31–40 of 231 posts
https://phys.org/news/2021-01-rnai-based-products-sustainabl...
Still more development to be done, but there are alternatives to existing synthetic pesticides on the horizon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Support local farmers who follow better practices, such as low/no till or organic. Buy meat that was grazed on local grass, which is the single best thing we can do to build better soil. Buy things in season that grow well locally.
Organic still uses pesticides, just “organic” ones. https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/national-... For crops it includes copper sulfate, peracetic acid, ferric phosphate.
Research in this area is an important step toward learning how to build healthy soil instead of killing it.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_thuringiensis_israele...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_amyloliquefaciens
[3]https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2015.0088...
Dengue is a serious health threat in Singapore. Fogging (1) is pretty common. Now, the Singapore government says fogging should be used judiciously, not routinely. But, that doesn't seem to be the case. Many condos will fog once a week, year-round. Supposedly all operations must be submitted in the an "E-fogging Submission System", but as far as I can tell, there's no visibility into this. Singapore has also recently…
I'm dismayed at how little we seem to know about pesticides, neonicotinoids for example but probably a host of other types. It certainly stands to reason that industrial application of poisons is going to kill a lot of species and destabilize ecosystems. The decline of insect populations over several decades - which to me is symbolized by the near-extinction of the monarch butterfly, is probably more destabilizing to…
If anything I'd say the problem is we don't understand enough about how soil and its corresponding ecosystem works, the article even says that: > Currently, regulators completely ignore pesticides’ harm to earthworms, springtails, beetles and thousands of other subterranean species. Pesticides and herbicides are designed to kill certain things, with the assumption that "this is bad because it's not what I want to gro…
JM Fortier of course is only one of many skilled farmers throughout the world, but what I appreciate is that he has clearly documented his process in videos and text so I find it easy to pick up on. His new farm is larger in scale and getting more to the kind of production we need, though the largest commercial farms are still orders of magnitude larger.
I have also been appreciating the No Till Market Garden Podcast and YouTube channel. [4]
[1] https://youtu.be/1BH0NkN6zHs
[2] https://youtu.be/cBKr9kPrpzU
I've watched the entire cycle in the past thirty years as a former agronomist. We were able to genetically modify plants so they generated natural pesticides as a defense against insects. This allowed us to stop spraying thousands of tons of less insecticides. But the very people complaining about spraying chemicals rejected these new enhanced plants saying they weren't 'natural'. We have been breeding plants to do t…
Organic food is for a bunch of people scared of modern technology. Some usually take alternative medicine such as homeopathy and are afraid of electromagnetic waves.
They claim buying organic is better for the environment and their health. But that's in fact the opposite
Does anyone have sources for suggestions about what we should do? I read these articles, and worry, and wonder what can I do. It's not clear to me that buying organic mono-cropped bananas at the mega mart is in anyway better or worse than buying non-organic mono-cropped bananas. I'd really like to just build up some more understanding on what I can do in my daily life to make things not worse.
You can join a CSA (Community supported agriculture) or join a local Foodcoop. Eat local things that grows naturally like weed in your area. For example, in my case I do not buy bananas at all, but organic apples from sources and land I know.
Eating wild plants is a forgotten art. In my neighbourhood there's an insane amount of Prunus Cerasifera but they're basically left to rot on trees, seems I'm the only one who bothers to pick them up.
But it must be pointed out that one should be careful with weed foraging, I'm part of a forum on "edible wild plants" and the amount of mis-identified ones is staggering.
I've watched the entire cycle in the past thirty years as a former agronomist. We were able to genetically modify plants so they generated natural pesticides as a defense against insects. This allowed us to stop spraying thousands of tons of less insecticides. But the very people complaining about spraying chemicals rejected these new enhanced plants saying they weren't 'natural'. We have been breeding plants to do t…
Isn't this the good old "naturalistic fallacy" though? Would you eat a poisonous mushroom because the poison is "natural"? You can at least wash some pesticides off.
I'm not a biologist but I'm sure there is a difference between crossing different varieties of peas versus introducing a non-pea (or maybe non-plant) gene into the pea DNA.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dengue fever is a serious disease and it’s not rare in Singapore, there were 40,000+ cases in 2020 which is pretty high for a population of 5M. If they stopped their mosquito control efforts it would be disastrous for human health.
Wouldn't a healthier ecosystem better handle mosquitoes, though? Predators of mosquitoes are bats, birds, fishes, frogs…
I've watched the entire cycle in the past thirty years as a former agronomist. We were able to genetically modify plants so they generated natural pesticides as a defense against insects. This allowed us to stop spraying thousands of tons of less insecticides. But the very people complaining about spraying chemicals rejected these new enhanced plants saying they weren't 'natural'. We have been breeding plants to do t…
> We were able to genetically modify plants so they generated natural pesticides as a defense against insects. Isn't this the good old "naturalistic fallacy" though? Would you eat a poisonous mushroom because the poison is "natural"? You can at least wash some pesticides off. I'm not a biologist but I'm sure there is a difference between crossing different varieties of peas versus introducing a non-pea (or maybe non-…