher who has a very narrow model and richer models make the ”irrationality” go away).
In other words, lack of knowledge of basic statistical principles leads GMO supporters astray. For example, they don’t understand the concept that “interdependence” creates “thick tails” … leading to a “black swan” catastrophic risk event:
Fat tails result (among other things) from the interdependence of components, leading to aggregate variations becoming much more severe than individual ones. Interdependence disrupts the functioning of the central limit theorem, by which the aggregate is more stable than the sum of the parts. Whether components are independent or interdependent matters a lot to systemic disasters such as pandemics or generalized crises. The interdependence increases the probability of ruin, to the point of certainty.
(This concept is important in the financial world, as well.)
As Forbes’ Brian Stoffel notes:
Let’s say each GM seed that’s produced holds a 0.1% chance of — somehow, in the intricately interdependent web of nature — leading to a catastrophic breakdown of the ecosystem that we rely on for life. All by itself, it doesn’t seem too harmful, but with each new seed that’s developed, the risk gets greater and greater.
The chart below demonstrates how, over time, even a 0.1% chance of ecocide can be dangerous.
I cannot stress enough that the probabilities I am using are for illustrative purposes only. Neither I, nor Taleb, claim to know what the chances are of any one type of seed causing such destruction.
The focus, instead, should be on the fact that the “total ecocide barrier” is bound to be hit, over a long enough time, with even incredibly small odds. Taleb includes a similar graph in his work, but no breakdown of the actual variables at play.
Taleb debunks other pro-GMO claims as well, such as:
1. The Risk of Famine If We Don’t Use GMOs. Taleb says:
Invoking the risk of “famine” as an alternative to GMOs is a deceitful strategy, no different from urging people to play Russian roulette in order to get out of poverty.
And calling the GMO approach “scientific” betrays a very poor—indeed warped—understanding of probabilistic payoffs and risk management.
In addition, the United Nations actually says that small organic farms are the only way to feed the world. And growing your own food helps prevent tyranny.
2. Nothing Is Totally Safe, So Should We Discard All Technology? Taleb says this is an anti-scientific argument. Some risks are small, or are only risks to one individual or a small group of people. When you’re talking about risks which could wipe out all life on Earth, it’s a totally different analysis.
3. Assuming that Nature Is Always Good Is Anti-Scientific. Taleb says that statistical risk analysis don’t use assumptions such as nature is “good” or “bad”. Rather, it looks at the statistical evidence that things persist in nature for thousands of years if they are robust and anti-fragile. Ecosystems break down if they become unstable.
GMO engineers may be smart in their field, but they are ignorant when it comes to long-run ecological reality:
We are not saying nature is the smartest possible, we are saying that time is smarter than GMO engineers. Plain statistical significance.
4. People Brought Potatoes from the Americas Back to Europe, Without Problem. Taleb says that potatoes evolved and competed over thousands of years in the Americas, and so proved that they did not disrupt ecosystems. On the other hand, GMOs are brand spanking new … created in the blink of the eye in a lab.
GMOs Also INCREASE Pesticide Use, DECREASE Crop Yield, And May Be VERY Dangerous to Your Health
As if the risk of “ecocide”isn’t enough, there are many other reasons to oppose GMO foods – at least without rigorous testing – including:
- Potentially severe health effects
On the plus side? A few companies will make a lot of money.
- advertisements -
And then there's the logic they use: First, they say such micro-black-holes would not be dangerous because, due to Hawking radiation, they would evaporate in some tiny fraction of a second. Small problem with that assurance -- Hawking radiation is only a hypothesis, it has never been confirmed experimentally, no one has ever seen or measured any Hawking radiation. Second, now that they've got the Large Hadron Collider running, they say there aren't even any black-holes being created, so clearly it's perfectly safe. How do they know there's no black-holes being created? Oh yeah, their evidence of absence is that they are not seeing a Hawking radiation signature.
So let me know if I got this straight -- if this completely untested Hawking radiation hypothesis is incorrect, then any created black-holes may not evaporate and may instead collect and eat the Earth from the inside, and their "proof" that they are not creating any black-holes is no proof at all, and any created black-holes may be for all practical purposes undetectable -- right up until moments before the whole planet collapses in on itself.
