Reddit Reddit reviews Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food

We found 11 Reddit comments about Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Science & Math
Books
Agricultural Science
Agronomy
Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food
Oxford University Press USA
Check price on Amazon

11 Reddit comments about Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food:

u/wrensalert · 56 pointsr/pics

GMO is so good for struggling farmers, unfortunately some uninformed idiots think it's bad and dangerous but they don't know any of the facts. It's inevitable whether you try to stop it. it's coming, and it's a good thing. For further reading,

Here's Bill Gates, talking this year about GMO foods, breaking down why it's a good thing.

In the video he recommends a book called Tomorrow's Table

Also, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter H. Diamandis

It's written by the guy that started the X prize, he's an MIT professor and Harvard MD.

He basically says GMO foods are gonna change the poor parts of the word for the BETTER and goes on to describe the harm that kooks are causing trying to stop them.

u/morsecoderain · 35 pointsr/skeptic

I really like Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food by Pam Ronald and Raoul Adamchak. It's written by a husband and wife team—the husband is an organic farmer, and the wife is a rice geneticist. I found it to be a good primer on genetic engineering and the basics of organic farming. They take the position that genetic engineering and organic farming are both tools that should be employed in the future of agriculture.

u/crushendo · 20 pointsr/todayilearned

US Davis is huge in plant genetics. One of their professors, Pamela Ronald, is a world expert in plant genetics and GM technology. Fun fact: her husband is an organic farmer and they wrote a book together about biotechnology and organic farming.

u/PandaLover42 · 10 pointsr/IAmA

Very good summary. The article's author, Pamela Ronald, also wrote a book called Tomorrow's Table. It's perhaps the most fair discussion of the GMO issue out there. In short, she advocates an organic, sustainable agriculture industry, utilizing GMOs only when necessary to reduce pests/disease/chemical sprays. But don't take my word for it, the book's probably available at the library, and it's a quick read.

u/pwoolf · 7 pointsr/Fitness

Actually avoiding GM soy is pretty easy if it bothers you. US organic food standards prohibit GM products. About 90% of the soy products I have access to at my grocery (soy milk, tofu, tempeh) are organic and as such not GM.

This said, I know of no clinical evidence that has shown any health difference of GM vs non-GM. There is speculation about allergy potential (say for Bt corn), but I've seen no convincing data to support this link.

If you are interested in a detailed discussion on the topic, you might check out the book tomorrow's table It was co-authored by an organic farmer and a plant geneticist. It provides a well thought out, more scientific description of the pros and cons.

The big upside that few people tend to recognize is that GM foods are a very promising way to allow us to grow way more food, food that is much better for us, and at the same time have less environmental impact. Not all GMs provide these benefits currently, but the technology has the potential to do this good.

As an example, imagine if we could grow corn in Ethiopia that would be rich in B6, contain tons of balanced protein, be resistant to drought, insects, and fungus. Many of these innovations are possible and are likely part of our future, but they won't happen without engineering the genomes of these crops.

u/Pierce28 · 3 pointsr/NCSU

I was a freshman in 08 as an engineer (graduated now). I forget what our summer reading was, but I never heard of it prior to moving in, never read it, and still got my A in Eng101 and it was never mentioned. I may have gotten lucky. If your summer reading is mentioned in classes, I doubt it would be in E101, but instead your required general electives like Eng101.

However, sorry if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're awfully peeved about the cost of the book. Is this book it? If so, if you're upset about $13.63, just wait until your calculus book. Or physics clickers. Or every other cost associated with college.

My advice - pay the $13.63, read the book, and be ready to start your college career off on the right foot. Engineering isn't easy, so making sure you do well in your first classes is critical in cementing that GPA before later classes that are far more difficult.

u/JamesAGreen · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

GMO food crops that can be grown in an inherently "organic" way. Although current systems exclude GMO crops from being labelled as such because people are scared of the recombinant aspect of biotech crops, there is nothing inherently juxtaposed about the science of organic farming and genetically-modified crops. In the future we will have a greater focus on GMO tech that increases yield/nutrition/flavor without having to dump herbicides/pesticides on the field. An awesome book about this: http://www.amazon.com/Tomorrows-Table-Organic-Farming-Genetics/dp/0195393570

u/MennoniteDan · 2 pointsr/farming

If you haven't read Tomorrow's Table I highly recommend doing so. Balance of approach is the future agriculture.

u/Hexaploid · 2 pointsr/environment

>Here are a few articles about examples of GM crops promoting superbugs and superweeds:

There is no such thing as 'super' pests or weeds. That is a misnomer. There are weeds resistant to herbicides, yes, and pests resistant to the plant's GE defenses, yes, but they are neither super not new. The first herbicide resistant weeds were documented two decades before GE crops were on the market, and resistance breakdown (when a pest overcomes a plant's resistance) happens as a result of simple evolutionary biology and has no bearing on the origin of the resistance. It happens in non-GE crops as well, so if your argument against Ge crops is that the same laws of population genetics apply to them as apply to every other crop, you're against a lot more than just GE and should take up a stance against conventional breeding as well.

>Well-managed organic practices can reduce pest damage naturally without sacrificing yields.

Well, first off, citing the Rodale Institute on organic is like citing Monsanto on GE. Second, false dichotomy. Organic is a method of growing things. Genetic engineering is a way of improving a plant. The only wedge between them is ideological, not reality based (some say both should be used). That, really, is the biggest problem with organic. It's ideology, not science. There's nothing wrong with biological techniques, in fact, the world would be a lot better off it the could replace chemical based ones, however, that does not mean that the dogmatic organic approach is the right way to go, nor is an appeal to nature is valid, and furthermore, genetic engineering is a biological technique. Third, what happens when things are run not well but average? Here's the (study) referenced in your second link by the way.

edit: I should probably add that I'm not trying to dismiss the dangers of resistant weeds and pests, just that they are a poor argument against genetic engineering itself (also, they're dangerous because they threaten to take away the benefits GE has already provided, so to use them as an argument against GE is to start out admitting they have been very useful).

u/_goodnewsevery1 · 1 pointr/GMO

http://grist.org/series/panic-free-gmos/

It is a series of articles about GMOs written by Nathanael Johnson. It is really well researched and written.


Also, this book: Tomorrows Table, by Pamela Ronald and R. W. Adamchak. It is written by a GMO researcher and an organic farmer who are married. Written with a lot of good citations, and very accessible to a lay person. Link: http://www.amazon.com/Tomorrows-Table-Organic-Farming-Genetics/dp/0195393570/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408658213&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=tomorrow%27s+tabe


Well done taking the first steps to educate yourself!