Genetically Modified Foods, nothing to fear

I'll say it like this....GMO's, robots, computers.....do away with the need of many peoples lively hood. I wonder how many people would still be at Ford and GM, how many families would still be on the farms and in the fields....how many bookkeepers and clerks would still be working......I wonder sometimes if the human race won't progress it's self into oblivion....
I'm afraid I like to see folks working together....not large corperations dividing and seperating till there is only one farmer, small business man, one artisan left to conquer
As to planting and the control of seed stocks......who has the right to outlaw non gmo seed...or the act of planting and harvest......it's the birthright of man for millinia...Beware of anyone that desires control of the air, water, or food .....once they get the bits between their teeth they'll be hard to handle

FALSE!

A great number of farmers are growing crops without any herbicides or pesticides. We use neither of either. Farming works just fine without pesticides, herbicides, antibiotic feeds, hormone injections, etc. There are a lot of people out there farming naturally and organically. No need for you to spread lies.

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

Sure there are a lot of farmers who are organic. But on a small scale it is oh so easy. Some types of organic are easy to do. Others are impossible to do well and effectively.

I am still waiting for a response above on the one little quarter section of flax production. As I assumed, there has been, and I am sure will not be a response to my question, because most people have no clue frankly how it could be done, much less have seen a flax field. Yet they espouse that people like me are toxic poison to the world. I find it ironic that those, (not you Walter, I love what you do, I really enjoy your blog and your pork knowledge!), folks make assumptions about things of which they have no idea about...

Raising small grains organically, is impossible on any kind of scale is my point..

Imho, anyone who is GMO averse should treat all foods that aren't grown and processed completely at home, as GMO positive.

I can understand people wanting to 'know'. Not knowing isn't good, so, in my book, the only way of getting around not knowing is accepting that everything edible is indeed GMO'd.

Until Joe and Betty Average take up this issue, it'll not get traction. Those of us who question the safety are in the minority, as in micro minority... Ask your Aunt Bertha, that doesn't have internet, if she even knows what a GMO is... odds are, if you ask a guy, it'll be isn't that some a brand of car...

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Well, glad to get that out in the open... This tells me you don't use organic methods - or at least something totally unrecognizable that doesn't sound like any organic farming I've heard of. What you describe sounds more like the conventional farming model that developed in the last century which has been robbing the soil.

It helps to have both livestock grazing and crop growing happening on farm. They build on each other. Additional species of animals work together for a better system.

I use sustainable organic methods. I do not till my soil. I build soil by selection of species and livestock grazing. I plant legumes and other things to build soil. I fence and shape our hills to self-terrace and collect the rain water, slowing it so it can soak into the earth. My land is my bank account and I build it, improving it's nutrient levels. It works very well for us.

Sorry it didn't work for you. Without knowing a lot more about your mistakes I can't hazard to guess what you did wrong. Transitioning takes time. It doesn't happen in a day or a year.

Aye, I'm talking about 70 acres of grass/legume pastures pastures plus kale, rape, pumpkins, sunflowers, beets, sugar beets, mangels, turnips, sunchokes, etc on which we graze chickens, ducks, geese, sheep and about 400 pigs sustainably breeding through finish. The only feed we buy in is winter hay. We use 'waste' dairy (whey) to complement the pasture.

We've been doing the pigs for a decade - that's our main income source with weekly deliveries of meat. We're successful enough with this that we are building our own on-farm USDA/State inspected meat processing facility so we'll then have everything on frame - vertical integration from growing crops and pasture for feed, to breeding, to farrowing, to raising the pigs, to slaughter, butcher, sausage links, smoking and other value added items. Getting there is a slow, gradual journey. Things don't happen over night.

It can work. It takes time to figure systems out and get infrastructure setup on pasture, get species mixes going well. Develop markets and loyal customer bases. Don't give up.

We also have about 40 acres of maple sugar bush and then forest land where we do sustainable timbering.

It all keeps us busy and off the streets.


To bring this back to the original topic: What I don't need is a bunch of Mønstersanto lawyers telling me I can't use my seed, that they own patents on my animals, etc. They didn't create life and their patents rest on too much previous art. If their pollen contaminates my crops then they owe me big time. I don't need them, their pesticides, herbicides or GMOs.

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

You hit on my point precisely. On a small scale, and with certain farming types, organic is pretty easy to do. 70 acres of land is small and manageable, and what you are doing is fantastic... With millions and millions of acres of grain, it is not anywhere near feasible, sustainable, or efficient.

Waiting on that organic prescription for 160 acre of flaxseed. Anyone???

