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Pesticides are killing the world's soils

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#111

Post by adreamingsoul »

I’m fascinated by soil and all the interactions between microorganisms, insects and plants. Does anyone have any recommendations for books on soil science (Edaphology)?

Over the course of three years I transitioned a small plot from a monoculture into a thriving “forest garden”. My goal was to restore the soil health and utilised a variety of plants, insects, and mycelium to achieve that. It was an amazing adventure that taught me a lot and also helped me through a mental crises. That experience and experiment has motivated me to be a soil farmer.

My biggest lesson was that pests and weeds are symptoms of a larger problem. INSTEAD of trying to manage them, look for what nature needs to manage them. For example, what attracts ladybugs? What environments are friendly for ladybugs?

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#112

Post by Ekaros »

agumonkey wrote: post #82
rmason wrote: post #28

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…

I've read this argument since forever yet I still have a small issue about GMO because, it seems to me that, at that level, potential negative mutations can happen a lot more than the old way. It's a bit like saying we've been using sun light to heat ourselves, and it's nuclear so why worry about radioactive uranium.

I don't think the negative changes are higher. On other hand I do not really understand why don't we apply same standards for testing with any cultivar as we do with GMO one. Surely that isn't too much to be asked for food safety.

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#113

Post by jnotwell »

rosetremiere wrote: post #44

In Switzerland, we're soon going to vote on two initiatives ¹² aiming at reducing pesticide use. The first is essentially about forbidding the use of all artificial pesticides by 2031 (also importation of food that was produced abroad using pesticides). The second is about removing subsidies to farmers that use any kind of pesticide, or regularly use antibiotics on their livestock, etc. I feel like they are quite dra…

If you're interested in the subject, I highly recommend Tomorrow's Table [1], a book by Pamela Ronald, a plant pathologist and geneticist, and Raoul Adamchak, her husband and an organic farmer (disclaimer: my fiancé works in Pam's lab).

The subject of the book isn't pesticides or biodiversity per se, but rather how to produce food sustainably in the face of population growth and climate change.

An anecdote from the book: what happens when artificial pesticides aren't used (setting aside the meaning of artificial/natural)? Corn can be sprayed with crystal toxins derived from proteins in the soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), engineered to produce these proteins, or exhibit damage from insects (it looks pretty gross [2]).

If you're going to ban pesticides, you need an alternative or will face lower yields.

[1] https://cropgeneticsinnovation.ucdavis.edu/book-tomorrows-ta...

[2] https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/use-and-im...

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#114

Post by mikehotel »

smhost wrote: post #86
sampo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do you think plants that produce pesticides are not an environmental problem of their own? All plants that, in the nature, tend to get eaten by insects, naturally produce pesticides against their pests. Humans have bred super-edible, non-pesticide plants for cultivation, and insects are happy to attack these. Now we are bringing back into crop plants some of the natural defenses that wild plants have always had…

insect populations are declining rapidly and are also in need of protection. we're probably going to have to start eating bugs for survival when all the animals are dead, since bugs are one of the most efficient sources of protein, so i'd personally be wary of telling the bugs to fuck off just so we can save the crops.

If insect populations are dwindling and in need of protection, why would we suggest people eat them? Wouldn’t that accelerate their demise?

Also, most folks are not protein deficient, but they are not getting enough fiber. https://www.vox.com/2019/3/20/18214505/fiber-diet-weight-los...

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#115

Post by Ma8ee »

sampo wrote: post #104
caf wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also, at the same time, genetically modified plants to be resistant to Glyphosate so that we could spray thousands of tons more of this herbicide. Semantic arguments about what is and isn't 'natural' aside, it's clear the technology has been a double-edged sword. I'm not set against GMOs myself, but I feel that proponents of the technology do themselves a disservice with the argument that it's no different to sele…

BASF has produced herbicide tolerant crops plants without using GMO in the breeding process, and patented the whole system (BASF Clearfield ® Production System). This does everything people accuse GMO's for, but it's not GMO.

That just proves that it is possible to achieve what the GMO proponents argue that GMOs are necessary for, without using GM.

And it certainly doesn't do the main thing that we accuse GMOs for, which is spreading genetically modified organisms in nature.

I couldn't quickly find any information about the system that didn't look like marketing material. But apparently you have to combine it with other practices, like crop rotation, that usually is considered better for the soil and the environment.

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#116

Post by tshaddox »

FooHentai wrote: post #76
smhost wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we shouldn't mess with nature" is also a naturalistic fallacy, fyi

No it isn't. While the naturalistic fallacy is the belief that natural = preferable, and that does sit very close to 'don't mess with nature', so too does the Precautionary Principle, and I would argue that sits supreme. We can argue about the degree of overlap of course, but it's not clear cut. I believe our scientific understanding in this area is at best partial, and so minimal interference only where strong justi…

The precautionary principle is false though.

