...until GMOs have cross bred with all main heirloom varieties

Again, seven years.

Patents will expire before GMO's become anywhere near so prevalent that you cannot find seeds that are not GMO.

Consent requires knowledge. When GM foods are slipped into the food supply without labels no choice is being made by the end consumer.

When I said choice, I was talking about farmers. Consumers really don't have much of one when nearly every product you can buy is GMO. Of course, you can find and grow your own stuff still.

GMO awareness is only picking up in the last few years. Let's label them and then see how many rush to buy them.

Yeah, just like gluten free and organic foods. People will believe anything they are told, and bending to these stupid crazes does nothing. GMO's do not need special labeling, although more information is always better.

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.

If this were true fields would not grow year after year. Farmers aren't stupid. They know how to keep a field's soil in a way that keeps it fertile year after year. Heck, farming is nearly down to a science at this point.

How much do you know about farming by the way? You an expect? You ever spoken to a farmer? Ever bothered looking up the reasons behind the practices? Or are you just jumping on the social bandwagon of how horrible these GMO's are, how the unnatural farming techniques are making us unhealthy and stupid.

Meanwhile, the only real negative farming practice is the US government's subsidy of corn. Even then, that practice has it's own benefits.

As to talking about the patents, my point was that no patents means no GMO crop at all. They wouldn't exist to complain about if no companies could patent them.

Or, we can be truly smart and come up with something that is sustainable and resilient which empowers people instead of corporations.

Magic flowers will power the world, cure all toxins, and feed people with almost no need for water at all. People just have to be truly smart to come up with them.

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.

Capitalism and cost is a proxy for the amount of work to produce a product. Do you think farmers would use GMO's if there were more expensive? Do you think society will be more productive when we go back to a third of the world being farmers rather than less than a percent?

No. The fact of the matter is that our modern system of farming is better than a decentralized one. Perhaps that will not be true when global warming hits, or if something else goes down.

And, if it does, people will change. When it is best to produce food at home, people will do so rather than going out and buying food. That is how capitalism/markets work.

Yes, and this is why there is the train of global environmental catastrophe rushing down the tracks at incredible speed

I am only aware of 1) overfishing, and 2) global warming that are things that are looking to actually be catastrophic.

Look at the ozone layer, look at when rivers in the US ran red. Look at how much more we can do, how far we have come.

Do you really think we are less prepared to deal with our environment now than we were in the sixties? Do you really think human society isn't smart enough to change? The only real issue with overfishing today is the nations which refuse to regulate. The vast majority of the world actively creates quotas and is trying to preserve the environment. People are, have been, and will continue to be, smart enough to not destroy the environment to the point that we can no longer survive.

The number of wind farms has gone up far faster in recent years than the number of coal plants. Things are changing. There are suspicions that the cheap price of gas is because Saudi Arabia fears the coming end of oil, and wants to sell as much of it as they can before it's no longer used.

The age of fossil fuels is rapidly headed to an end. Humanity will persist, we will survive, and we will continue to thrive. Not by being back-asswards and fearing technology, but by embracing it.

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.

Why not in seed banks? Isn't it best to have the diversity in storage where nothing can learn to infect it?

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.

Hunters and gathers relied entirely on the environment

Farmers captured and controlled plants, build homes, and retreated from nature without needing caves

Modern society has massive complexes, cities, areas where nature only exists within the contexts of where it lives on us, or despite us.

When I say "nature" I am talking about the natural ecosystem humanity was born in. Not plants and animals. As time passes we take more and more under our control, and learn to better and better control it. An issue like global warming, one that exists over the entire climate of the entire planet, being recognized and being planned for is a huge sign of how we have shifted over time.

Yeah, we still rely on nature today, but that will come to change should we stay on the course we are on. I have my own hopes that our reaches into space will be the "wright brothers plane" of the environment regulated and controlled entirely by mankind.

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.

No body of water is more pristine than those we purify for our cities. As for diversity of life, and what we can learn from it, I agree that it should remain preserved within reservations until the day comes that we can truly have studied all of live, and are able to surpass what evolution can create for us within our own ability to create and test new genetics and life.

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.

History has not fared kindly to all those creatures that relied on nature to keep them alive. Nature will have a fit one day and kill us all if we don't stop it from doing so.

Or it'll leave us behind.

I am sure the dinosaurs would agree.