Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Illegibly Eligible posted:

Where Monsanto is evil is their business practices. It really DOES harm food supply and fucks farmers over HARD. Say you want to grow Monsanto corn but not Monsanto tomatoes. Not gonna happen. Their licensing is so restrictive that it's virtually impossible to NOT grow their crops once you start. Oh, it turns out there's a drought in your area, so you want to switch from Monsanto's (water intensive) crops back to something else that needs a bit less liquid? Too bad, you're under contract for X years. Oh snap! Your Monsanto corn was cross-pollinated with non-Monsanto corn from the next farm thanks to honeybees. You now owe Monsanto ridiculous amounts of money for violating their copyright.

I would love to see a contract thats states this. Please provide that for me.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Divine Disclaimer posted:

No, my problem with Monsanto is that farmers should be able to re-sow their own seed, for practical reasons I consider more important than Monsanto's corporate profits.

Do you even understand the concept of hybrid seed? If you take a filial 1 hybrid that has a dominant trait that you like, what percentage of plants of filial 2 will have that trait? More importantly were your growing conditions last year the same as the growing conditions this year? Of course not. So why would you use F2 seed from last years growing conditions when we lost 100-200 growing degree days this year?

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Inaction Jackson posted:

Yeah, I think that a rational debate over potential problems with Monsanto's business practices needs to focus on information asymmetry. If farmers want to collect and re-plant seeds, then they can buy non-patented seeds. If farmers understand the benefits of a GMO seed and want to pay for the better product, it's pretty silly for us to act as if they are being forced to do anything.

Maybe an issue exists with farmers buying a GMO seed and either not understanding or never being told potential susceptibilities of the GMO plant. Or maybe being told untrue benefits. I have no idea if either has happened on a large scale, but that would be a good place to start if people want to demonstrate unethical behavior from Monsanto and/or push for regulations on how Monsanto sells their seeds.

Even information asymmetry doesn't make sense. We have land grant colleges that publish thousands of crop trials free to the public every year. We have county extension offices that hold conference's every winter to show farmer's new best practices. I am not buying that somehow monsanto is able to falsify peer-reviewed research at our land geant colleges.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Flowers For Algeria posted:

Except Roundup is not 100% glyphosate, but rather a mix of 40% glyphosate and other agents, including surfactants which are highly toxic.

EDIT : what I'm saying is just let's not start painting herbicides as "safe" for the environment or animals. Pretty much all herbicides are toxic, and Roundup is no exception.

Good news is that farmers buy glyphosate and other raw chemicals in bulk and mix it for their needs.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Illegibly Eligible posted:

Seriously, good bit of research you did there. While I lack hard information to refute any of what you've found, anecdotal evidence suggests Monsanto to be somewhat less benign than they imply. I don't feel it unfair to draw a rough comparison to the RIAA in terms of "douchebagginess" if even 90% of the stuff I've heard is entirely bullshit.

Still waiting for any evidence of your initial claims.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Forever_Peace posted:

They also knowingly (though I can't say willfully) flood the market with crops that punish every farmer who DOESN'T switch (and over the long term, even those who do) by drastically altering selection pressures that can breed pesticide-resistant weeds, pests, or secondary pests. Monocultures are dangerous, but it's important to note that this isn't an inherent problem with GMO's - a marketplace of competitive, diverse GMO companies wouldn't have this problem. It's clearly a problem of Monsanto's monopolistic business practice.

How does this punish farmers who doesn't switch? Glyphosate resistant weeds only effect farmers that use Glyphosate. Farmers that don't use Glyphosate actually end up better because the genetic pathways for Glyphosate resistant are not efficient. This is why there is a 5-10% yield drag on RR crops.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Anti science stupidly is leading to a resurgence in mumps, and measles.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Buller posted:

You can't seperate the industries scientific department from it's actions, just because whatever soybeans they are making might not be immediately destroying it's surrounding natural enviroment, we still have no idea what nature in many parts of the world will look like after interacting with GMO crops for xx+ years, not to forget that alot of groundwater have been destroyed by garden chemicals being sold over the counter for everyone to put in their yards.

