We think very differently and it's obvious we're not going to agree or convince one another.

Nobody is saying you cannot eat different things...

...until GMOs have cross bred with all main heirloom varieties. With all other technology you can recall the product if there's an issue. Not with GMOs. This is why I see it as a mass experiment, when the genes are out they are out of our control.

Nope, nothing useful here. Just horrible companies making these horrible things that have taken 90 percent of the corn market, and are being voluntarily bought and used by everyone involved.

For as much as I appreciate the sarcasm, the statement makes no sense. Consent requires knowledge. When GM foods are slipped into the food supply without labels no choice is being made by the end consumer. GMO awareness is only picking up in the last few years. Let's label them and then see how many rush to buy them. If you were referring to farmers preferring GM, I am sure GM crops are a lot more convenient to farm. You just sit on your tractor all day fertilizing, tilling, sowing, spraying, spraying, spraying, spraying and harvesting. And depleting the soil year after year irresponsibly.

The biggest cognitive dissonance of the bio-tech argument is that GMOs don't need labelling because they are "substantially equivalent". Yet, on the same breath they claim that GMOs are different enough to be accepted at the patent office. Which is it? Are they equivalent or not?

Nothing to do with GMO crops.

Precisely. You don't see one mention of the need of GMOs to feed the world. Because it's not necessary. As I said, it's a problem of political will.

The patent is not on the living organism, but on the specific, artificially created, gene/crop that creates that organism.

This is a mute point. The technicality of patenting doesn't change the reality that it affects the whole GM seed, which can only be used after paying royalties.

If it isn't sustainable, then as it grows to a critical mass, farmers and researchers will find new and better ways of growing food.

Or, we can be truly smart and come up with something that is sustainable and resilient which empowers people instead of corporations. I'm sorry but I find this extremely short sighted, especially in the presence of current environmental challenges. I would understand this train of thought if we had no food and there really was no alternative. But since there are alternative methods for successfully growing food without chemicals and GMOs, it seems foolish to not pursue those first.

Nothing in human history has been sustainable.

Yes, and this is why there is the train of global environmental catastrophe rushing down the tracks at incredible speed, while we mock about a technology that is not needed to solve the problem at all. Besides we should learn from the past and try not to repeat its mistakes.

People are a hell of a lot smarter, and a hell of a lot more adaptive than I think you are giving us credit for.

I give credit where credit is due. Centralizing food production is far from smart, it's a recipe for disaster. Resilience exists in diversity. If one variety fails one year another variety will survive. 97% of crop varieties went extinct during the industrialization of agriculture. The expansion of GM will further reduce the genetic pool by replacing varieties which are still being grown. There are currently dozens, sometimes hundreds of varieties of most common crops. We will need to preserve this genetic diversity for hard times ahead. Not in seed banks but by promoting the farming and gardening of all different and rare varieties.

The world is advancing to where we no longer need nature, and where we, as a species, will do away with it.

I'm not sure if you're joking or just trolling. This statement could make sense if you were writing from an artificial, self-sustained biomme in some alien planet, and even then you'd have to have at least some plant life which you must have gathered somewhere else. As it stands everything we have (and that keeps us alive) comes from the environment around us. We have detached ourselves from the wilderness, we live in concrete boxes, buy food in packages and look at shiny backlit screens but we are as dependent on nature as we've ever been. The opposite isn't true however.

You may see beauty in technological advancement, I see beauty in diversity, harmonious eco-systems, pristine water bodies and soil alive with micro-organisms and fungi, most of which we still know nothing about. Let us study and understand the inner workings of nature, which carried us where we are today and work with it to carry us into the future. Or it'll leave us behind.