Monsanto Ordered to Pay $289 Million in California Roundup Cancer Trial

a reply to: TheRedneck

There are already alternatives to Glyphosphates and neonicitanoids and actually best food is truly organic food anyway, it is a little tiny bit harder for the farmer and weeding by hand is a time honored back breaking tradition but of course it also create's job's so on the whole an upside there if more expensive for some of the already nearly bankrupt farmers so that is were government SHOULD step in to ensure national agricultural policy's are backed up with government subsidies.

Take my country the UK, in the past hedge rows which have been decimated by idiotic EU policy's and field size directives as well as the use of chemical's such as roundup were a breeding ground for life such as bird's and insect's many of which preyed upon those insect's which preyed upon the crop so a healthy field using the old fashioned rotation method was also a balanced eco system in miniature.

The food we produce organically we now know is actually far more nutritious as well.
www.npr.org...

There are also claim's that the pre-conquest south american cultures may have produced up to sixty percent more food than is even produced there today and of course that would have been organic and natural techniques of farming (if you overlook there backward blood ritual's and offering some poor soul's heart to there sun god's and rain god's etc).

Pros' and con's are many and yes modern farming techniques are cheaper, can produce more intensive crop yields per field and of course are less labour intensive BUT the food is simply not as healthy, less labour intensive mean's less people employed in agriculture and the harm it does to the natural ecological balance is devestating *.

* but remember that 'natural' balance is often not really natural at all but the result of generations of intense farming practice and adaptation of species to the ecological niches it provided as in the old hedge rows of England etc which state side is not really the case so not sure if that argument is applicable.

a reply to: LABTECH767

There are already alternatives to Glyphosphates and neonicitanoids and actually best food is truly organic food anyway, it is a little tiny bit harder for the farmer and weeding by hand is a time honored back breaking tradition but of course it also create's job's so on the whole an upside there if more expensive for some of the already nearly bankrupt farmers so that is were government SHOULD step in to ensure national agricultural policy's are backed up with government subsidies.

If you're arguing that hand weeding is an alternative, I'm sorry, that is not a scale-able solution. It's fine to weed a garden by hand, but when one is talking about thousands of acres, it is simply impractical. Even if there were enough unskilled workers to do the job, the cost to the farmers would be prohibitive and equate to drastically higher food prices, and any lack of labor would lead to food shortages.

Roundup has a fairly safe history so far as Montsanto chemicals go... there are simply things one needs to do to prevent overexposure to concentrated solutions.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

Fair point but I was being dry humored there, in the old day's the farm workers would work from before sun rise to after sunset every day of the week with less than half an hour break at lunch time so not a job I would wish on anyone.

The fact is though that hardier NATURAL not GM crop's bred over generations were able to compete with the weed's until the modern practices upset the ecological balance and getting back to that former state of affairs would not be easy, indeed it would require hand's on work until it was restored.

Monstanto and there new parent company though bare in mind are pushing a model were they want to sell you weed killer AND they want to sell you THERE GM seed's so they don't want you to use traditional variety's because it is not in there business plan, there weed killer is actually often damaging to those traditional variety's as well and the GM version's they are producing are often TAILORED to work alongside it so that farmers are then locked into using them in perpetuity as there suppliers of both seed and chemical's.

Now remember this GM is NOT all good, some may very well be good and better than natural but a lot of it is likely to have side affect's and those traditional crop's grew up alongside there human farmers and the community's that relied upon them for there staple diets' so they are tolerated perfectly well by the human body and quite often MORE SO by the population native to the region were they are grown, these GM replacement's on the other hand are NEW to the human body and are perhaps NOT tolerated as well by the body's of these people especially in third world country's were Monsanto and Bayer are forcing there wares onto the farmers and therefore upon the resident populations of those region's.

So what I am saying is that these company's are doing stuff that does not only affect a small area of one nation but is affecting the entire planet, the entire ecology of the planet and with growing evidence that this is actually in an adverse manner are they in any way at all ethical in there practice.

a reply to: LABTECH767

In the interest of fairness and truth...

