Well yes, it's a discussion about the problems and benefits of genetic engineering. An entirely different topic within the US are farming laws, which you have written, and I agree, an even bigger monster than genetic engineering cannot and should not solve. Coupled with that are global trade laws, water rights, and run-off regulations. You've also got the straight: "How, as a farmer, should you plow, sow, and grow a patch of land?" All of which must be solved first, and independent of figuring out how to get the most, year after year, out of that patch of land.

And that's not even getting to what you do with the crop once it's been harvested.

My point isn't to sympathize with big-ag, it's to defend technology that still holds a lot of promise. Hell, Golden Rice isn't even controlled by a for-profit nowadays.

We're dealing with more than a "PR nightmare" we're dealing with selfish and impure actions by large corporations that view the subjects of their benevolence with apathy at best and ill will at worst.

You're also dealing with thousands upon thousands of independent researchers at hundreds of universities across the world. You might as well say all medical research is bunk because pharmaceutical companies profit off the pill in the end. I'm not exactly sure what the anti-vax reference is for, though. Jenny McCarthy's sole scientific reference was retracted long ago and the ill will of the CIA has little to do with the medical merit of vaccines.

So whether or not "rice gruel" is a balanced part of a basic 3rd world breakfast, "rice gruel and a little sweet potato" solves the problem more handily than "Golden Rice Gruel, a Syngenta Product, All Rights Reserved, Void Where Prohibited."

That is also a valid solution. But here's a word from a researcher on the matter:

Everybody in the field agrees that the ideal solution is for people to diversify their diet and to simply eat well. However that’s exactly the crux of the matter: People are simply too poor and in some cases they do not know enough about nutrition, either. This means the question is a bit akin to the purported suggestion by Marie Antoinette to “let them eat cake” – if they could they’d be probably more than happy to do so. While it is a horrible thing that millions and millions of people still live in poverty, there’s no denying that this situation will only be solved slowly over the coming 1-2 decades (or at least I very much hope it will be solved). This leaves those who cannot afford a sufficiently diverse diet out in the cold for the time being. Clearly, they deserve our attention and the help society can give.

There's also a comment with regards to hammer nail:

This means what can be an optimal mix of the various interventions in one country may not be the best use of resources in another. However, this makes it the more important to have as many different tools available as possible, so decision-makers in each country can use the strengths of one intervention in one setting to complement the strengths of another intervention in another.

Look, I also think it's dumb as fuck that modern Western civilization has basically thrown out all agricultural history in the name of bushels. And yeah, BP funds biofuel research. And, yeah, Monsanto representatives attend synbio conferences. But to counter your idiom with another, "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater".