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Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

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Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#41
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't decide for organic because of that. Like I said in another comment in this thread, organic farming still uses pesticides, just not the synthetic ones. In my opinion as a farmer, the foundational principle of Organic Farming is not a path towards better farming practices, but one that divides what is supposedly natural and organic, and what is artificial and synthetic. This has more to do with a romantic id…

Sure, I agree the organic standard is far from perfect and has many loopholes, but it's a starting point. If there were a standard out there that instead embraced a systems-thinking view on safe practices - both chemical use and general land management, emphasizing safety for the long term health of the ecosystem, the farm economy, and the humans consuming the product - I would embrace that standard instead. Even if…

Your second paragraph pretty much resumes what Integrated Farming is. That is exactly what I do.

And everything you do in Organic Farming can be done in Integrated Farming - you only resort to chemical solutions if there are no other options left. And even then, only if you've gone beyond a certain point beyond which the damage will out-cost the benefits of the spraying.

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#42
post #4

Does anyone have the insight as to why Bayer purchased Monsanto? This to me is one of the biggest corporate acquisition mistakes in history. To make things worse Bayer even retired the name Monsanto making Bayer the defendant in all these cases.

Bayer has a long history of doing the wrong thing on purpose and coming out the other side with riches to show for it. It appears that people have wisened up to this style of business practice faster than Bayer realized.

[deleted]

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#43
post #4

Does anyone have the insight as to why Bayer purchased Monsanto? This to me is one of the biggest corporate acquisition mistakes in history. To make things worse Bayer even retired the name Monsanto making Bayer the defendant in all these cases.

Bayer has a long history of doing the wrong thing on purpose and coming out the other side with riches to show for it. It appears that people have wisened up to this style of business practice faster than Bayer realized.

[deleted]

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#44
post #8

This topic is so aggravating. On one hand, you have the "Don't eat science words, they give you the autism cancer!" reactionaries, and on the other side, you have the "Everything is completely benign, because science!" reactionaries.

Yup, I hear you. I try to put my faith on the in-between folks, who say, "we can't prove in a court of law that this is harmful, but in this case there is a plausible mechanism and the risks don't seem justified. In this other case, there's no plausible mechanism for harm or the benefits outweigh the risks." The people who show some kind of doubt are, as always, the ones to actually listen to.

Sort of a tangent here, but I find very often in the workplace that my managers want me to tell them about how I "know" something will work. I never know if something will work. I can only be mostly sure that it will. It goes against my nature so much to respond to these questions the way that they want.

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#45
post #12

I am really looking forward to the day we can replace chemical herbicides with weed-hunting robots. It seems such a huge market opportunity... little, inexpensive bots that can roam a field, picking out weeds the moment they appear as seedlings, never touching the crop itself, not putting anything in the soil. When I was a kid growing up in central Illinois in the 1970s, before Roundup, "walking beans" was a common s…

Perhaps little automated dirt guns like mobile SAM sites that can shoot down pests as well? They can just pick up a few grains of dirt and shoot them at any pests that come near the plants.

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#46
post #33
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many herbicides are harmful in some way, but most are safe if used properly (i.e. respecting the correct dosage for each target, respecting the safety interval, etc). Buying organic is not safer, though, because one can still use herbicides in organic farming, as long as they aren't synthetic. Sometimes the safer organic option won't be as safe as the synthetic one. Some herbicides are dangerous, and if safer solutio…

> Buying organic is not safer, though, because one can still use herbicides in organic farming, as long as they aren't synthetic. Sometimes the safer organic option won't be as safe as the synthetic one. I don't have problems per se with "synthetic" materials, but I do respect that compounds introduced within the past few decades are more likely to have zany side effects than those which plants have evolved alongside…

I understand your heuristics, but let it not drift towards the naturalistic fallacy.

