Bill Gates, born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington, USA, is an entrepreneur, software engineer, philanthropist, founder of Microsoft, and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (foreign). He was chairman, CEO and chief software designer of Microsoft.
In 2000, Bill Gates founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2008 Bill Gates announced that he would donate $58 billion in personal wealth to charitable foundations. Bill Gates resigned as chairman in 2014. On September 29, 2015, Microsoft founder Gates topped the Forbes list for the 22nd consecutive year with a net worth of $76 billion. In November 2017, Bill Gates was elected as a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. In January 2019, he was selected by American Magazine as one of the "Ten Most Influential Thinkers in the World in the Past Decade."
"Farmer" Bill Gates
Super billionaire Bill Gates is known as a co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft, but in addition to that, he also has an identity that doesn't seem to match technology very well - farmers.
Over the years, Bill Gates has continued to buy land distributed across the United States through his controlled Cascade Investment LLC. The Land Report magazine noted in its "2020 Top 100 U.S. Landowners Report" that Bill Gates, as the leading U.S. farmland owner, owns a total of 242,000 acres of productive farmland in 18 states, including Washington, Illinois, Iowa, and California, ranking 49th in the ranking.
Source: The Land Report
The magazine commented, "Another identity of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is that of 'Farmer' Bill. ”
It's worth noting, however, that the crops that "Farmer" Bill cultivates on the land he owns are genetically modified corn and soybean crops that will become the underlying raw materials for ultra-processed foods.
The organic farming model is actually a "scam"
Bill Gates has made it clear that "replacing farm beef with artificial beef is the best way to reduce the amount of methane produced in animals." ”
He is also part of the investment portfolio of artificial meat company Impossible Foods.
In February, Bill Gates made a strong recommendation to replace beef with artificial meat in his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and Breakthroughs We Need. In an interview with MIT Technology Review, he also said that if people can't change their habits to make themselves accept and like artificial meat, maybe the law can.
In addition, Fortune magazine wrote that Bill Gates and Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown both believe that the "winning strategy" of agricultural development is to find ways to increase crop yields while reducing carbon emissions.
"Compared to organic farming, the right amount of GM crops is essential to reduce carbon emissions. He said.
Bill gates
"Nature" published a research paper: organic food is more harmful to the environment than traditional food, with carbon emissions exceeding 70%.
A new scientific study in Sweden shows that organic plants are more harmful to the environment than traditionally grown foods.
The study found that reducing the use of fertilizers meant that more land needed to be reclaimed to grow crops, resulting in a 70 percent increase in carbon emissions.
The authors claim that from a climate perspective, even organic meat and dairy products have a greater environmental impact than similar products that are traditionally produced.
The scientific study, published in the journal Nature, was led by researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.
Lead researcher Stefan Wirsenius, an associate professor at Chalmers University, said: "Our study shows that organic peas grown in Sweden have a climate impact that is about 50% higher than conventionally grown peas. ”
"For some foods, the difference is even greater – for example, the difference in the impact of organic winter wheat in Sweden is close to 70 percent," he said.
Their study found that organic food is much more harmful to the climate because yields per hectare are much lower, and this is mainly due to the lack of use of chemical fertilizers.
In order to produce the same amount of organic food, more and larger plots are needed.
Dr Wirsenius said: "The more land organic farming occupies due to deforestation, the higher the indirect carbon dioxide emissions."
World food production is controlled by international trade, he said, so the way we farm in Sweden affects deforestation in the tropics.
If we exchange more land for the same amount of food as traditional production methods, we indirectly fuel the arrogance of deforestation elsewhere in the world, he said.
He found that since organic meat and milk production uses organic feed, more land is needed to produce feed than traditional production.
"This means that in principle the results found on organic wheat and peas also apply to meat and dairy products," he said.
"However, we have not done any specific calculations on meat and milk, and there are no specific examples in the article."
The researchers used a new measure, which they call the Carbon Opportunity Cost, to assess the impact of larger land use on higher carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation.
This indicator takes into account the amount of carbon stored in forests, which leads to deforestation releasing carbon dioxide.
The study was the first in the world to use this indicator.
Dr Wirsenius said: "In early comparisons of organic and traditional foods, people often didn't take into account the fact that more land use leads to greater climate impacts."
"This is a major oversight because, as our study shows, the impact can be even greater than the greenhouse gas effect."
Sweden has set political goals in increasing organic food production.
Dr Wirsenius said: "If these goals are achieved, the climate impact of food production in Sweden could increase significantly."