Why are you worried about plants that are so poor to compete in "natural environment" that they require near constant human interaction to prevent them from collapsing under the weight of their massive fruit? Its like worrying about domesticated poultry with breasts so big that the birds can not naturally breed escaping and running the pheasant population extent or Chihuahua's escaping and having wolves go extinct. If corn and soy were not tended by farmers the fields would be overrun with weeds and grasses, just like the "natural environment" was in the great plains a thousand years ago.

:edit:

jesus loving christ are you really wanting to talk about the damage that tile drainage and tilling have done to our rivers?

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Buller posted:

It's not only plants its animals too, many animals have very specific habitat demands, so theres always the risk of extinction (local or global) when you alter nature. Not to say what unknown consequences there may be to animals interacting with GMO on a mass scale (Like the butterflies in China).

And that is why we should seek to heavily modify as little area as possible. This means we need to have crops that are modified and bred to convert as much energy as the plant gets from the sun into sugars and starches rather than trying to compete against other plants for sunlight.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Buller posted:

If there is a surplus of food people are just going to start producing more meat or cash crops, take a look at South America and their Soy Bean production.

We have to strive for a surplus of food. A surplus of food is a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. Btw you haven't responded to my post about the ecological damage done by traditional weed control methods like tilling.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Buller posted:

Alright i see, i guess in that case that Monsanto is a great company and opposition to reckless and unresearched GMO implementation and adoptation is ridiculous, thanks!

Not one person has argued that in this thread.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

acephalousuniverse posted:

I absolutely don't care about GMOs one way or the other as I've said before, but "we've acted recklessly and continue to act recklessly in countless numbers of ways, one more can't hurt!" does not strike me as a very good argument.

Please tell me how traditional tillage is not acting recklessly.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

acephalousuniverse posted:

Please tell me when I said it wasn't.

You seem opposed to methods that allow us not to till land.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Buller posted:

Why don't you tell us about those non-herbicide resistant crops Monsanto makes that go well with round up then?

Monsanto's high performance hybrids hold up pretty well against traditional amide herbicides like allidochlor, amicarbazone, beflubutamid, benzadox, benzipram, bromobutide, cafenstrole, CDEA, cyprazole, dimethenamid, dimethenamid-P, diphenamid, epronaz, etnipromid, fentrazamide, flucarbazone, flupoxam, fomesafen, halosafen, huangcaoling, isocarbamid, isoxaben, napropamide, naptalam, pethoxamid, propyzamide, quinonamid, saflufenacil, tebutam and tiafenacil.

Btw you still can use glyphosate on non-RR plants, you just need to be very judicious on their use.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Amarkov posted:

Also note that the US has taken some action against the problem. Bt resistance in corn pests is expected to evolve as a recessive trait, so Bt corn fields are required to have non-Bt corn planted nearby, under the theory that genetic drift will prevent an explosion in the Bt resistant population. It's almost like regulatory bodies respond to evidence of possible environmental harm :ssh:

That isn't required by regulatory bodies, it is required by Monsanto (obviously so they can sell more of their evil seed) and they will revoke your license if you get caught cheating on refuge.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

You can get corn with Cry1Ab and without PAT. Wou can also get corn stacked with Cry1Ab and RR.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Also because if you learn dialectics then you don't have to learn, understand or believe the underlying scientific concepts because you can argue that there is no such thing as "science" or "concept". Therefor kill your parents or something.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Sogol posted:

I don't understand this argument. Perhaps you could say more about how you imagine the dialectics promotes some sort of ignorance?

I was referred to a book in another thread I found very useful on this relationship between dialectics and science - "Biology Under the Influence" by Lewontin and Levins. It is essays and a pretty good read. Of course Kuhn is also a pretty good read and gets into this as well. I have just started re-reading "Towards a Rational Society" by Habermas which also deals with the question.

