DailyDirt: Feeding A Growing Population…
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Modern farming is evolving yet again as technology makes growing crops more efficient with increasingly clever tricks. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to mess with plant DNA to insert interspecies genes, but maybe there’s no reason for increasing crop yields or produce quality, anyway. Biologists are messing around with gene expression pathways instead, so they don’t need to change the DNA present — just when or how the genes are (or aren’t) activated. And better fertilizers could be on the way, too. Check out a few of these farming developments.
- There’s a way to grow 50% more corn by taking advantage of a newly-discovered regulatory pathway in the plant that controls the stem cell growth of corn (and possibly other crops as well). The resulting ears of corn don’t look all that pretty, but significantly more kernels per ear of corn increases crop yields without necessarily using more land or other resources. The researchers are still just exploring this new way to boost corn growth, and if you like eating corn on the cob — these mutant ears of corn might make you lose your appetite. [url]
- Maybe you’ve never heard of the Haber-Bosch process, but it’s essential for farming since it’s been used to create fertilizer (ammonia from nitrogen gas) for about 100 years now. It’s an energy intensive process, so the Department of Energy is looking for alternatives that are scalable, more sustainable and don’t require fossil fuels. [url]
- Pesticides and GMO crops may be replaced with RNA interference sprays that can kill bugs or alter plant genetic expression. Genetic sprays wouldn’t necessarily require GMO crops at all since a sprayed-on solution of RNA could effect desirable results without needing to change any plant DNA. Genes could be turned off at will with a spray, making plants more drought tolerant or poisoning insects by crippling their natural development. [url]
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Filed Under: ammonia economy, biotech, corn, dna, farming, fertilizer, genetic sprays, genetics, gmo, haber-bosch process, rna interference
Comments on “DailyDirt: Feeding A Growing Population…”
Ummm – perhaps we should be thinking about population control rather than about how to feed an over populated planet.
Re: Re:
Don’t worry, Monsanto’s working on Roundup Ultimate.
Re: perhaps we should be thinking about population control
People go on about how we’re “running out of resources”. There’s only one resource I’m worried about running out of—the most important one we’ve got. What is it?
People. As long as we have people with brains, willing to think about problems and work on solutions, we have a future. “Population control” is a recipe for extinction.
Re: Re: perhaps we should be thinking about population control
you massively overestimate human intelligence…
Re: Re: Re: you massively overestimate human intelligence
Is that a human intelligence saying that?
Re: Re: perhaps we should be thinking about population control
Consider how scientists contain bacterial growth in a petri dish. The bacteria grows until it chokes on its own excrement and dies, apparently it is not intelligent enough to comprehend much less do anything about its impending doom.
Humans think they are so smart … and yet they shit where they sleep.
Re: Re: Re: The bacteria grows until it chokes on its own excrement and dies
Only because it’s not smart enough to figure out how to escape from the Petri dish.
See what I’m getting at?
Re: Re: Re:2 The bacteria grows until it chokes on its own excrement and dies
.. and humans think they are, yet do nothing about it.
Re: Re: perhaps we should be thinking about population control
That’s the sticky bit for me. We’ve created an environment where social evolution selects for sociopathy and and half-wittedness. If we don’t do something to avoid building a world filled with sadistic ranchers and their passive herds of ‘people’, the few survivors with brains are going to be too busy running away from bands of witch-hunters to get any problem-solving done.
FrakenFood
All of these technologies
focus on increasing yields from low intensity monocrop agriculture, which is already rife with regulatory capture. Monsonto BTW, isn’t even going to be a U.S. Corporation for very long by the look of it. They are being courted by a few German firms.
Increasing yield density per acre is easy and has been for a few hundred years: use higher intensity farming methods. If you include environmental accounting, most of the cost differential right now is in automation. And that is the domain of robotics and systems engineers, like these guys. This is the kind of technology that kills glyphosate and the mould board plow.
Of course the hussle right now is to extend shitty farming models to keep the guys currently in charge, in charge. And the fed can be relied on to pay agro corps a “research bonus” which will be turned into bribes for state level officials, increasing regulatory capture and extending the service lives of deprecated systems.
This is pretty much what happened in CA. The DOE paid GM. GM bribed CARB with the DOE’s money, and the CARB electric car initiative was killed with a misdirection campaign (AKA “hydrogen fuel”), and all funded by your federal taxes. SSDI. (Same Shit, Different Industry)
Moving towards automated high intensity agricultural systems will diffuse food production across more business’s and more states. This is really good for GDP, job creation, and water quality management issues like easing pressure on the ogallala aquifer. But it is really bad for big agro, as it will reduce their monopoly control of the respective markets.
Sorry to be such a drag. Really. I’m a little nerdy about ag-tech. I hope you take some interest in the link, and some of the related stuff. Most of the really cool work in this sector is being done in the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark.
Fucking socialists 😉