What would be the difference in price if Roundup and Bt corn ban

[VERN in IL]

Bt corn: BANNED
Roundup: BANNED
ETHONAL subsidies eliminated.

If this happened, what prices would we be looking at per bushel? I can only think of one significant cost, wider rows and running a tractor with cultivator twice per season.

[jwal10]

Why wider rows? Tractors run 30" rows. There would be a lot more passes across the field fitting the ground using a lot more fuel, oils and tires. A lot more equipment cost. A lot more chemicals used and many way worse than Roundup. A lot more soil loss from open ground. With roundup you can no-till and kill the weeds and grasses in 1 pass....James

[VERN in IL]

Jwal you didn't even answer the question. Wider rows are for soybeans.(no more drilling)

Would it be 3x what it is now?(or higher) Would "large corporate farms" be able to exist, or would they dissolve into smaller farm operations since they will be less efficient on large scale?

[arabian knight]

No matter how much, it will be Too Much. We need to keep prices low. And some ethanol plants are now switching over to BioMass as corn has gotten too high and now that is showing up at the pump in higher prices for gasoline then it should be at right now.

[Brighton]

Originally Posted by VERN in IL

Jwal you didn't even answer the question. Wider rows for soybeans.

Would it be 3x what it is now?(or higher) Would "large corporate farms" be able to exist, or would they dissolve into smaller farm operations since they will be less efficient on large scale?

Roundup didn't even work that well in my area this last summer for Soybeans, many of the farmers are going back to walking beans like we used to do.

[Ernie]

Originally Posted by VERN in IL

Jwal you didn't even answer the question. Wider rows are for soybeans.(no more drilling)

Would it be 3x what it is now?(or higher) Would "large corporate farms" be able to exist, or would they dissolve into smaller farm operations since they will be less efficient on large scale?

Let's see ... less poison sprayed into the environment, the elimination of corporate farms and a return to smaller, sustainable agriculture in the United States?

Sounds pretty good to me.

[DaleK]

Why would there be no more drilling beans? We were drilling beans for years before they were RR.

Methinks you don't know what you're talking about.

[sammyd]

why would banning roundup cause you to cultivate more?
Did you forget that chemicals were used long before roundup appeared?
I would buy stock in atrazine...

Let's see ... less poison sprayed into the environment, the elimination of corporate farms and a return to smaller, sustainable agriculture in the United States?

LOL try more poison sprayed and no dent made in corporate farming.

[PrettyPaisley]

I'm with Ernie. Corn has been so badly corrupted that we live without it here. Of course I buy corn-gas since I can't figure out how to strap a carseat onto a horse, but we don't buy processed foods for human or animal consumption. We've all but checked out of the corn/soy-mania created by the gov't and their bedding down with Big Chemical Ag.

To heck with all of it. I'm breaking my back to preserve some sort of balance here with bees and butterflies - planting weeds and crops that will attract them to a safe haven surrounded by monster machines polluting every inch around us with their toxins. Where is MY choice in all of this corruption ???

But I digress .... carry on destroying the world. I'll go hug a tree or something.

[farmerDale]

Originally Posted by Ernie

Let's see ... less poison sprayed into the environment, the elimination of corporate farms and a return to smaller, sustainable agriculture in the United States?

Sounds pretty good to me.

Because of gm, there already IS less poison being sprayed. Before gm, a wicked blend of many very toxic compounds were used, vs. much less toxic herbicides of today. Also, 95% of farms in the US and Canada, are family farms, the "corporate farm", is less of a concern than most think. Many family farms form a corporation for taxation reasons.

Finally, what about tillage and excessive fuel burning is more sustainable than no tillage and less fossil fuel usage?

What is the definition of "smaller, sustainable agriculture? Each farmer with three acres, using a hoe? Because long before gm came along, that kind of farming was a thing of the past. Connecting the two is kinda strange to me.

The internal combustion engine did much more damage to the idealistic, small farmer mantra, than gm ever did or ever will do.

[PrettyPaisley]

Originally Posted by Ernie

Let's see ... less poison sprayed into the environment, the elimination of corporate farms and a return to smaller, sustainable agriculture in the United States?

Sounds pretty good to me.

Had a conversation with a local grain farmer who thought it was sooooo funny that people pay him extra not to grow GMO soybeans. He lurved to brag about how much more pesticides he uses on their precious non-GMO feed. (Something to be proud of I tell ya.)