Don't come here, tell everyone they are wrong, then tell us to read books and then our eyes will be opened by the Truth. To paraphrase Einstein if you can't explain your argument simply you do not understand what youre talking about. I am not saying that the dialectic method promotes ignorance, just that YOU are ignorant on the subject matter because when pushed you have to retreat to the language of dialectics rathern than stating your argument.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Fake studies? Like computer science researchers publishing research showing that glyphosate may cause "inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, depression, ADHD, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, multiple sclerosis, cancer, cachexia, infertility, and developmental malformations."

http://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2013/04/discover-blogger-keith-kloor-stumbles-ne
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2013/04/26/when-media-uncritically-cover-pseudoscience/#more-11062

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

FRINGE posted:

Okay? That lovely article is rightly calling some bullshit articles ... bullshit articles. Complete with ($yay$) links to all his favorite people from one blog to the other. And...?

Did the bullshit article writers manifest a team of lawyers to take up their cause? Did their boys in the FDA and USDA start PRing for them? Did their State Dept contacts threaten someone on their behalf?

I can see where it is exactly the same. :downs:

This was an actual published bullshit article in a pay-to-publish journal IIRC, not a claim of a published bullshit article.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

I am still waiting for evidence that Monsanto locks farmers into future contracts. This would be news for the farmers in my extended family. They switched from Dekalb to Pioneer this year because there was such a late thaw and pioneer has better short season crops.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

I have no clue why anyone is surprised GM plants would have lower yields than their non GM hybrid parents. The plant only receives so much energy from the sun. Every bit of energy that is used to express bt and resistance to roundup is less sugar and starch for the plant. The question isn't if GMO seed is better than the top performing hybrid, it is if GMO seed is better than inbred seed.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

FRINGE posted:

That is good for you, me, and a handful of other people. Unfortunately it is as common on the pro-GM side to believe that they have magically elevated yields as it is on the anti-GM side to believe that they will cause you to lose a limb.

Hybridization is still giving us phenomenal increases in yields. Probably the best way to think about it is the current top performing GMO crops are probably the top performing performing hybrids from ~5 years ago. GM is to solve other problems, specifically weed control. Yes there are bt GMO's and bt GMO's are under all circumstances better than spraying bt. When you spray bt you spray indiscriminately hitting not only your fields but also the trees in your windbreak and forested areas that are near your fields. Getting back to weed control there are numerous ways to control weeds, but no good way to control weeds.

Traditionally tilling and burndown (with fire) is the oldest and the one probably considered the most "organic". Tilling destroyed the Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri and numerous other rivers, thousands of lakes and wetlands and caused the Gulf Dead zone. Btw we knew about the gulf dead zone in late 40s/early 50s. Very likely it existed before WWII. Tilling also destroys earthworms and organic matter in the soil.

Tilling is great for destroying weeds at the end and beginning of a crop season (and destroying rivers and wetlands) but it doesn't do poo poo for weeds that pop up after you plant. Traditionally you sent your slaves farm hands to go out and pick out all of the weeds. For some strange reason WWII vets weren't too excited to go back to the fields after their service and there weren't enough unskilled immigrants to perform all of this manual labor. That and we had a bunch of cool chemicals weapons developed under the guise of a herbicide program. Some of these chemical weapons sucked as chemical weapons, hell some were pretty close to non-toxic, but were great at killing some plants like the almighty 2-4-D. These were the first generation of what is considered "selective herbicides", they specifically targeted and killed broadleaf plants and left grasses like wheat, corn and barley alone. Downside is they still require tilling for killing off grasses. Also many of these selective herbicides tended to stick around in the soil more than we would like. A farmer couldn't really spray a longer lasting selective herbicide on their corn and then next year expect to have a good legume crop. You also can't use these selective broadleaf herbicides on broadleaf crops so they had some pretty big limitations.

