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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

#71

Post by _nalply »

beat wrote: post #19
jMyles wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one is even sure how it would impact humans. But is that relevant? Isn't it more sane to let our first assumption be that plant killers aren't good for us? Until we have some compelling reason to believe otherwise?

Billions of dollars for giant corporations isn't a compelling reason?

I find this a cynical or maybe a sardonic statement.

Judgment aside, there's a cost for the society which is not borne by owners of these giant corporations. These owners have a selfish interest to propagate dubious means. With "selfish" I mean the good natured selfishness in the sense of Smith's capitalism. So we as a society should strive to charge the owners with these costs, so that products like RoundUp get uneconomical to produce and sell.

Keyword: external costs

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#72

Post by timkpaine »

avgDev wrote: post #61
radcon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

There is another good one. Bayer took HIV infected blood from US and Europe and sold it in Africa, infecting many people with HIV in the process. Also, many medications have under reported side effects. I myself have experienced insane side effects from an antibiotic. Doctors I have seen fail to report to the FDA and claim it is something else. I have talked to many people with the same symptoms and again they encoun…

Jesus....https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24785997

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#73

Post by chicob »

crdrost wrote: post #62
chicob wrote: 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…

I think you don’t give yourself enough credit by calling it a “romantic ideal of purity;” it really does make a difference. A little pesticide is fine for cosmetic value: people buy more of the prettier fruits and veggies, great. But when you start to apply modern engineering to it, you get extremely powerful pesticides which are able to do something much more dangerous. The most talked-about example of what I am tal…

Farming has the issue of mass scale, as any other human activity. Farmers have been artificially selecting species for thousands of years, but perhaps not at the scale and speed we witness today.

I have no doubts that normalization and lack of diversity are a problem. It is being observed today, for example, in the decreasing quality of tomatoes, that have lost flavour in favour of appearance.

But normalization of food production often goes in hand with normalization of feeding habits, and that is a whole different problem. For example, potato producers know that washing potatoes decreases shelf life, but they still do it because otherwise consumers wouldn't buy them.

Modern convenience has a lot to do with this, and I think that the solution lies with consumer habits as well. I am all in favour of a more conscientious approach in the consumer-side, but this should be done without resorting to simplifications and emotional responses. It will also take some time.

On the other hand, convenience is a rather early feature of our lives, so I hope adapting to new ways of producing and consuming could be at least half as quick.

In the end, I hope we will be able to use land efficiently, respecting biodiversity and allowing for a reasonable amount of natural harm, without sacrificing quality and, more importantly, food security.

As for Integrated Farming, the Wikipedia article is not as thorough as the Organic Farming article, perhaps because IF is still not a thing in the US.[1]

Integrated Farming is an extension of Integrated Pest Management, Soil management and Efficient Water Usage practices, along with other schemes. It was largely subsidized in the EU for farmers wanting to adapt their methods. From 2020 onwards, it will become the standard for EU farming practices and subsidies will stop, as far as I know.

Integrated Farming is certified by local agencies, in the same way organic farming is: checking farming logs, pesticide invoices, warehouses, equipments and such. A local agent visits my farm every year.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_farming

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#74

Post by gdubs »

There’s a second order conclusion here that seems to get constantly lost in the conversation. On a bumper sticker it’d be, “It’s the monocultures, stupid.”

When we talk about things like glysophate staying around in the soil or making it’s way into the water supply, what we really should be questioning is why so much is being used in the first place. And that’s because we grow fragile annual crops in enormous monocultures making the use of chemicals a necessity.

I’m for alternative methods of farming, like permaculture, but I’m not so ideological to be against chemicals in the absolute. Based on the evidence I’ve seen, pragmatic use of sprays isn’t terribly dangerous. I’m talking spot spraying as part of conservation and restoration work, etc.

The fixation on particular chemicals like glysophate is a distraction from the root issue, which is that industrial scale agriculture is — on the whole —damaging to the planet.

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#75

Post by stickfigure »

snarfy wrote: post #49
stickfigure wrote: post #27

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.

From https://www.post-gazette.com/life/garden/2009/06/13/Carefull...

[Vinegar] works as a contact or burn-down herbicide, which means that it only kills the portion of the plant it contacts. The thistle will re-grow from the roots, and you will have to make repeated applications until you exhaust the carbohydrate reserves in the roots. There is probably a lot of seed present in the soil, and new thistle plants will sprout that you will have to treat in future years.

Just picture yourself doing this on 90ac of hills!

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#76

Post by sametmax »

gdubs wrote: post #74

There’s a second order conclusion here that seems to get constantly lost in the conversation. On a bumper sticker it’d be, “It’s the monocultures, stupid.” When we talk about things like glysophate staying around in the soil or making it’s way into the water supply, what we really should be questioning is why so much is being used in the first place. And that’s because we grow fragile annual crops in enormous monocul…

Yes but permaculture is not scalable for big companies, since it requires a lot of skilled labors. You cannot use one big tractor for a huge perma field and be done with it. And they dictate the market.

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#77

Post by tptacek »

Supermancho wrote: post #66
tptacek wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing that got farmers sued by Monsanto was the planting of "Roundup-Ready" seeds and subsequent application of glyphosate to the crop , which would kill a non-Roundup-Ready crop. You could plant Monsanto's GM seeds all you wanted without legal risk, so long as you treated them like any other crop and didn't try to exploit their GM properties.

> The only thing that got farmers sued by Monsanto That is factually incorrect. https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2018/06/01/dissecting-cla... The licensing cases were world news.

This is a link that directly repeats the claim I just made, in more detail. Both elements are present in these cases: the planting of licensed seed, and the subsequent application of glyphosate to that crop. If you spray non-GM soybean crops with Roundup, you kill the crop.

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#78

Post by gist »

beat wrote: 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…

What is the energy source for that? Solar? Is it therefore possible to have enough solar energy to operate the machinery with enough to pull out and keep on going? And wouldn't you need a tremendous amount of batteries as well? Would seem there would be an environmental impact that could far exceed some kind of potential 'safe' chemical solutions.

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#79

Post by beat »

_nalply wrote: post #71
beat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billions of dollars for giant corporations isn't a compelling reason?

I find this a cynical or maybe a sardonic statement. Judgment aside, there's a cost for the society which is not borne by owners of these giant corporations. These owners have a selfish interest to propagate dubious means. With "selfish" I mean the good natured selfishness in the sense of Smith's capitalism. So we as a society should strive to charge the owners with these costs, so that products like RoundUp get unec…

It is, indeed, a cynical statement. But it gets to the very reason why we aren't looking closely enough at the potential social costs.

As an aside, I think the conventional wisdom reading of Adam Smith, that somehow selfishness begets virtue, was not the author's intent, and is mostly just a self-serving rationalization. At the very least, it ignores the ways that selfish action can turn toxic - deception, corruption, theft, and of course externalized costs.

Re: Roundup’s Risks Could Go Well Beyond Cancer

#80

Post by the-dude »

soperj wrote: post #67
crdrost wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you don’t give yourself enough credit by calling it a “romantic ideal of purity;” it really does make a difference. A little pesticide is fine for cosmetic value: people buy more of the prettier fruits and veggies, great. But when you start to apply modern engineering to it, you get extremely powerful pesticides which are able to do something much more dangerous. The most talked-about example of what I am tal…

>The most talked-about example of what I am talking about is to consider that McDonald’s has uniform french fries throughout the US. Granted I haven't been to Mcdonalds in a while, but from what I remember this is 100% not the case. You get fries of all different sizes.

These are no square potatoes Sir.
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