Organic food is more harmful to the environment than traditional food, with more than 70% carbon emissions
"Organic" pesticides can also be toxic. As evolutionary biologist Christie Wilcox wrote in his 2012 article in Scientific American ("Is Less Pesticide Residue a Good Reason to Buy Organic Food?"). Not necessarily" explains: "The health risks posed by organic pesticides are the same as those posed by non-organic pesticides. ”
Organic farming is a scam?
Another lesser-known aspect of this is that the vast majority of pesticides we eat are "naturally" present in our diets, whether organic or non-organic. In a classic study, Bruce Ames, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues found that "99.99 percent of the pesticides in the American diet (by weight) are compounds produced by plants in self-defense."
Pesticides are often translated as pesticides, but in reality their role is not just to kill pests, but to include all the chemicals that help crops defend themselves against natural enemies, including fungi, insects, weeds, and rodents. 】
In addition, "the likelihood that natural and synthetic chemicals will trigger a positive reaction in animal tumor tests is equal." "As a result, consumers who buy organic foods to avoid pesticide hazards are simply focusing on 0.01 percent of the total amount of pesticides they eat."
Some consumers believe that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Organic Program (NOP) requires certified organic products to be free of "genetically modified" (GMO) ingredients, that is, crop ingredients modified by genetically engineered molecular techniques.
Wrong again. The USDA does not require organic products to be free of genetically modified ingredients. (In any case, the methods used to make so-called genetically modified products are nothing more than an extension or refinement of the traditional genetic modification method that has been used for a century or more.) As USDA officials have repeatedly emphasized:
Organic certification is process-based certification. That is to say, the certification body is responsible for determining whether the production operation of organic products complies with the production standards and operating practices required by regulatory agencies such as the Organic Food Production Act of 1990 and the [National Organic Plan]. If the organic production and handling process is fully compliant, then the mere residue of genetically modified ingredients does not constitute a violation.
In other words, as long as the farmer who produces organic crops adheres to his or her own organic system (production) plan (which must be approved by an organic certification body before the farmer is granted an organic production license), no amount of GM ingredients (or prohibited chemical synthetic pesticides) that are unintentionally incorporated will not affect the organic certification of the product or the farm.
Only in two cases will the USDA allow organic products to be tested for residues of prohibited ingredients (e.g., pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, or antibiotics) or for exceptions (e.g., genetically modified crops). The first case where the USDA National Standards for Organic Production support testing of a product is when a certification body believes that a farmer intends to use contraband or engage in prohibited practices. In the second case, the USDA requires certification bodies to conduct annual sampling of 5% of their certified production programs. The certification body determines the object of sampling at its own discretion.
The organic food community, including the International Union of Organic Farming Movements (IFOAM), supports the USDA's Relaxed Testing Agreement and opposes more frequent mandatory testing of prohibited and exceptional ingredients in products.
The organic food industry and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have given two explanations for such a small range of product testing. First, they emphasize that organic farming is process certification, not product certification. That is, for organic certification, the most important thing is the certified organic system (production) plan, and the willingness of farmers to comply with the plan reflected in the responsibility of keeping production records.
Second, extensive testing can significantly increase the cost to farmers who produce organic products, making it even more expensive for farmers of organic crops who are already paying high expenses. Farmers engaged in organic production will transfer high production costs by raising the premium of organic products, but when prices are high to a certain extent, consumers will switch to cheaper non-organic products.
Few consumers of organic food will realize that organic farming is a system based on "trust" or even "faith." Every transaction comes with a moral hazard that organic farmers can use low-cost non-organic products as high-priced organic products.
For the vast majority of products, there is no testing that distinguishes between organic and non-organic, for example, whether milk labeled "organic" is produced from a cow from an organic production system or from a cow in a traditional dairy farm fence. The higher the premium for organic products, the greater the economic incentive to cheat.
Think this kind of evil is only theoretically possible? Think again. According to a 2012 USDA report, 43 percent of tests on 571 samples of "organic" products contained banned pesticide residues, and "the results showed that some of the substandard samples were ordinary products that had been mislabeled organic, while the rest were contaminated with organic products due to inadequate protection." ”
How did the organic farmers who created such a scam get through the cracks? A 2014 Wall Street Journal survey of THE USDA's inspection records since 2005 showed that 38 of the 81 organic certification bodies authorized by the USDA to qualify for certified organic farms and suppliers of organic products "failed to meet the USDA standards at least once." ”
More precisely, "40 percent of the 81 certification bodies are labeled by the USDA as failing to fully perform their inspection duties; 16 percent fail to present potential use of banned pesticides and antibiotics by their certified organic farms; and 5 percent fail to prevent potential mixing of organic and non-organic products." ”
fruit
When it comes to the problem of trust and faith in organic food, or the problem of lack of trust and faith, there is an example worth mentioning, and that is the tall Whole Foods, which imports a large number of products that are said to be "organic" from China, not elsewhere. This even includes Whole Foods' self-operated brand, California Mix. (Yes, you read that right.) ）
Henry I. Miller, Drew L. Kershe表示：
Organic farming is an unscientific, heavily subsidized marketing trick that misleads and blackmails consumers, and the reason for this is ultimately due to the nature of food regulation, as well as deception. When you buy an organic product that is overpriced, the old adage of what you pay for no longer applies.