By this point you should have the feeling that I am not too much of a fan the traditional weed control method of tilling. Oh I forgot to mention that it also caused the dust bowl. It is the most destructive farming practice ever invented. And Organic farming relies on it. "Oh there is no-till organic" No there isn't.

http://extension.psu.edu/plants/sustainable/news/2011/Sept-2011/4-org-no-till posted:

So far none of the organic no-till systems being tested are continuous no-till. They are instead “rotational no-till”: tillage is avoided entirely in some phases of the rotation, but is used sparingly in others, often to establish cover crops in fall. Nonetheless, tillage is drastically reduced. For instance, Dr. Matt Ryan, a postdoctoral researcher at Penn State, estimates that tillage operations in a three-year organic grain rotation can be cut from 24 tillage events to just 9 using the roller-crimper system.

Tilling 9 times over a 3 year crop rotation is not no till.

Thankfully there is an option that will allow us to have true continuous no-till (not the bullshit 9 times over 3 years organic no-till). That is the non-selective herbicide. Unlike selective herbicides like Glufosinate and everyone's favorite Glyphosate. They killed all plants. They killed all plants fast. They killed all plants fast while having a short half life in the soil. The non-selective herbicides allow for TRUE continuous no-till (not the bullshit 9 times over 3 years organic no-till). Downside, they kill all plants, except the genetically engineered ones which I guess isn't a downside. The downside is you have to deal with Monsanto and Dow, but that is better than calling tilling 9 times on a 3 year rotation "no-till".

karthun fucked around with this message at 09:59 on Jul 5, 2013

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

FRINGE posted:

From what I understand, so far, weed (and pest) control can be mitigated partially by mixed-crop planting, in that certain plants repel certain pests and work to synergisticly aid one another in preventing the kind of "plague" that can easily ruin a monocrop. (Sure, there is no help for corporate monocropping aside from the lovely practices we currently see.)

Two things, first mix-crop planting can do good against some pests but broadleaf weeds can still destroy a crop. Secondly please stop with this monocrop bull, it makes it really hard to take you seriously. Monocrop hasn't existed since the 70's. Best conventional practices are for crop rotations. Every farmer I know practices crop rotations.

quote:

As well as the smaller scale permaculture practices seem promising moving-towards-actual ideal.

We disagree on small permaculture gardening practices being an ideal for farming.

quote:

So far as: "'Oh there is no-till organic' No there isn't.", I have seen first hand that the practice works. The one (very small, single family, 3/4 acre out of 5 cultivated + 1 greenhouse) plot I have been on is on its 5th year so far. If it is going to fail, it is certainly not happening yet. (This is including the clearing of an invasive grass over the first two years.)

I am curious why you are saying that these do not exist? :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming#Management


I know that you were explicitly referring to:


... but that does not mean that the other practices do not exist. What the article you linked said was that: "So far none of the organic no-till systems being tested are continuous no-till. They are instead “rotational no-till”"

A) Labor intensive practices that work for a garden will not scale up for a farm. B) Have you ever used a shovel on your garden?

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

V. Illych L. posted:

Bit late, but this is perfectly good. There is a real possibility that there may be a risk in ingesting the product; thus, it is labelled. What I'm talking about is the generalised labelling of GMO products as such, which has up 'till now been the main area of discourse in my own country on the issue.

To chip in, I really don't think apologising for a company that has abetted some of the most grotesque war crimes in modern American history by stating that other big corporations also completely lack any sense of decency is a good strategy. In a society of aristocrats that murder serfs at will, an aristocrat killing a random serf is still really lovely.

I have to continuously combat nuclear-GMO-vaccination paranoia in my own party, so I share a lot of frustration with the "pro"-Monsanto people here, but I really don't think "you are stupid and wrong" is a good starting point. It's like the historical luddites - the movement started out with a perfectly accurate observation (industrialisation only enriches the wealthy at the expense of ordinary people), and chose a futile and ineffective response to that. Redirecting the focus from simple destruction to an appropriation - from "fight industrialisation" to "make industrialisation serve us rather than those bastards".