>It still might happen if they keep cranking up the voltage.
It (black-hole generation) might already be happening. It would take an unknown amount of time for the micro-black-holes to gain enough mass to become macro objects (but after that probably a very short amount of time before the entire Earth is replaced by a black-hole).
EDIT: Note that it has been known for some time that the Earth is a type 13 planet.
During WW2 the boffins on the Manhatten Project calculated the odds of a runaway nuclear chain reaction destroying the earth as one in three million. A conventional invasion of Japan would have cost 10 million plus lives and the nuclear genie in the bottle would have been let out within a decade by other countries (USSR) so it was somewhat understandable that the bomb was dropped.
Most things have a risk, it is OK to take risks that might destroy yourself, but it is scary that some people think it is OK to risk everything and everyone without their permission. Those who would risk others are deluding themselves if they think that it is OK and especially when the only benefits are relatively small (like a Nobel prize) .
yeh...except for fact that Japan had tried to surrender...
and bombs dropped on civilians...while military not targeted
dupe
Curiously, the two cities that were bombed had the largest Catholic populations on the entire island of Japan.
I'm sure it was just coincidence.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-bombing-of-nagasaki-august-9-1945-the-u...
Japan did not try to surrender and was fully prepared to fight to the last man, woman and child. Even after the 2nd bomb it still took the effort of the Emporer to sue for peace. There were those in the Japanese who were so opposed to contemplating peace that there was the threat that Emporer Hirohito would be deposed even in spite of his almost God like status.
There was no fully civilian areas in any Japanese city. Pilots that flew over the ruins of Tokyo (burnt out by conventional incendary bombsthat created firestorms that killed hundreds of thousands) reported that the houses contained the machinery to make military equipment (home workshops).
I just learned that Monsanto is being run by Sideshow Bob
GMOs could
- lead to mass starvation of higher developed species: Imaginable
- extinguish all life on earth: Ridiculous, life is way too resistant and adaptable, if only on a bacteria level
- "Destroy the Planet" (whatever that exactly means): Hilarious and 100% pure bullshit
Also as much as I like Taleb, here he seems to assume or imply that genes never "jump" from one organism to another in nature, only human manipulation can make this happen.
I believe the opposite has been proven.
The particular damaging thing that Monsanto did was creation of "Roundup-ready" crops. Only crops with a particular gene can surive the herbicide. These leads to ecological dead zones where nothing can be grown without the Monsanto seeds. That means the end of evolution for those plants. Extreme concentration of risk.
Those Roundup Ready genes are now appearing in wild relatives of commercial crops due to cross pollination and other means of genetic transfer.
The "jump" of the Bt gene from insect to crops is pretty drastic -- not sure Nature could ever have pulled that off.
The concern would be transfer of the Bt gene from GMO food into E.coli DNA in the human gut. Our diet does affect the flora (types of bacteria) in our gut, and plasmids (chunks of DNA) are taken up by the gut bacteria.
So what happens when humans start producing Bt toxin in their guts? Hmmm, guess we're gonna find out.
What could possibly go wrong go wrong........
I love Taleb but this is a ridiculous analysis.
And thank god that genes do jump from one organism to another. Eukaryotic organisms would not exist without mitochondria, whatever that little bugger used to be.
If eukaryotic cells hadn't had some gene jumping humans wouldn't exist.
Right, genes jump? How high! Gentic mutation and natural selection drives evolution. How do genes leave an animal and jump to a corn plant. Please discuss at length!
Well, first a female chimpanzee masturbates with a fresh corn cob...
Well, a second tree of life has been discovered recently - arsenic-based bacteria - that backs up what you say, and also the six previous extinction events do as well. Guess it depends on your definition of all life.
http://www.nature.com/news/arsenic-life-bacterium-prefers-phosphorus-aft...
Darwin can stop rolling over now.