GMOs are more environmentally friendly?
Currently, corn and soybeans grown in the United States are mainly used to produce animal feed, and these crops are also considered to be major factors in the destruction of the atmosphere.
Some people believe that eating farmed meat means cutting down trees to make it easier for animals to graze. But often, the land of grasslands and trees is occupied by farmland to grow corn.
Livestock and crops are being embedded in a symbiotic system that mimics the best way nature works, and companies focused on agricultural technology such as Syngenta are using genetic engineering, biologics and other means to create hybrid wind- and flood-resistant drought-resistant crops, the "new agriculture" model that the industry is generally optimistic about.
In the view of Bill Gates and Pat Brown, GMOs are more environmentally friendly than organic farming. Now, for Bill Gates, having a lot of farmland will be enough to support him to develop many genetically modified crops to accelerate the promotion of artificial foods such as artificial meat that he favors.
In December 2020, when asked on a show about "whether eating organic food helps save energy and reduce emissions," Bill Gates immediately said, "No, organic produce requires more land than traditional farming." "If organic farming is promoted, it will cause the collapse of global ecosystems."
In a 2019 article, Brown mentioned that Impossbile is experiencing a soybean shortage due to its reliance on supplies from non-GMO farms. Moreover, unmodified seeds do little to prevent disease and force farmers to use more herbicides. GM crops can provide an adequate supply for Impossbile and help create the "beef texture" burger that consumers love.
"This allows us to scale up production to offer consumers the Impossbile Burger at the lowest possible cost, and the safest and most environmentally friendly option is genetically modified soybeans."
Bill Gates: Genetically modified foods are "completely healthy" and help solve global hunger
Bill Gates, the world's richest man and founder of Microsoft, believes that genetically modified foods are "completely healthy" and help solve the problem of global hunger.
On February 27, 2018, local time, when Bill Gates participated in asking Ask Me Anything (ask me any questions) on the US social news site Reddit, some netizens asked "Do you eat non-GMO foods, what is your daily diet". Bill Gates replied, "Look at it in the right way, genetically modified foods are perfectly healthy, and that GM is a technology that reduces hunger and malnutrition." I'm not going to stay away from non-GMO foods, but it's disappointing that people see non-GMO foods as a better option. Many netizens also commented and followed the question.
Bill Gates' approach to GMOs is in line with the vast majority of scientists in the field. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has also funded the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) for the development, promotion and application of genetically modified golden rice.
Previously, many authoritative scientific research institutions have carried out a lot of research work on these genetically modified products. The overall conclusions of these research efforts prove that GM foods that have been approved for marketing are absolutely safe.
The European Commission, which has spent 25 years organizing more than 500 independent scientific groups to participate in more than 130 scientific research projects, has concluded that "biotechnology, especially genetically modified technology, is no more dangerous than traditional breeding techniques". The World Health Organization believes that "it has not yet been shown that the use of GM foods by the general public in countries where GM foods have been approved has any adverse effects on human health." The International Council for Science also proposed that "existing genetically modified foods are safe to eat."
From 1996 to 2016, after more than two decades of commercialization of genetically modified crops, Wu Kongming, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, once said, "Such a long practice, such a large consumer group, in fact, did not find a case of eating genetically modified agricultural products caused any health problems."
Taking genetically modified crops as an example, due to the implementation of standardized, legal management and strict and comprehensive scientific evaluation in various countries, in the 38 years since its advent and 26 years of large-scale application, the global GM crop varieties, planting area, processed food types and eating populations have been expanding, and there has been no genetically modified food and environmental safety incidents with scientific evidence so far.
Therefore, it should be affirmed that all genetically modified crops that have been scientifically assessed and approved by law are safe, and their risks can be effectively controlled. The world's mainstream scientific community and the International Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Health Organization (WHO) and other authoritative institutions have pointed out in recent years that "genetically modified breeding is as safe as traditional breeding".