At least this is what's worked for me, working within the radical left. If you're working from anywhere else, your mileage may vary.

The risk argument is exactly why I can't buy into labeling. Right now there is one mutation for every 10 - 100 million letters of DNA. Corn has 2 billion base pairs and 32,000 genes. Every generation of corn there could be as many as 200 new genes that have never been expressed in nature before. Yes I know that it is not likely that a single mutation will not lead to a new gene but lets just assume the worst case. And you are worried about EPSSP instead.

If labels go on GMO food I want labels on all food, including organic, that say "The corn in this product may contain up to 200 new mutated genes that have never been expressed in nature before. These genes have never been tested for safety and you eat the product at your own risk." I want that label repeated for every single crop that is in the foodstuff. You still willing to take that trade?

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

V. Illych L. posted:

If there's a possibility of a product containing peanut proteins which could realistically be allergenic, labelling it as such is a matter of public health, whether that is because it's a GMO or because it's been worked in the same process as peanuts. I, uh, don't see that this should be controversial.

That isn't controversial, and that is the current practice in the US. Infact if DNA from a major food allergen were to be used in a GMO crop, say a wheat gene in corn, then the corn product would have to be labeled as containing wheat. The entire GMO labeling controversy isn't about labeling peanut genes being used in other crops, it strictly about labeling GMO foods just for being GMO.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

V. Illych L. posted:

Yes, and as previously stated I'm of the opinion that labelling GMOs as such is silly.

Reading again, you might not actually have disagreed with me initially, making this a rather odd tangent.

It does sound like we don't disagree. That being said I have talked to people that don't realize that if the DNA comes from a known allergen then that must be labeled. It doesn't help that the anti-GMO community has been less than honest about their reasoning for GMO labeling.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Jesus loving christ. I am honestly dumbstruck.

http://www.morgellons-research.org/morgellons/agrobacteriumAndMorgellonsFull.pdf

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

KomradeX posted:

Is this post for real? Like holy poo poo that seems like something someone making a straw man would say, like holy crap is saying you don't trust evolution kind of goddamn surreal.

I don't trust evolution, or to put it better natural selection. Artificial selection has done humanity much better. We don't want our grain crops expending energy competing against each other for sunlight when that energy could be better used to grow more seed.

quote:

Personally I find myself neutral about GMOs, I think they have a great potential, and theres no reason that they can't be implemented along with other farming traditions, crop rotation etc,etc. The problem becomes if we're going to continue forcing monoculture everywhere, not just the Third World though it is particularly damaging there. Christ this isn't an all or nothing concept, yeah Anti-Vax and Fluoride people are crazy and annoying, but the sociopaths that run the global market I'm gonna say are worse than a bunch of misguided hippies, which why aren't we beyond using that as a pejorative yet?

Monoculture? Again crop rotation has been a conventional farming best practice for the last 40 years.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Hypha posted:

This is a really strange post. Grain crops already actively compete with each other, it just doesn't matter cause of yield compensation,canopy closure and the ability of the farmer to nutritionally compensate. From a disease perspective, modern farming definitely can be defined as a monoculture on a rotation by rotation basis but environmental effects are more nuanced. Also, not all crop rotations are inherently good for the environment but sometimes you gotta take advantage of the economic situation.

Grain crops actively compete against each other, but natural selection that leads to the most fit wheat is not necessary going to be the most desirable for cultivation. Secondly if it is on a rotation by rotation basis it isn't a monoculture. Also considering the requirement of refuge for GMO crops one really has to stretch the concept of a monoculture to make it fit. It isn't the 70's anymore where you plant the same corn over and over again. You will be running multiple cultivars per field and changing your cultivars every year.

quote:

Plants don't give two shits about us but natural and artificial selection go hand in hand. Many genetic characteristics relied upon were not actively selected for and some of them have turned up to be insanely profitable, such as with the Clearfield system.

