> It is the anti-GMO activism that created the problems you mention ["Golden
Rice"]

Anti-GMO activism is not the issue - Golden Rice simply is not going to do
what it is claimed to do for people so malnourished, they have sub-minimal
Vitamin A.  It is not activism to say that something does not solve the
problem, moreso when the problem is malnutrition.  It seems cruel to
disparage the practical analysis as "activism" when the analysis is directly
saving lives, and improving health, and doing so for a wide range of
problems, malnutrition included.

> and the consumers could then decide on the benefits.

This truly "misses the point", as it presumes that malnourished people could
afford to BUY rice.  They can't - they plant rice in small subsistence
holdings from gleaned or saved seed.  The "consumers" that CAN buy rice from
3rd-world nations are EU consumers, where "anti-GMO activism" is official
government and trade policy, and not considered "activism" at all.

> Christina, have you actually spoken 
> with starving farmers in those countries.  
> In many, women do most of the work...

It would be very rare to speak to any starving people.

I've also not taken up the time of anyone starving, but I also did work on
Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA) projects in the 1970s and even
then there was a clear focus on teaching the women to (for example) fix the
water pumps, as men would never haul water, and would not be motivated to
fix the pumps to save the women the extra work of hauling water from, at the
time, very unsanitary rivers.  This has become less true since the 1970s, as
traditional roles have faded, and women are less oppressed than they were.
Cheap radios and PSAs and education in the form of soap operas have educated
women on everything from birth control to food sanitation.

> But you mention that the
> Africians can now not sell to 
> the EU,  so what your saying 
> is a GMO has forced the nations
> to keep the food at home

What the GMOs did was force extra-time and extra-cost steps like grain
milling to avoid any chance of contamination.
It was the USA that had the rice export problems, and no surprise, the GMO
rice was not donated to food banks, so the USA is no better than the
"Africans".  But imagine the gravity of the choices that these 3rd-World
leaders face - hardship now over the short term, or a long term economic
disaster... which does more harm?

> a quick review of yields of most crops will show a quite linear climb in
the last 3 decades.

The first GMO in 1994, was Calgene's unsuccessful Flavr Savr
delayed-ripening tomato. In 1996, Roundup Ready soybeanswere introduced
followed by corn in 1998.  But you say "3 decades, which goes back to the
1980s.  How do we account for the lack of any change in the rate of yield
increases after GMOs became common?  Could it be that the GMO crops (corn
and soybeans, mostly) are not the primary factor?

> It is much easier to help the third world 
> by not interfering with their tried-and-true 
> methods of agriculture,

> the tropics + limited resources = top bar hives.

In regard to both farming and beekeeping, I must disagree.

Exhibit A: Honey Care Africa
http://honeycareafrica.com
Where modern Langstroth Equipment is provided to beekeepers, and a
percentage of their honey sales goes to pay off the equipment.  As the
harvestable honey is increased in both quantity and quality with the
elimination of ad-hoc horizontal hives made of junk, and the less sanitary
harvest therefrom.  It turns honey into a true cash crop, and that is a rare
thing.

Exhibit B: Indian Cotton
http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp01170.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/yb54qz2t

As I mentioned before, hybrid non-GMO varieties, increased fertilizer use,
improved irrigation and other management improvements turned out to be the
primary source of the rising yields in India, rather than the GE traits.
Clearly, "tried and true" can be improved upon, but this does not imply that
crops must be GMO as a part of the effort.

So, yes, modern techniques are a good thing, but GMOs have not proven
themselves in controlled studies to be worth the collateral damage they do.
Maybe Peter's commercial papaya's are an exception, I don't know, but I do
know that papayas grow wild in abundance in most all of the subtropics and
tropics, and I've never seen any serious problems with them.  They are
plentiful, and colorful, but very very bland unless you let them ripen after
picking until they look rotten (a week or so).  These are something you can
pick on every walk of longer than 5 minutes in most tropical areas.  So the
problems solved by the GMO product seem to be limited to one area, or
limited to commercial production.

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