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

Some are scared of dissenting, factual opinions, some take them in stride and are thankful. Some think having a couple of decades experience on a certain topic is a personal attack, some think it is helpful.

We are all so different. Personally, I celebrate this fact. Others do not. It is hard to type something, and have the proper emotion attached to it. Bearing this in mind, debates would be more effective, if we all came to this realization.

I believe we all have a contribution; I believe I know more about certain things in this world than others who have not lived it. An example may be calling moose. I know how to do it! Most probably have no clue. But others on here know how to make cheese. Something I know little about, but crave to know more.

Balance is great. What you do with this balance, is entirely up to individual posters.

I agree, I need to here those other opinions so I can make an informed decision. I also need the ability to question those opinions and experience so that I can better apply it to m,y situation and my needs.

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Those farmers are doing so much to not pollute their land and over apply pesticides because they made those investments and they need to pay for them. They are working towards better practices every day but that does not seem to be enough.

They can write those investments off on taxes but they still have to come up with the money in the first place.

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I do sell food.

Small-scale, organic, sustainable, no-till is growing.

Every year we see more and more farms starting-up, and more Farmer's Markets opening.

My Dw works is produce manager in a grocery store, she loves seeing local farmers delivering fresh organic produce to her loading dock.

Ag can be profitable, and it certainly does not require GM or roundup.



I agree.



Good point.

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http://www.mofga.org/Programs/FarmAp...2/Default.aspx

See, now, where are we contaminating our land? You are starting out with a premiss that I don't believe you can back up, and you are stating is as fact.

That is kind of insulting to the farmers, whether 3 acres or 3000 acres in size.

We use electricity, we use paper, we use lumber, we use steel, we all use raw materials for hoes, and

Obtaining any of those items makes a footprint. Getting food, whether from an organic garden 10 feet from your front door, or imported from Brazil is going to leave some sort of a footprint on the world.

I believe small organic producers are a wonderful thing, but they create more problems and issues than the bigger farms do.

Organic means you run out of fertilizer. As you use up food, you use up P and K in your soil. And then you have poorer soil. And lower yields.

Organic means you till the soil much more to control weeds. This leads to more soil erosion.

Organic means you have few options for insect or fungus outbreaks, and weeds are more difficult to control. This leads to lower yields as these pests cause more harm.

So......

My view is that if everyone were forced to go organic, we would have much worse conditions, much worse footprint upon our country, than what we have with current modern ag practices.

Someone up above said modern ag is the lazy way to do things.

Wow. Come walk a mile in my shoes.

I've made so many changes on my small farm in the last 10 years, I can't hardly keep up. It is ever evolving, ever changing. We do new things every year to try to make farming better.

To the topic of this thread, gmo Roundup and Bt crops are exactly that - a way to make life safer, better for us farmers and you consumers too.

It is less poisons, it is a smaller footprint that we get from these practices.

I hope I hit upon some part of your question. I find your question just so very much out of place, I don't really understand where it is you are coming from. It sounds like you believe farmers go out and about shooting gallons of random poison into the environment just because that is fun or something.

We use tools to grow a bigger crop that more and more people depend upon for their food. Some of those tools are weed killers, we try to use less of them, and less dangerous ones as much as we can. If we use none of them, that creates other problems such as crop failures, soil erosion, delayed planting which makes lower yields, and so on.

I think we would be in serious trouble if we were not allowed to use these weed, insect, and fungus controllers. It would be really bad.

As for calling them poisons, caffeine and table salt have higher ratings as poisons than Roundup and most other weed killers have. Do you say,"pass the poison" when you want a salt shaker or a refill of coffee? Or are you trying to make a political statement by just calling these products poisons? Something to reflect upon perhaps.

An Internet aqantance visited me many years ago. Actually it was before Internet, was Fidonet back then. Anyhow, he was opposed to chemicals in the environment. To the point he moved. Was very interesting to have conversations with him. Anyhow when he stopped by, he sat there in the driveway, and rolled his,own cigarette. Smoked away. Then a bit later, his wife says, well he might rally against this or that chemical, but he uses a jug of Roundup around the yard, because the weeds just get too much.

That was an interesting visit. He was afraid of the man made poisons of the world, but chain smoked his cigarettes.

What are the risks we really face, vs our preconceived notions?

I enjoy these discussions Angie, and don't mean to make your job here harder.

I really really belive we would be in a worse world without having safer chemicals like Roundup,available to us. Hopefully we continue to advance and find even safer components. Until then we do the best we can do. I would be scared of an all organic world as the only option, I think that would be very destablizing to the whole world.

But through it all, an organic garden on your three acres is a good thing, and encourage more folks to do so.

Just, be careful if you demand everyone do that - I think that would lead to bad results.

Paul

Yes there is a lot of land available to come on stream. Because of mostly political reasons, many areas have poor yields, much lower than North American or European standards. Take russia. They have millions and millions of acres of purely AWESOME soil. But it is not producing as well as it could, precisely because they do not have money to buy the proper inputs you hate, like fertilizers and weed killers. They have the machinery, (sort of), but inputs cost money, and they are shorting their soil, therefore lower yields. This goes for just about any country on the planet who has great soil, but has pathetic yields, due to the organic farming done there.

Next, you may think we are poisoning our soil and water. Well, I can tell you, that if our soil was poisonous, the western world, especially Europe, would not be producing ever increasing amounts of tonnes per hectare. If soil is being killed, it will not keep producing better. My soil, on a strictly personal level, is much better than when I took it over, because it has not been tilled in decades. The organic matter content is going up, the soil life is phenomenal, and soil tests prove this, along with the soil life that is abundant, where it used to not exist. So I would argue our soil is getting better than ever before. Contrary to suppositions by some, the herbicides applied today are less risky, less intense, and much more benign than 20 years ago. What happens to a herbicide once applied? Most gets broken down within plants into simple compounds. Some gets digested in the soil. Yes this can take time, but when you are talking about a lb of herb an acre which has 2 000 000 lbs of soil on it, you can see how little is even there.

The reason other areas have poor production, is because they do not have the tools to produce and produce well, like the western world has. They have the soil in many cases, but plants need balanced nutrients in the proper rations to do the best. The ONLY way to do this with any amount of accuracy, is to apply fertility in some form. There is not enough manure on the planet to keep yields up like commercial fertilizers do, which by the way, contain EXACTLY the same chemicals as manure does, just in the proper ratios.

So true. I had to explain that to my ex when he would want to purchase something cause it was "tax deductible". We'd have had more money if he didn't spend it.

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Ya on a small scale selling at a local famers market, but you can not feed America on that much less the world. Sure a few are buying at a farmers market, just a handful when you compare and look at the big picture. Many cities now have well over 4 million population they can Buy enough food at a farmers market to feed their families. Sure a few get fresh stuff, but as far as large quantities of meat it is inside the store and not out in the parking lot. We are only talking about a few % that shop at farmers market, and then very few repeaters at that.
And so many large farms have cut back on putting what some on here call poisons, that the water is getting cleaned up, the air is getting better from all those tractors and such running back and forth many times just to get a crop ready to harvest, now they make as few passes as possible.
Things are really getting much better then in years past.

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And that is why they get bigger and bigger so they will have the Cash Flow to help pay off those loan. So they need those huge crops for a larger cash flow to survive and pay the help and keep up with repairs.

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Of course it's about the bottom line. Do you do whatever you do for nothing? Blithely stating that equipment can be depreciated on taxes is overly simplistic, there still will be taxes to pay- income, state, school, etc...

Farming, of any type, is a trade off of what's best for stock/land and what can turn a profit. If you live in reality that means that not everything is picture perfect. If you live in fantasy, then yes, it's so easy to think that farmers (large and small) should work for nothing, it's easy to grow crops without pesticides and chemical fertilizer, and all animals should be raised on grass and be allowed to live past their usefulness.

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i think you deserve 3 cheers...hipp hipp horay x3.....

you are a 1%

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i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life,.......,and not,when i came to die,discover that i had not lived...Henry David Thoreau

I think it's funny that ernie believes modern ag is why folks don't stay on the farm yet he would threaten his family with 3 acres and a hoe.
Folks have been leaving the farm since farms were invented.
Before chemicals before gas powered machinery, kids have made up their minds that the farm life is not for them and moved on to the city.
You can't blame the exodus from farming on modern farming practices with any sort of straight face.

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i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life,.......,and not,when i came to die,discover that i had not lived...Henry David Thoreau

In a city of 100,000 which is not very large,how far would you have to walk with your hoe to your 3 acres? Should we just abandon the population centers for that 3 acres and a hoe. As far as farmers and taxes go, there has to be a profit made before you can ''write off'' anything.

Good question. If you want to assume 2 people per plot, you need 235 square miles of garden, not including all those other things that need land. You MIGHT be within 25-30 miles

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No matter what, I'm glad for the move toward no-till wheat farming. If it weren't for that, we would be in the midst of another dust bowl. Another dust storm day.

Sure wouldn't have much time for hoeing after you got there.

Plus you'd work up enough of a hunger that you'd probably need another 3 acres ;-)

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The internet - fueling paranoia and misinformation since 1873.

Plus you can't really grow and raise everything you need to survive on three acres.

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Sounds like Brighton needs adopt you and then you can inherit the family farm. Win-win for both of you. Seriously our oldest plans to take this place when we are gone but of none of ours were going to I would adopt a family to take it rather than have it sold off to goodness only knows who.

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