Wheat ALS pesticide resistance wasn't naturally selected. New genes were created by human intervention and we eventually came up with genes that worked. Weeds that have pesticide resistance, now that is natural selection.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

hseiken posted:

I think that's splitting hairs, to be frank. Obviously the milk will not contain the hormones injected into the cows, presumably. But it was still an indication that the financial impacts were what Monsanto were worried about as far as the labeling which supported my point that the pseudoscience people and organic crazies think there's dark mysterious meaning to these lawsuits.

I don't think consumers really think a lot about what goes into their food in this respect, but it seemed as if Monsanto was battling on exactly what you said: The milk products were identical. However, some people do not want to buy products with such science applied to them and I think that's a right they should be able to exercise. Whether they're superstitious, against bio-engineering or what ever their issue is, it's a consumer right to know exactly what you're getting. One can choose to ignore it if they want, or they can be anal, but the choice isn't there until the label reflects such differences in production.

But yes, this is delving into the 'rear end in a top hat vegan bullshit' side of things...and that's a place no one cares to visit. Food Nazi's...the only people you should be weary of when eating out...Luckily, most restaurants provide the silverware before the food, so you have a stabbing utensil ready when they start talking to the wait staff.

And people have been able to buy labeled milk is from cows not treated by rbST sense 1994. What you can't do is lie an say that your milk is hormone free or that your milk is rbST free. If you are going to label your milk you have to follow the federal and state guidelines just like every other food label.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

BottledBodhisvata posted:

That said, Monsanto is loving evil as all goddamn hell and they rule this country's agriculture supply with an iron fist.

Monsanto had revenue of 11 billion in 2011, Cargill had 130 billion. ADM had 89 billion. CHS had 40 billion. Mosaic was about 11 billion. Thats about how much of an "iron fist" Monsanto has, Cargill will just spin off a subsidiary like Mosaic of equal size. I bet you have never heard of Mosaic, and you sure as hell haven't heard about CHS.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Hypha posted:

That is a pretty harsh statement and I would argue that its premise is wrong, presuming you mean environmental sustainability. There are plenty of techniques which allow you to positively contribute to improving the environment while still increasing yield, such as beetle banks and various intercropping arrangements. There are definitely options though which cannot be considered in an organic system and I would argue there are measures which are counter-intuitive to what organic agriculture should be trying to achieve but the research is still out on that question. From a producer standpoint, as I understand, you can be pretty pragmatic about what works for you and what doesn't. The consumer side of things has a sort of cult thinking, which probably explains the price point we are able to demand. Organic produce, my risk assessment alone, should cost more but organic wheat at $3 a pound at the farmers' market feels like stealing.

Ya, no. What can work with massive amounts of manual labor on a 4 acre hobby garden will not scale up to 640 acre farm. Instead organic farmers rely on the tried and true method of weed control, tillage.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Hypha posted:

So what is your point? Farming "organically" is like stepping back 90 years, so farmers are going to have to rely on tillage, fallowing and a very strict crop rotation. You can still farm a major operation "organically". It is definitely riskier and there will be a lot of problems with weed and insect control but on a good year, your pay-out is larger. I do not mean to defend all the bullshit that people add to organic production, there is a lot of methodology that does not make sense. To say that cultural techniques are scientifically unsound though is objectively wrong; tillage does control weed and pathogen populations. Numerous scientific studies support that cultural control does work. You do not need all kinds of chemical inputs to farm, it will be more effective though if you do. To say that it is impossible to farm today without drowning everything in chemicals is incredibly misinformed, almost as much as those that claim that organic systems will overtake the yield of conventional systems.

E: Not that I am responding to you specifically that you implied that cultural control is unscientific. Every technique I do talk about though, I only understand from a 640 acre farm perspective. I don't do hobby farms.