Paid Shills 'o Plenty
I was enjoying a party with some geologist friends who proudly declared their participation as experts on the Love Canal Chromium Poisoning Case. Being naive, I assumed they had to have supported the case that the poison leeched into the water supply. Nope! Wrong. They were on the team that sampled in such a way and at such a depth and attempted (proudly) to prove it couldn't have been the power company and contractors that KILLED and DEFORMED those people.
I looked for a glimmer of humanity, some self awareness, AND SAW NONE!
These are the same fuckers who are going to kill us with GMO's
Thing is Kurt, how or why is it that you call them freinds? Says volumes about you right there....
why the ad hominem 8-weeker?
It's fun how my "C\\:Caseworkers
always like to address me all familiar-like. That'd be the new bloods with new handles, and such. Well they gonna be howlin' at the cell walls all peelin' and rusty-like when their teflon coated brain cavities finally echo the truth to infinity. Naw, feller, I b'n crossed 'afor and 'naw don't bother me none, nohow.
This concerns me a whole hell of a lot more than the global warming 'crisis'. The weird part is not many people seem to be focused on this, which could be corrected reasonably quickly and instead we are deluged with global warming hysteria which cannot be resolved quickly, if at all, and is less of a threat.
No that's not true but it's likely too late to do anything about global warming. Whether it's anthropogenically driven or not is moot. As the average temp heats up, a one degree change will release massive amounts of methane from the clathrates frozen in the Arctic permafrost and GM will cascade out of control until it has reached catastrophic levels. Methane is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. At least you're not alone. The deniers here are legion.
The main deficiency I see in the AGW crowd is that they don't seem to understand that the Earth ecosystem, which includes temp control, is a self-correcting system. In history there have been RADICALLY higher levels of "agw" gasses, (which do not "cause"/lead warming - but lag it) and the result seems to have been a healthier ecosystem - more plants, more animals.
Yet we are now being told that the optimum temperature is what it has been for a couple of hundred years.
I call BS on that!!!
As to your use of the pejoritive term "deniers" - you're full of crap. I have yet to meet a climate change "denier". OTOH, EVERY person I've talked to about AGW a.) disagrees that AGW exists (if the world is warming, it's not because of puny man). And b.) they mostly agree that "climate change" has been going on for about 4.5 billion years.
Have YOU read any of the IPCC "reports"? I read the first two. Formulas aside, look at their data collection "methods"!!! I concluded that the people who formed and run the IPCC know absolutely NOTHING about science!!!
But they do know about creating fictitious "carbon credits" that they can then buy and sell, and broker to make $BILLIONS! And which process does not change one gram of difference in the carbon actually being released into the atmosphere - the whole "carbon exchange" system changes nothing but the names of the people/companies who are "allowed" to release carbon into the atmosphere.
Plenty of tangible evidence exists for those who need to be hit over the head with it, ie the massive recession on both poles of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets; the levels of heat-absorbing soot and pollution accumulating on top of the remaining glaciers, and coincidentally missing in hundreds of feet of corings. If you won't acknowledge the extent of the dead and dying coral reefs (50% in many places) and rise in the acidity of the oceans, never mind the rise in the sea levels, then I'm afraid no one can help you to understand what anthropogenic changes have taken place - from jet plane contrails to fertilizer run-off. There is no self-regulating mechanism in Nature to account for that. If that isn't enough, come up here to Maine and I'll be more than happy to show you where you can stand underwater in the middle of Main Street.
Personally, I don't care who does or doesn't believe. It's not a question of belief or one of correction. It's merely a statement of fact. I particularly don't care about those claiming to regulate it by hitting the biggest polluters with a carbon tax, which is a farce. Use all the exclamation points and insults you want if it makes you feel better. If you feel it necessary to have to resort to ad hominem attacks in order to divert attention it only serves to demonstrate how juvenile and hollow your argument is.
I'm guessing the models you're using are outdated. NOAA has the latest data. Drop down and run the sliding temperature/time visual indicator to see just how bad things have gotten.
http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators
The trump card to the entire AGW deck is the FACT that the ecology of Earth is a dynamic system. If you don't know the difference between a dynamic system and a static system, you don't belong in the discussion.
