Could Monsanto Destroy Irelands Farmers

SiegfriedsMum wrote: »

I don't even know what creationism is, so think it unlikely I "believe" in it.

Are you just going to ignore the points I made in response to your last post?

you wrote:

Are you not aware that something like 98% of all species which ever existed on this planet no longer exist?

you wrote:

For example, the Irish potato which was around in times of famine was a pretty disgusting specimen, and new and better varieties have been developed since then which are much more drought resistant too. Someone might well have said in the 1860's "oh what a shame to develop new varieties of potatoes as they could potentially wipe our our existing variety", but that would have been pretty silly.

you wrote:

To be honest, if Monsanto wants to spend its own money on debunking others, or on looking for life on Mars, then that's their concern and it causes me no issues what they spend their money on so long as its legal and decent. If you think thats the real problem, then I disagree.

you wrote:

We live in a capitalist society where the making of money is useful for paying people's salaries, paying tax and so and so on. What's wrong with making money especially if the way one makes money is by helping others?

Last year's drought took a big bite out of the two most prodigious US crops, corn and soy. But it apparently didn't slow down the spread of weeds that have developed resistance to Monsanto's herbicide Roundup (glyphosate), used on crops engineered by Monsanto to resist it. More than 70 percent of all the the corn, soy, and cotton grown in the US is now genetically modified to withstand glyphosate.

• Nearly half (49 percent) of all US farmers surveyed said they have glyphosate-resistant weeds on their farm in 2012, up from 34 percent of farmers in 2011.
•92 percent of growers in Georgia said they have glyphosate-resistant weeds.
• It's spreading at a faster pace each year: Total resistant acres increased by 25 percent in 2011 and 51 percent in 2012.
• More and more farms have at least two resistant species on their farm. In 2010 that was just 12 percent of farms, but two short years later 27 percent had more than one.

So where do farmers go from here? Well, Monsanto and its peers would like them to try out "next generation" herbicide-resistant seeds—that is, crops engineered to resist not just Roundup, but also other, more toxic herbicides, like 2,4-D and Dicamba. Trouble is, such an escalation in the chemical war on weeds will likely only lead to more prolific, and more super, superweeds, along with a sharp increase in herbicide use. That's the message of a peer-reviewed 2011 paper by a team of Penn State University researchers led by David A. Mortensen. (I discussed their paper in a post last year.)

corn and soy farmers will likely have to muddle along, responding in the same way that they have been for years, which is by upping their herbicide use in hopes of controlling the rogue weeds

For a good idea of what's in store, check out this piece in the trade mag Corn & Soy Digest on "Managing Herbicide-Resistant weeds." Here's the key bit—note that "burndown" means a complete flattening of all vegetation in a field with a broad-spectrum herbicide such as paraquat, an infamously toxic weed killer that's been banned in 32 countries, including those of the European Union:

For those with a known resistance problem, it’s not uncommon to see them use a fall burndown plus a residual herbicide, a spring burndown before planting, another at planting including another residual herbicide, and two or more in-season herbicide applications. “If you can catch the resistant weeds early enough, paraquat does a good job of controlling them. But once Palmer amaranth [a common glyphosate-tolerant weed] gets 6 ft. tall, you can't put on enough paraquat to kill it," [one weed-control expert] says.

But of course there's another way. In a 2012 study I'll never tire of citing, Iowa State University researchers found that if farmers simply diversified their crop rotations, which typically consist of corn one year and soy the next, year after year, to include a "small grain" crop (e.g. oats) as well as offseason cover crops, weeds (including Roundup-resistant ones) can be suppressed with dramatically less fertilizer use—a factor of between 6 and 10 less. And much less herbicide means much less poison entering streams—"potential aquatic toxicity was 200 times less in the longer rotations" than in the regular corn-soy regime, the study authors note. So, despite what the seed giants and the conventional weed specialists insist, there are other ways to respond to the accelerating scourge of "superweeds" than throwing more—and ever-more toxic—chemicals at them.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

This is the text of bill HR933 that you are referencing (section 734, bottom of page 34 here).

Now, while it is very verbose and a little hard to follow, nowhere does that actually say that federal courts cannot ban the sale or growth of crops no matter what the health consequences. What it says is that if a crop, that is already legal, is put under re-review by a court, that it does not have to be destroyed while waiting for the re-review to be finished (again, because it has already been approved). I don't see the problem with that, in general.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

For instance, if the courts wanted to re-review the safety of a certain make of car, I wouldn't expect all the factories to shut down and all the cars in dealers lots be destroyed before safety concerns are confirmed.