Sure - chemicals have been around long before glyphosate was sold like Big Gulps on every street corner but NONE of them did the damage to this planet is such a short amount of time. 100% of air and water samples contain this crap. So do you. Your body, the babies in your womb ... we are all tainted. And that is not something to be bragging about.

[Alice In TX/MO]

More herbicides in use now......

http://grist.org/food/roundup-ready-...ide-addiction/

[sammyd]

With roundup you can no-till and kill the weeds and grasses in 1 pass.

You can do no till with many chemicals it's been around since at least the 40's.

[Brighton]

Originally Posted by PrettyPaisley

Had a conversation with a local grain farmer who thought it was sooooo funny that people pay him extra not to grow GMO soybeans. He lurved to brag about how much more pesticides he uses on their precious non-GMO feed. (Something to be proud of I tell ya.)

Sure - chemicals have been around long before glyphosate was sold like Big Gulps on every street corner but NONE of them did the damage to this planet is such a short amount of time. 100% of air and water samples contain this crap. So do you. Your body, the babies in your womb ... we are all tainted. And that is not something to be bragging about.

Are you that young, you don't remember DDT??

[rambler]

Originally Posted by VERN in IL

Bt corn: BANNED
Roundup: BANNED
ETHONAL subsidies eliminated.

If this happened, what prices would we be looking at per bushel? I can only think of one significant cost, wider rows and running a tractor with cultivator twice per season.

1. Without Bt crops, we would use much more toxic and dangerous insecticides, costing a bit more per acre. This would use much more dangerous chemicals. You would expose farmers to lots more toxins. Those insecticides are nasty stuff, poo on those of you who think going back to them is some sort of progress.

2. Instead of $4 of Roundup per acre, we would spray 2 chemicals to do about the same job costing $28 an acre, but seed would cost $15 an acre less, so there would be a small increase in costs and a small increase in amount of slightly more toxic chemicals being used. We would return to using more atrazine, dicomba, 2,4D, Status, and so forth.

3. Ethanol subsidies ended 2 years ago. You gotta keep up, man, that ship sailed! Today we are exporting a good amount of ethanol to other countries, and with the lower cost of corn ethanol is a lot cheaper than gasoline, keeping the price of fuel down.


The net effect is grain/ feed/ food prices would go up a little bit, more toxins that tend to last longer in the environment would be used, and ethanol would continue to give Us all a small net energy gain and save us all some money, tho a tiny bit less since corn would cost a tiny bit more.

You didnt ask, but you would really affect sugar the most. Cane sugar is being abandoned by USA, it is more profitable to grow condos in Hawaii and the govt determined replacing the Everglades type environment is a good use of our tax money so sugar is being phased out of Folrida over the next decade.

We are left with sugar beets and corn sugar. Without Roundup beets, you would effectively end that crop these days. Before Roundup beets, they basically needed manual hoeing, they are not tolerant of very many herbicides. It would be hard to return all that manual labor to the cost of beet sugar, you would just end that industry.

Hope that answers your questions. I won't put a dollar amount on it, I think it would be small but noticeable increase in grain prices, and a rather large increase in sugar prices, with a very minor increase in ethanol prices.

Paul

[farmerDale]

Originally Posted by Alice In TX/MO

More herbicides in use now......

http://grist.org/food/roundup-ready-...ide-addiction/

The article there talks about glyphosate use. Yes glyphosate usage went up. BUT other herbicides went down. The article is written though, to make the uninformed believe ALL herbicide use went up. In reality, some, (glyphosate) use went up, while others went down, WAY down...

[Ernie]

I'm still fantasizing about that 3 acres and a hoe thing. Sounds like heaven.

Many of you are concerned with the profitability of agriculture ... but as I neither sell food nor buy much, those aren't really my concerns.

I would rather live in a world where people didn't feel entitled to put poisons into the air and water to keep from having to do the labor I do without complaint.

But ultimately, nothing your saying is incorrect. Without the monopoly of Roundup you'd simply have dozens of other equally toxic substances being used, because large scale farmers don't want to pull weeds or fight bugs and because food-buying America wouldn't pay them a living wage if they did so.

It's a multi-layered problem, but after these large-scale farms collapse and die then we will discover that 3 acres and a hoe would have given us a food-resilience to survive darn near any disaster that would have struck our nation.

A food resilience that just doesn't exist now with large corporate farms, monoculture, and toxins.