If you create a "model" (which is what the AGW people do - they do NOT deal with reality - just their computer models) and determine input "A", then input item "z" - your result will only work according to the "rules" in your model. If the real world is a dynamic system, you have absolutely NO WAY to determine the actual affect of "z" on the rest of the system, expecially in a system with as many inputs and items as the Earth's ecosystem. If your input of "z" has no affect on your model, perhaps that's because you are not even aware of item R6 - which is obliterated by your input, but it's such a TINY thing you don't even know it exists. But when it dies out, it could lead to the extinction of a huge percentage of the Earth's life. (In a cascading reaction - ie R6 was the only food of a single higher organism. The higher organism was the only food of three other organisms. Those three were the main food of 6 others, and so on in a cascading reaction to the loss of the item that you don't even know exists... and so didn't put into your model - but confidently claim that your model is accurate.)
As to the ice sheets & etc - you need to get out more. East Anglia says that there has been NO global warming for 16 or 17 years now.
As to the melting of land ice sheets - the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas is a zero-sum situation - as some melt, others expand. And let's not forget Kilimanjaro - saai to be melting as it disappeared. But it didn't melt. It just evaporated. The air is so dry that the ice just evaporated. (The process is called "sublimation.")
Re the Antarctic sheets - as above the ice shelves (over water) are irrelevant. The ice over the land is thickening - with the possible exception of the place where a live volcano under the ice is melting stuff (same song for Greenland.) Would the melting of the Antarctic be bad? dunno - but it would give us a whole continent to explore and settle... cores from below the ice have tropical plants in them. but I doubt that will happen soon. Ask the "scientists" who got caught in the ice that expanded and thickened so quickly last year that it trapped several ships.
As to main streets being covered with water - yeah... that's been happening for a few thousand years that we know of. A couple of words for you... "Rebound effect". Ooops! There's that dynamic system again. The world isn't static - expecially the land. The land sort of "floats" on the underlying magma. One plate goes up, another goes down. While islands in the Solomons sink ("rising water"), other land rises. Net effect = zero change.
I'd suggest you look deeper into the people (NASA and NOAA) who are telling you things - like that they recorded a temp of 600 F at Egg Harbor WI on 4 July, 2010. When apprised of the probable error, NOAA refused to correct it.
So... is NOAA trustworthy? Nope. NASA isn't either.
AGW is pure, unadulterated hogwash.
Climate change, however, is a fact of life and has been for what... 4.5 billion years or so?
"Let’s say each GM seed that’s produced holds a 0.1% chance of — somehow, in the intricately interdependent web of nature — leading to a catastrophic breakdown of the ecosystem that we rely on for life. All by itself, it doesn’t seem too harmful, but with each new seed that’s developed, the risk gets greater and greater."
While I am generally sceptical of GMO, that claim is absolutely statistically BullSHIT!
While I am generally sceptical of GMO, that claim is absolutely statistically BullSHIT!
Do enlighten us.
OK,
0.1% chance is 1 in 1000, so if you have a population of 1000, there is a chance that ONE of these will have a random mutation which will cause ecocide.
Probablities are NOT additive. It's like saying that the more often you fly, the more chance you will be in an accident. NO. The odds are the same for each and every flight.
Interdependent vs Independent variables. Check it out sometime.
Also, nice strawman!
I participated in the anti - GMO alfalfa case a couple of years ago which was lost at the Supreme Court level, it being just a coincidence that one of the SC members foremerly served Monsanto as its chief counsel.
But I digress.....Taleb's point is dead on: we are being asked to shoulder a risk that is immense (perhaps remote, but catastrophic) in return for what? Here's what most of the GMO plants do....they do not die when sprayed with RoundUp but supposedly the weeds around them do. That is the GMO alfalfa case. The problem is weeds have now been selectively bred to resist RoundUp which should not surprise even an eight year old. It is just the same as our new breed of bacteria that has been selectively bred to defeat antibiotics.