Sigh... It was the conventional practices of 90 years ago that hosed up the Mississippi river and caused the dead zone in the Gulf. It was the conventional practices of 90 years ago that caused the dust bowl. And these are the failed conventional practices that are implemented broadly on "organic farms". Honestly I don't like to call a thing like Earthbound Farm to be a farm. Btw there is the future of your organic movement. Large megacorporations with tenant farmers. gently caress that poo poo and gently caress the organic movement.

Btw I never said that cultural techniques are scientifically unsound and objectively wrong. But you can quote me on saying that scientifically unsound practices, like 90 year old conventional practices that hosed up the Mississippi river, the Gulf of Mexico and caused the god drat dust bowl, are absolutely objectively wrong.

karthun fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Oct 10, 2013

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Hypha posted:

Yes, you are exactly right. Conventional tillage has a whole host of problems associated with it and poor agronomic practice has lead to irreparable damage. Proper application and restraint though, will not suffer these issues. Zero-till technology also is not available for every cropping system to date. It is not like the methodology we use today has stayed stagnant in regards to cultural techniques. The point remains that weed control is still very much possible without herbicides.

Because HM Capital gives a royal poo poo about proper application and restraint. You have far too much faith in faceless corporations, absentee landowners and tenant farmers to make good long term decisions rather then just what ever it takes to make a quick buck.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

It takes about 10 calories of fossil fuels to produce each calorie of food we eat. Pesticides and fertilizers are made from fossil fuels. In 1994, it took 400 gallons of oil equivalents to feed each American broken down as follows:

31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer
19% for the operation of field machinery
16% for transportation
13% for irrigation
08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)
05% for crop drying
05% for pesticide production
08% miscellaneous

And too much of the grains we eat go to feeding livestock instead. People are eating way too much red meat, which not only means less food for humans to eat, but also increase the effect of global warming. We can't continue intensive farming on heavily depleted soils as the norm. It is not sustainable.

What pesticides and fertilizers require fossil fuels to make them? Ammonia, the inorganic fertilizer you posted about, only requires hydrogen and nitrogen.

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

This website basically says that nearly all of them are in some way petroleum based. Also, this idea that ammonia only requires atmospheric hydrogen and nitrogen is incorrect. (I bolded the part relating to fossil fuel use and the Haber process.


e: drat, forgot to link another really really good paper by Dr. Julia Wright, who has studied this for almost 30 years:

http://books.google.com.ec/books?hl...epage&q&f=false

The Haber-Bosch process is simply 3 H2 + N2 → 2 NH3. Why is petroleum required for this process?

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

What do you think is the main source of the diatomic hydrogen? It's methane gas

That is only because methane gas is the cheapest way to produce hydrogen. The real question needed to be asked why do you think it is impossible to use other sources of hydrogen?

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

You're being intentionally obtuse. I never claimed it was impossible; I'm aware that Haber himself used electrolysis for his source of H2 in his early experiments. But I think humans will likely drill every single oil well dry before electrolysis is ever used again.

You JUST said that "this idea that ammonia only requires atmospheric hydrogen and nitrogen is incorrect". I will let your silly atmospheric hydrogen statement pass, but the Haber process is LITERALLY 1 part nitrogen, 3 parts hydrogen (by volume) at 400 degrees C and 200 atm with an iron catalyst. There is no reason why this can not be implemented using current technology using electrolysis. Or something MUCH more intresting.

karthun fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Jan 13, 2014

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

karthun
Nov 16, 2006

I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

You JUST SAID that you need to add heat to have the Haber reaction, these substances do not randomly turn into ammonia in the presence of one another, you need heat and pressure.

Also, wow, you are kind of a douche.

I don't consider heat and pressure to be a major obstacle rather than the raw feedstocks. An electric oven in self-cleaning mode hits 500 degrees C. If you would like to make an argument about the pressure requiring fossil fuels, please proceed.

  • Locked thread