Yes and, of course, the whole point of creating round up ready crops is to be able to spray more round up. I don't know how anyone can say that GMO food aren't grown with more round up, thats the whole point of "round up ready".

Look people, its common sense...would you drink round up? No? Then why would you want it soaked into your food? Anyone who thinks this won't greatly increase the risk of cancer and other diseases is absolutely lying to himself.

I understand the point of this message is to say the simpler life is better.

But, I think it says much more, and explains the problems of the world, including the gmo issues.

Far too big to even try to explain, but this - inadvertent toy - is one of the best messages I've read here.

It explains how we all want something different in life.

It says how we long for the easy life, while wishing things were like the old ways.

How we want others to behave differently than we behave ourselves.

Nice message, it explains things clearly to me.

Paul

More glyphosate, not in terms of rates applied, but simply over more acres: but MUCH fewer, much more nasty herbicides that were previously used. One thing you will never hear probably from the anti crowd, is about the clean water, soil saved, and the positive environmental impact that not having to rely on tillage has given our land.

Some people have drunk glyphosate to prove a point. It is a salt. A SALT!!!

Do you know how glyphosate was discovered as a weed killer? It was being used in water treatment ponds to tie up organic sludge. It was found that spilled glyphosate killed weeds very well. Roots and all.

Finally, it is not on your food. It is sprayed on the crop at a very young age, at a rate of less than half a pound an acre. The crop, which is inserted a soil bacterium gene to break it down,(remember the water treatment discovery?)

People need to know what happens to a herbicide 80 days after application. It does not just stick on the plant and translocate to seeds. It is DIGESTED within the plant. It is digested in the soil.

It is not sprayed on the seeds. There are rules regarding preharvest intervals to allow more time to fully be digested.

Bottom line: Older, much more potent herbicides DID stick around longer. Many were intentionally soil applied, and in a sense sterilized the soil to prevent weed emergence. Todays herbicides are much more easily broken down. There are dozens of different kind of herbicides. Glyphosate is only one of them.

Gm crops allow for FAR less total herbicide useage.

I know farmers tilling hundreds of acres (usually corn/wheat/beans or sometimes hay) certified organically. No, they do not no-till, at least most of the time they do have to use conventional tillage (meaning not no-till) to plant their crops. Many of them plant cover crops, which improve the soil and help suppress weeds. They also use manure to build the soil since they can't use conventional fertilizers. There are a few of them who are using a new method of no-till by growing small grains (usually rye) as a cover crop, then letting the rye get tall, then rolling it over and planting behind it (usually soybeans). Here's an article about it.

For me it all boils down to property rights. Healthy or not, if your patent protected GMO corn wind pollinates my blue corn and the seeds are now legally yours- I'm ----ed!

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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H.L. Mencken

If you really knew what you were talking about, you would know that your food isn't soaked with roundup.
It is usually sprayed long before any actual food shows up, and even before it is planted in a lot of instances.

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Deja Moo; The feeling I've heard this bull before.

Raising small grains organically, is impossible on any kind of scale is my point.

I'd like to respectfully disagree. I have raised many acrs of oats, wheat, rye, and winter peas, and oats and winter peas mixed........no pesticides.....my father never used pesticides....never needed to except on truck crops and tobacco.

As to fertilizer....I've backed down from 200lbs of dry nitrogen to less than 100 on my oats, due to having oats be so heavy they lodge bad. We've cut over 100 bushels with the higher fert. rates and around 60 to 75 with the lower. If I had access to enough safe natural fertilizer......I woundn't need to use the fertilizer I do.

If you tend and nurture your land,your land can nuture you. Most folks don't want to work today...they don't want to walk out in a field and pull up the six hills of wild mustard, pig weed, or croatalaria....they let the next generation of seeds mature and dispurse through the field. They don't have time, or the economic indepence to plant green manure crops or let the land lay fallow a season.

A strong healthy soil grows healthier, rowbust crops. It's hard to explain....maybe best compared to raising a child....If you feed it Ramen noodles, cheap pop, cheap artificial juice, is the childs health and system going to do as well as a child fed healthy balanced meals.....If a child sits in front of a television, never has much exercise, left to raise their ownselves.......will they be as healthy and agreeable as children that are taught to think, play, and live life in a real world. The land is a living thing too.....soil was not meant to be a sterile, dead, medium to support a plant...in truth it's a source of two of the items humans find nessecary for life....nourishment and water

Not necessarily, and the ones that are, are natural/organic.

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Apocalyptic and Survival Fiction - Readers and writers welcome

http://www.foodrevolution.org/blog/f...gmo-scientist/

Here is a good article from a pro gmo researcher




“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair,

I know a fellow who has been researching in this area. Organic no till using rye. It is indeed an interesting idea.

The bottom line is we all need to add more back to the soil than what we remove in proper ratios.

Without the Gmo Roundup, we used to use combinations of several different herbicides, many of which were harsher, longer lasting, had worse LDL scores.

So yes, more Roundup is used, which is a safer product. There is a lot less of the more dangerous herbicides used.

Insecticides are the far more dangerous chemicals used, the bT gmo crops has saved is many tons of harmful insecticides from being used.

Yes yes, more roundup is being used, but we are using many times less of the harmful, more dangerous chemicals.

I find the second part of your message to be intentionally inflammatory, anti farmer type stuff. Food does not get soaked in roundup, and you know it. That is just a sound bite to put other people down. Pretty poor of your side.

Paul

I think you misunderstand me. I too have grown crops with no pesticides. Last year I grew wheat I never needed to spray, and I picked weeds off a 120 acre field by hand, because in this instance, it was feasible with maybe a plant per acre that was undesireable.

I hear you on soil needing to be alive. My yields have been going up since using no tillage, because organic matter in my soil is going up. Earthworms and microbial life is amazing. Yet this has occured while using noon-organic fertilizers and some herbicides. If chemicals killed soil, it would not grow anything. On the contrary, my soil is improving every year from using precise, scientific applications of fertilizers in the proper ratios, removing weeds from the equation by using herbicides as required.

You often hear that we farmers have to continually use more and more chemicals. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some weeds have a 5 year dormancy for example. I have eradicated many weed species on my farm by keeping after them. Once gone, that herbicide is no longer needed, so I use less.

I spray my land in a rotation in the fall for perennial weed control. You only need to do this once in 5 or 8 years once you get on top of the weeds, so you end up using less herbicides.

Because my soil organic matter is increasing from using no til, and always having residue covered soil, my soil fertility is increasing, so I need to use less chemical fertilizers than before.

My soil is alive and dynamic. If my organic neighbors soil was as dynamic and alive as mine, they would be getting decent yields. Unfortunately for them, they are getting less than half, because the weeds are not controlled, the soil fertility is hard to build up on a reasonable sized farm with any kind of scientific accuracy.

My gramps used organic methods, and his soil was beat up to snot when I took over from all the tillage, and the lack of proper rejuvenation and inputs. But my gramps also only farmed a couple hundred acres, and it was not a huge deal.

If a car was still 1000 dollars new, if inflation had not occured, we could all live happily ever after making a living on small grains from 100 acres of land. But today, to simply survive, farms must be larger to make enough return to offset inflation. And so because of this, and the poor soil practices of organic methods on large acres of small grains, farmers today generally use synthetic fertilizers which offer accuracy of application, and soil building properties by increasing biomass production. Hence the soil improves with their useage. It does not die, contrary to popular theory. It gets more productive over time.

Industrial farming gets a bad name for many reasons. But the number one reason is because there are now so few people on the farm anymore who get their info directly from an actual farmer. They get it from radio phone in shows, the internet, mother earth news, Al Gore, greenpeace, and the 7 acre organic farmer down the road, who is in it for what all we farmers are in it for. The money. for without money, none of us would be making the effort.

I simply wish people would ask actual farmers the why, the when, the how much, and the how does that work. Rather than seeing a sprayer out in the field, panic, and come on here spouting off about assumptions that are incorrect, make themselves look silly.

They could just go ask the farmer what he is spraying and why. Ask him to show you his soil. Ask him why he is doing what he is doing.

That is my ultimate wish. That we farmers were asked a few questions, like what rate we use, when we spray, why we spray, how our soil is actually doing.

But no, presuppositions which are almost always false, rule the day. Ask a farmer: If you don't believe him, fine, but at least ask him...

Cheers,

Dale

Yep, sorta like a checking account. If you got $100,000.00 in your account, spend $10,000.00 a week, and put in say $12,000.00....well you'll stay ahead of the game...long as you don't have $2000 worth of services charges a week.

Soil is sorta the same way...put in more than you take out, keep the circle turning, and for the most part you'll profit. The problem with many farmers in my area is that they want to be miners instead a famers.....they want to dig enough ore with a teaspoon to make a pile of goodies big as a warehouse, and they want to do it in a few minutes.
They really like to rent a farm....work it to death...especially if they rent it, soybean it to death, and collect all the federal crop insurance they can.....I wonder if that's why so many folks hate farmers anymore.

the landowner needs to have a better contract in place.

I've seen organic guys do just the same.
Keep taking the hay and never bringing back any manure...

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Deja Moo; The feeling I've heard this bull before.