(October 17, 2014 at 10:06 am)alpha male Wrote: If it doesn't affect the price, the poor will still starve.You also have to consider that global seed prices aren't based on one fixed global price. Rather seed producers, like Monsanto, sells seeds at whatever price the local market can handle. A farmer in the US will pay far more for the same seed than a farmer in India. Monsanto would rather make a tiny profit in the third world than none at all. Seed sourcing is far more about market share, than profit per pound.
You're only considering technology, while ignoring economics and human greed.
As for the starving poor of the third world, GMO foods are, in fact, a huge benefit to them, and likely will be their only chance at avoiding wide-spread famine going into the future. Third world food production and starvation doesn't really have to do with a lack of sufficient finances. They can afford to produce the food, but they often lack the proper soils, amendments, irrigation, weather conditions, ability to produce enough variety of food to keep malnutrition at-bay, etc. to adequately do the job right. This is where GMO is particularly useful. Despite the fact that seed will have to sell for so much less per ton in the third world than in the West, the market for GMO is actually far stronger in the third world due to the existence of this far larger variety of "market demands" that GMO can address. Moreover, when the market demands are driven more by life-and-death rather than mere consumer appeal, any GMO solution for these kinds of endemic life-threatening problems is often a guaranteed monopoly on seed sales for that product for millions of customers. This makes GMO development for third world problems a win-win for both the third world people at risk of starvation, and the rotten greedy coin-counters at the big GMO developing seed sourcing firms.