Rotenone, an insecticide produced by some plants, is used in organic farming because it is naturally ocurring. It has been pointed out as a cause for Parkinson disease in farmers.[1]

The likelihood of danger should be approached without any preconceived ideas.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotenone#Toxicity

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#47
post #4

Does anyone have the insight as to why Bayer purchased Monsanto? This to me is one of the biggest corporate acquisition mistakes in history. To make things worse Bayer even retired the name Monsanto making Bayer the defendant in all these cases.

Bayer has a long history of doing the wrong thing on purpose and coming out the other side with riches to show for it. It appears that people have wisened up to this style of business practice faster than Bayer realized.

  It appears that people have wisened up to this style of business...
More to the point, I think there was a profound amount of attention scrutinizing Monsanto, more than any other company I can think of.

The concept of Monsanto's business model has been probably the most chilling example of vendor lock-in ever imagined, and certainly throughout the 1980's and onward, raised more than a few eyebrows anywhere it was explained.

It really resonates to the core of human values as a concept of highly calculated evil, executed as a long game. Apologists will shrug their shoulders, and with open hands, suggest that it's enough to say that a company motivated to earn money is justified in any behavior, and that the truth is that natural modes of food supply would strangle and starve civilization, were it not for innovators creating expanded production volumes by exploiting powerful technologies under tightly controlled circumstances.

But, it's clear that Monsanto's products and services represent a direct threat to those who dare to depend on them. Genetic modfication of herbicide/pesticide resistant food supplies, combined with litigation designed to destroy unlicensed supplies, all to further sales of proprietary organisms and their matching chemicals, is such an intuitively horrific system of practices that it begs disbelief.

And with that, you have the far reaching attention that glyphosphate weed killer and genetically engineered crops have brought upon those who would seek to threaten the world with them.

To properly internalize the ideas in play, one can handily imagine what it means, should anything ever go wrong. Every mouth fed by food grown as corporate product will starve, if ever there's an incident that precludes the use of the product.

Thus, if Monsanto's genetic engineering enables crops that feed two billion, and suddenly, next year, for any reason, farmers are made to cease production, well... what happens to two billion people?

Except, it's worse than that. Because it's not like you can draw a line around those two billion people. They aren't living in some enclave, sealed off in a parallel universe. It's not a hypothetical person that eats RoundUp Ready food. We've all probably eaten some, and now, we'll all have to cram into the same life boat if something goes wrong, and the mistake can't be reversed.

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#48
post #8

This topic is so aggravating. On one hand, you have the "Don't eat science words, they give you the autism cancer!" reactionaries, and on the other side, you have the "Everything is completely benign, because science!" reactionaries.

I know there are better examples, but the one that always comes to mind for me is Asbestos. Everyone thought that was safe, now it kills 100,000+ people a year.

And to make matters worse, companies were able to suppress evidence of its danger for decades. We never know what evidence is being withheld from us, so I feel like a little irrational paranoia is actually rational.

Edit: Oh, and how about Exxon withholding all that information about climate change for 40 years? That's another good one.

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#49

I sprayed a bunch of glyphosphate yesterday and I'll spray a bunch more today. I live on country property that is infested with yellow starthistle, an invasive noxious weed. Right now is it's growing season. There's absolutely no practical way to beat it back without chemistry. I'm sympathetic to concerns about our food chain but to the folks hoping for the downfall of Monsanto/Bayer: You are hereby invited over to p…

There are alternatives. Vinegar works pretty well.

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#50
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, I hear you. I try to put my faith on the in-between folks, who say, "we can't prove in a court of law that this is harmful, but in this case there is a plausible mechanism and the risks don't seem justified. In this other case, there's no plausible mechanism for harm or the benefits outweigh the risks." The people who show some kind of doubt are, as always, the ones to actually listen to.

Such a world we live in, where the fools are absolutely certain and the wise are full of doubt.

It couldn't be any other way.

The more you really learn, the less ignorant and more nuanced you become.

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