[potatoguru]

Reality seems to be pretty skewed for some of you. The world cannot be fed organically. There are seven billion people on this planet. GMO's and herbicides/pesticides are a necessity to feed those seven billion. Without it, so many would starve. Is that really what you want?

[Brighton]

Originally Posted by Ernie

I'm still fantasizing about that 3 acres and a hoe thing. Sounds like heaven.

Many of you are concerned with the profitability of agriculture ... but as I neither sell food nor buy much, those aren't really my concerns.

I would rather live in a world where people didn't feel entitled to put poisons into the air and water to keep from having to do the labor I do without complaint.

But ultimately, nothing your saying is incorrect. Without the monopoly of Roundup you'd simply have dozens of other equally toxic substances being used, because large scale farmers don't want to pull weeds or fight bugs and because food-buying America wouldn't pay them a living wage if they did so.

It's a multi-layered problem, but after these large-scale farms collapse and die then we will discover that 3 acres and a hoe would have given us a food-resilience to survive darn near any disaster that would have struck our nation.

A food resilience that just doesn't exist now with large corporate farms, monoculture, and toxins.

So what is a person, like me, who owns 160 acres, family farm for 7 generations, to do, alone other than put in corn or soy beans?

Should I just sell it, after almost a 150 years of hard work, and if I do another local farmer is going to buy it and do the same thing done on it now, or maybe someone would like to build a Condo Complex out here??

I have 5 acres that have been fallow for almost 6 years now, birds, rabbits and such live there, that is how I try to give back and honestly, that is the best I can do.

[rambler]

Originally Posted by PrettyPaisley

Had a conversation with a local grain farmer who thought it was sooooo funny that people pay him extra not to grow GMO soybeans. He lurved to brag about how much more pesticides he uses on their precious non-GMO feed. (Something to be proud of I tell ya.)

Sure - chemicals have been around long before glyphosate was sold like Big Gulps on every street corner but NONE of them did the damage to this planet is such a short amount of time. 100% of air and water samples contain this crap. So do you. Your body, the babies in your womb ... we are all tainted. And that is not something to be bragging about.

For those who want to learn more, most of what PP says here is totally wrong.

By all the science we have available today, Roundup is one of th safer chemicals used to kill weeds. It affects a part of plants that mammals don't have, so it really doesn't 'act' upon us. When sprayed, the chemical bonds very very tightly to clay particles and becomes an inert type of substance so it won't even affect plants. It then breaks down in a rather short 3 week period. Caffeine, that many of us drink every day, has a worse LDL rating than Roundup does. Some folks are very focused on Roundup having some sort of strange effects on humans, but no one can explain what it is they are talking about.

On the other hand, herbicides like 2,4D and dicomba (most dandy lion lawn weed and feed applications have one of these) and other weed killers have higher toxicity ratings.

Some like atrazine persist, or don't break down, for many months. And or are soluble in water, meaning they combine with water and are easily transported with rain and streams. (Remember, Roundup binds with clay bits, it is not so liable in water.)

So........

By all the tests we can do, know about, and so on, we find Roundup to be better for the environment, less persistent, less toxic, than most of the other herbicides we have used in the past, and still use some of today.

There are a few out there, unsupported, 'studies' that say Roundup is really bad for any and everything..... Dr Huber for one has a study he conducted that says roundup caused some new life form to be created and lives inside all of us and causes our DNA to break down. man, that is scary stuff! It makes headlines. That would worry me too!

But this Dr made his 'discovery' over 2 years ago, and since then he has gone on to make speaking tours for pretty good pay. Tho he claims his discovery is world altering; he has refused to share any evidence of these new creatures, or how to find them, or how he found them, or what they are, or where they are.... He hasn't continued his research. He just travels about making speeches for pretty big speakers fees...... Now if he really had something, and really was concerened about your health, wouldn't he want to share and expand his research, and help you and me?

In the past we have had so e problems with DDT, and 2,5T, and a few others. We didnt have the testing, nor the experience, nor the ability to test things to the billionth of a portion as we have now. I would hope we have learned some from the past, and are looking at things much closer.

I'm glad we have choices in our lives, and we can plant and grow and eat what we wish. I don't want anyone to change what they are doing.

But, most of what PP says here is just plain totally wrong, if a person chooses to look into the science of it.

Now, I know this is a hot topic here, and that all I have to say on this. Some folks run on emotion and 'what they read on the Internet' and well that is just how things are, god bless em, we live in a diverse and fun world.

Paul