In fact, some genetically modified foods not only have no safety problems, but are also healthier than similar non-transmutation products. Recently, scientists through the past 21 years of genetically modified corn research literature meta-analysis (meta-analysis) believes that compared with similar non-GMO corn, genetically modified corn yield can increase by up to 24.5%. At the same time, the toxic chemical by-product mycotoxins contained in genetically modified corn crops have also been significantly reduced, and the toxin content can be reduced by up to 36.5% depending on the variety.
In 2017, the International Agricultural Biotechnology Application Service (ISAAA) released a report showing that from 1996 to 2016, GM crops were commercialized for 21 years, during which the cumulative planting area of GM crops in the world reached 2.1 billion hectares, equivalent to more than twice the land area of China, and farmers benefited more than 160 billion US dollars. In 2016, the global GMO cultivation area reached a new peak, an increase of 3% year-on-year.
According to the above report, as of 2016, there are 11 kinds of genetically modified crops commercially grown globally, namely corn, soybeans, cotton, rapeseed, sugar beet, alfalfa, papaya, pumpkin, potato, poplar, and eggplant. In 2017, genetically modified anti-brown apples were already available in parts of the United States.
According to international research institutions, U.S. genetically modified soybean production accounts for 93 percent of total U.S. soybean production. Most of it is used in the United States, where 47.2 million tons were consumed from 2012 to 2013.
In 2014, Martina Newell-McGraofflin, a professor at the University of California, Davis, said that 90 percent of processed products in the United States, as well as soybeans, sugar cane, corn, etc., are genetically modified, and there are currently one trillion people eating in the United States, and another billion livestock use genetically modified crops.
According to the International Agricultural Biotechnology Application Service (ISAAA), the United States is currently the largest producer of genetically modified soybeans. A 2011 study by Henry Miller, a researcher at stanford University's Hoover Institution, showed that Americans had consumed a total of 3 trillion servings of genetically modified foods in the past 10 years.
According to the American Grocery Merchants Association (GMA), 75%-80% of foods in the United States contain genetically modified ingredients. The United States is the world's largest consumer of genetically modified crops, the United States has approved the industrialization of 22 kinds of genetically modified crops, planting about 1.13 billion mu of genetically modified crops every year, accounting for more than 40% of its arable land, of which corn, soybeans, cotton, sugar beets and other genetically modified varieties are planted in more than 90%.
More than half of the U.S. GM corn and soybeans are consumed in the country, and 75 percent of processed foods contain GMOs. According to incomplete statistics, the production and sale of genetically modified soybeans, corn, rapeseed, tomatoes and papaya and other plant-derived genetically modified foods in the United States is more than 3,000 species and brands, plus foods derived from genetically modified microorganisms such as rennet, and more than 5,000 kinds of foods containing genetically modified ingredients are sold in the United States.
At present, China has only approved the commercial application of two crops, genetically modified insect-resistant cotton and genetically modified anti-virus papaya. China imports from abroad as processing raw materials, genetically modified soybeans, genetically modified corn, genetically modified rapeseed, and genetically modified cotton.
The Buffett family also often eats genetically modified foods
Bill Gates said his friend, buffett's family, known as the "god of stocks," also regularly eat genetically modified foods. He said at least 5,000 foods in supermarkets across the United States contain genetically modified ingredients. Corn is almost always genetically modified. "We don't deliberately choose whether it's genetically modified or not, because that's what the ignorant care about." Bill Gates said. He told reporters that although there are also a small number of people in the rich class who pursue organic food, most of the intellectual elite among the rich do not think about it. "Organic food doesn't necessarily mean health, it's just a hyped concept." "My family has been eating genetically modified foods for more than 30 years and I haven't felt wrong. It's not worth my concern at all. ”
Buffett
The intervention of genetically modified breeding technology in nature's natural selection is contrary to the laws of biological evolution. Is this really the case?
"Natural selection, survival of the fittest", organisms continue to evolve through genetic variation, from simple to complex, low to high, in natural selection to obtain a favorable position, to win the living space. According to agricultural researchers, the transfer of biological genetic material includes longitudinal transfer (transfer from parent to offspring) and horizontal transfer (transfer between different biological species) two ways, in addition to the longitudinal transfer of genes within the species, the horizontal transfer of genetic material between species, constantly breaking the original population isolation, is also an important reason for biological evolution.
"Transgenic technology is the frontier technology of biotechnology, whether from scientific principles or from long-term practice, especially the long-term tracking, evaluation, evaluation and monitoring results of international authoritative institutions, it shows that the safety of transgenic technology is controllable and guaranteed."
For Bill Gates, GMOs are the future of global agriculture.