The risk with GMO crops primarily resides is in their mono culture nature since it costs about $100 million to create a new GMO crop it has to be really pushed and become a dominant crop at the expense of biodiversity. A classic plant breeding company might have 20 lines for a given plant, but if you go the GMO route you cannot afford to do that so you end up with reduced varieities which means higher risk of failure due to disease or insects.That means a disease or insect group could wipe out a large % of that plant in any given year. Think of the potato blight in Ireland if you want an example of what a mono culture plant can do to those that are dependent on it. Corn or wheat would be similar examples for the U.S.
The other issue with GMO's is that once the genie is out of the bottle there is no putting it back. Pollinating crops (such as alfalfa) can spread the GMO trait into other similar plants which in turn can spread it to others with unknown results.
As we also know mutations always occur from time to time in plants and animals. What might one get with a GMO engineered plant that mutated?
As an early reader of Taleb's works my hat is off to him for attacking the obvious risk being overlooked with GMO's.
Humans, by and large tend to overlook what they do not know, and with GMO's we have no idea what their long term effects will be on our planet.
"It is just the same as our new breed of bacteria that has been selectively bred to defeat antibiotics."
A similar situation recently involved honey bees and
the Varoa Destructor mite. One "group" of beekeepers opted for using chemicals to control the mites. Another group opted to let the bees that survived the mite's attacks breed, and let those that succumbed die without the chemicals. Among those that opted for natural selection lost most of their bees before they recovered - so a temporary loss, then a healthy recovery (with freedom from the chemicals).
This has apparently led to a splitting of the beekeeping world. Some constantly chemicalize their hives (and the honey), while others refuse to do this. The chemicalizers have essentially and inadvertantly been developing a chemical resistant strain of varoa, while the non-chem beekeepers are developing varoa resistant strains of bee.
Choose your path carefully! One road leads to healthy bees - the other leads to healthy varoa mites and eventual death for the bee species.
For what???? For $$$$$$$ of course. Witness the comments here.
Mmmm, glyphosate. It's what's for dinner (and lunch and breakfast)
I want a squash that tastes like lobster.
and a chick pea that tastes like butter to go with that.
Going to end the world? Nope. Do I think GMO is bad? Why yes, yes I do! But I seriously doubt it's going to end the world. "Here, buy our seed that you can slather with this convenient herbacide that we also happen to produce!"
One thing that I do think is at least as bad as GMO is artificially induced male cytoplasmic sterility in various hybrid crops. It's passed on through the mother, so even if you plant, say carrots, with this trait, and they are pollinated either by Queen Anne's lace, or an open pollinated variety of carrot, the offspring will still have male cytoplasmic sterility.
...the offspring will still have male cytoplasmic sterility.
Not sure about the down arrows or personal abuse by usednabused. Please expound. Of this I know not.
A plant that is capable of producing both male and female gametes can self-pollinate, or be cross-pollinated. Many plant species can actively switch self-pollination on and off by regulating genomic pathways that lead to production of male sexual organs or viable pollen. These plants can make a "choice" depending on environmental sensing. [http://www.plantcell.org/content/18/3/515.full]
Optional male sterility tends to be regulated by non-nuclear genes (aka cytoplasmic); the mitochondrial and plastid genomes. These genomes do not participate in recombination and are effectively transmitted asexually, from mother to offspring (male or female).
When a plant "chooses" to avoid self-pollination, it effectively "chooses" to be female and requires male gametes from another individual (sexual reproduction). This increases the probability that fertilization will occur using pollen from a partner with a distinctly different genome. If the process works, then the result is called a hybrid [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_(biology)].
Hybridization is the most commonly used tool in GMO, crossing different lines to get a hyrbid that is screened for superiority to both parents. In order to do this reliably, GMO require a consistent female line, typically one in which male sterility is easily enforced by chemical treatment or has been enforced irreversibly by mutation. This line is then used repeatedly and hybridized with whatever the researchers feel like experimenting with next.
In the case of irreversible cytoplasmic male sterility, the offspring will also be male-sterile because cytoplasmic genomic material is transmitted from mother to child (the same is true in humans), not from father to child. Such seeds are pretty much useless for crops that are harvested in the senescent stage (grain crops), but can still be used for plants harvested in the vegetative stage (eg root vegetables). Such seeds don't quite qualify as "terminator seeds" as the all-female offspring can still be pollinated by other sources, but for farming purposes then they may as well be.
