Recent World Food Prize, where one of the winners is Robert Farley, chief technology officer at Monsanto is drawing protests. From my reaction in Faceook :
I think that Monsanto's aggressive marketing brought bad name to the science part. Probably we have to consider case by case where these worked and did not work. Glenn Davis Stone has written about BT cotton with reference to India. The final conclusions in his blog Field Questions seem to be that there may be benefits but they are overblown http://fieldquestions.com/2013/02/09/bt-cotton-is-failing-blame-the-farmers/ In the blog, if you go to 'About the author', it has links to Stone's papers which also have links to some basic information on GM technology.
About BT brinjal, so far the reports that I found convincing are negative.http://www.gmwatch.eu/files/Andow_Report_Bt_Brinjal.pdf
I started feeling that finally it is politics and money and it is difficult to stop these things ( I think Monsanto is in some some advisory committe to Indian government on agriculture), and am not following the news as much as before. I think that GM food merchants found it difficult to penetrate Europe and have been focussing on the third world. Some of the powerful politicians in India are pro GM. In spite of Jairam stalling BT brinjal, probably there will be a comeback of GM foods without adequate research.
I think that Monsanto's aggressive marketing brought bad name to the science part. Probably we have to consider case by case where these worked and did not work. Glenn Davis Stone has written about BT cotton with reference to India. The final conclusions in his blog Field Questions seem to be that there may be benefits but they are overblown http://fieldquestions.com/2013/02/09/bt-cotton-is-failing-blame-the-farmers/ In the blog, if you go to 'About the author', it has links to Stone's papers which also have links to some basic information on GM technology.
About BT brinjal, so far the reports that I found convincing are negative.http://www.gmwatch.eu/files/Andow_Report_Bt_Brinjal.pdf
I started feeling that finally it is politics and money and it is difficult to stop these things ( I think Monsanto is in some some advisory committe to Indian government on agriculture), and am not following the news as much as before. I think that GM food merchants found it difficult to penetrate Europe and have been focussing on the third world. Some of the powerful politicians in India are pro GM. In spite of Jairam stalling BT brinjal, probably there will be a comeback of GM foods without adequate research.
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