Monsanto does not actually encourage farmers to buy their GMO seeds. They literally require it by contract. For large farmers to be able to make a living they need to enter into a contract with Monsanto to buy their seeds and pesticides, otherwise they run a huge risk of a single disease wiping out a year's crops... and the farmer. The profit margin on farms is extremely low when one considers the value of the land. The family members I have that farm all those thousands of acres make a good living... but that's about it. They're not rich, but I'm sure they have millions of $$$ tied up in land, equipment, etc. And they still work from sun-up to sun-down.

On the other hand, while there are serious concerns about some GMO crops, natural is not always better. Those nice ears of corn you see in the grocery store? They're about 4 times the size of a "natural" ear of corn, and have at least twice the kernels per area. I've seen some of the older corn crops from when I was younger, and they're barely edible. Onions are another food source that, if not developed, would be nothing like what we see in the stores today. We have definitely improved both quantity and quality of our food through our genetic research.

Don't misunderstand my position; I love heirloom varieties, primarily because they allow the time-honored tradition of saving one's seeds for next year. But even being heirloom doesn't mean they are actually natural... most heirlooms are simply not modified to the point that the seeds cannot be used the next year. Incidentally, I have grown beans and potatoes from those purchased in the grocery store... everything is not hybridized to the point most think they are.

That's not to say all GMO is good. Some of it removes important nutrition from the food. Some of it can actually create food that has toxic effects. It depends on the crop; just stating that GMO food should be avoided in all instances is a poor position to take, akin to supporting starvation and population control. A much better position is to look at each crop individually and make a determination from there.

Sort of how I look at pesticides.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

I am actually Not anti GMO just cautious about it.
As you rightly point out most variety's even the heirloom/traditional variety's are usually hybrids, indeed one of the quirk's of history that is often used to put an angry bee into some archaeological argument's is that the cotton used by the native american's to make there textiles BEFORE Columbus supposedly discovered them was actually a hybrid of old and new world cotton's.
So it's not only food's.

We are a strange species, we burn most of our food to chemically alter it and make it more digestible to us which no other species does and we hybridize and selectively breed both animal and plant stock over generations to make it more suitable to our need's, all that GMO really is when all is said and done is just bringing this tradition of human alteration of our environment into a more modern format using modern science.

The danger is that we can indeed make mistake's doing this, create a crop that is highly beneficial but becomes an nuisance weed and spreads out of control invading other eco systems for example or a crop which can be naturally cross pollinated with wild species and so create hybrid's that have property's which may be undesirable.

But genetic modification on a leash, well regulated and with genuine high ethical standards is most definitely beneficial on the whole, but accident's will happen and it is of course like all science open to abuse especially were profit is concerned.

It would be naive to think we could turn back the clock now and also would we really want to, as you rightly point out population growth is going to happen and we have to feed those people, we have vast tract's of arable land which are currently uncultivated around the world, some of it is too far north, some too dry, some has poor soil and others has too wide a variety and extremity of season's and weather so hardy GM crop's if they are properly designed are not only a life saver they are actually essential.

My real bone is the pesticides and the danger of rogue accidental cross pollination of crop's with undesirable outcome's.

a reply to: LABTECH767

I am actually Not anti GMO just cautious about it.

I consider that to be a wise position to take.

To address the rest of your post, yes, mistakes will happen... but that would happen anyway to some extent. The genie is out of the bottle. If I plant a few rows of corn in my garden, there's always a chance that some of the GMO Monsanto corn will cross-pollinate with it. There were actually some threads on here a few years back about Monsanto trying to sue gardeners for that (which was one of the more ridiculous ideas I have seen, which is why I remember it). That kind of activity is the real disaster that is Monsanto.

I am concerned about pesticides as well, and rarely use them myself. I can say I have never come into direct contact with Roundup... never used the stuff. I simply understand that it has achieved a reasonable safety rating based on family reports, and I know it is a blessing for farmers economically. Monsanto getting sued out the yin-yang? A good thing IMO. It happening over Roundup? Not so good...

TheRedneck