A big field of such plants are all female, cannot self-pollinate and cannot cross-pollinate with each other meaning that only plants around the edge of the field, in luck with the wind, or within range of insects that can dodge pesticide treatment, have any real hope of cross-pollinating with a compatible external pollen source to produce seed. Even then, the offspring plant will also be male-sterile and suffer from the same constraint.
Over time, evolution will not favour these lines. Male-sterile lines cannot take over the world without compatible males so such plants will always be out-competed by other lines that are capable of self-pollinating in a pinch. Furthermore, organellar genomes are subject to Muller's Ratchet [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muller's_ratchet] for which plants have evolved very complex nuclear-encoded fixes, such as pentatricopeptide repeat proteins [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatricopeptide_repeat], meaning that it is highly unlikely that we stupid humans will be able to design a mutated mitochondrial genome (that enables artificial control of fertility) that would stand the test of time when left to fend for itself in the wild.
[Note that I am talking here specifically about fertility regulation, not any other GMO trait].
the problem is not gmo. gmo can actually be useful.
the problem is the general thrust of mega agricultural corporations seeking to take every last technolgoy we have and milk every last drop of profit from them in order to create a system drowned in extreme agriculture.
gmo practices are in themselves not always bad, it's the context they developed in. a context of machinery and petroleum resource intensive megafarming-----where massive quantities of fertilizer, petsticide, and transportation fuels are required to get products that are inherently of limited life --perisheable ----to market.
the process maxmizes the amount of production per acre at the expense of other qualities of the production process, making fat tail risks to production more likely. there is less and less a built in margin of error for 'succesful farming' as farming becomes almost entirely automated with fewer and fewer human beings and labor involved in the effort.
what's worse, farmers who don't cooperate are frequently outcompeted off their land OR the notorious threats of lawsuit that monsonto gets away with----bankrupting farmers through protracted litigation when seed of their proprietary gmo gets on their crop.
gmo is not bad per se---it's the context in which its created.
if monsanto were to outwardly claim to public drop all gmo tomorrow-------would you suddently trust them? or think the problems are solved? no.
the trend is not slowing down either, and it's not just monsonto pushing this. furthermore the processsed foods suppliers are in near vertical integration with these large agricultural companies. so you really have a giant machine at the back end ( farming ) and front end ( processed food production packaging distribtion marketing and sales) all collaborating togehter on an international stage .
it's impressive on many levels. sometimes it's disastrously impressive.
finally-----the future trend of automated farming , using specialized fruit picking machines and tree shaking machiens and a host of newer 'more efficient' means of using robots to replace labor, as well as to replace antiquated irrigation and pesticide spraying technques. ( in japan theyve been using drone helicopters for targeted pesticide spraying for over ten years!!)
this all boils down to a picture of removing man from the hard labor of his job. on one level its an impressively efficient system. on another, we are entering uncharted territory where farming and other traditional livelihoods are being intermediated by a process of specialist engineers, each of which has increidble debth in their knowledge of how to contribute their expertise to run the most productive farm, but none of which knows how to 'farm' as a whole.
ocne the food is controlled by robots. what happens if they suddenly stop working one day with no people around who know how to do the hard work of making mother earth bring forth her bounty?
good plot line for terminator 5. t-1000 is a farmer, plot twist,---the war against humanity turns out to be a unionized robot strike for better wages for robots, and more petroleum!.
How can you say "Nope"? Only a dope would say nope.... There could be many many consequences of fucking with the food chain and supply that even a genius such as El Vaquero might not even think of!
never forget the tomatoes . and never forgive people for making movies this bad. it's a crime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs9wLoxz03E
Three ears in one. That's some increase in production.
Can you 'ear me now?
And...
You get three ears of corn instead of just one!
Continuous product improvement and innovation helps keep a lid on inflation.
Get your hedonics...right 'ere!
AWESOME. I love the "hair"!