If you have a good explanation of the dangers of a particular action, then that’s sufficient to argue for caution—there’s no need for an additional principle, because you have an explanation about the dangers involved.

If you don’t have a good explanation of the dangers of a particular action, then you definitely don’t need a principle to tell you how cautious you ought to be. Presumably even when abiding by the precautionary principle one must estimate the plausibility of any hypothetical danger (to avoid universal hypothetical dangers of the form “there could be a wizard out there who has decided that they will kill us if we do X”), but developing good explanations for the plausibility of dangers is precisely the work mentioned in the previous paragraph that obviates the need for the precautionary principle.

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#117

Post by BelenusMordred »

sampo wrote: post #64

This is a skillfully written piece to raise anger. But if you look closely, there are some signs: This piece refers to a study [1]. As they mention, this Scientific American piece is written by 2 of the 5 authors of the study. 4 out of 5 of the study authors don't work in a conventional academic institution, but in nature conservation non-profits [2, 3]. The study [1] is titled "A Hazard Assessment". If you know the…

Think the people putting their names to this peer review should be noted:

    EDITED BY

    Christophe Darnault
    Clemson University, United States

    REVIEWED BY
    Roberta Fulthorpe
    University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada

    Alan Kolok
    University of Idaho, United States

    Kean Goh
    California Department of Pesticide Regulation, United States
Do you plan to write a rebuttal to the journal and those who oversaw it at any point? Or just post here?

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#118

Post by Impassionata »

sampo wrote: post #64

This is a skillfully written piece to raise anger. But if you look closely, there are some signs: This piece refers to a study [1]. As they mention, this Scientific American piece is written by 2 of the 5 authors of the study. 4 out of 5 of the study authors don't work in a conventional academic institution, but in nature conservation non-profits [2, 3]. The study [1] is titled "A Hazard Assessment". If you know the…

This is a skillfully written piece to deny and hedge. But if you look closely, there are some signs.

This comment refers to some scientists. But it's actually written by an Internet Commentator.

If you notice that Internet Commentators tend to talk without paying attention to what they're saying, you'll see the motivated reasoning at work.

He goes from affirming that toxic things are toxic with some weird indignation to quibbling about whether or not those toxic things in the soils are killing it.

This man has no qualifications. He just has an Internet connection and knows how to navigate to this site and format an opinion in the local Internet Commentary way.

It just looks like you're articulating the reason you don't care about the factual reporting going on here. It's ok not to give a shit, you don't have to go to all this effort to prove it's reasonable for you not to give a shit.

We all live in denial but there are insufferable forms of it, and this is one of them.

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#119

Post by rosetremiere »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #87
rosetremiere wrote: post #44

In Switzerland, we're soon going to vote on two initiatives ¹² aiming at reducing pesticide use. The first is essentially about forbidding the use of all artificial pesticides by 2031 (also importation of food that was produced abroad using pesticides). The second is about removing subsidies to farmers that use any kind of pesticide, or regularly use antibiotics on their livestock, etc. I feel like they are quite dra…

One could say that the initiative to subsidize farmers who use highly toxic chemicals and unsustainable practices resulting in depletion and eventual destruction of soil is also drastic. As in paying money to destroy the soil and help someone profit a bit extra in the process is maybe not the best investment of people’s taxes. Of course, it took us some time to start paying attention to the externalities. But now tha…

To clarify, I believe the goals are laudable, and the "drastic" adjective was the best approximation I had. My first guess would be to vote 2× yes, but I have some reservations:

* I heard that even among organic farmers, it was not a clear 2× yes.

* There is the question of efficiency of organic/no pesticide farming: are we going to have a really bad output and something less ecological in the end due to more work for the same amount of food produced?

* Am I just a bourgeois voting for my trendy ideals, not seeing that poorer people won't have the money to pay for heightened prices?

* Am I just a city-dweller that thinks farming is easy peasy, putting even more strain on the farmers, whose lifes as hard enough as it is?

* Are we going to rely more on importation, thus simply externalizing the problem (seemingly the initiative take care of this question)?

All this to say: I'm not confident enough in my knowledge of farming and ecology to yet say I'm going to vote 2× yes.

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#120

Post by londons_explore »

Ma8ee wrote: post #88
londons_explore wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to bet it's less bad than the status quo. Sure, bad things will happen with a few GM crops, but worse things will probably happen from existing non-GM farming practices. I think most experts would also agree with that assesment.

That is a false dichotomy. It is perfectly possible to get good yields with farming practices that use neither pesticides nor GM.

It isn't as much of a false dichotomy as you make out.

At any point in the decision making chain, in general, the decision is "should be do this new thing, so should we not".

So it really is a dichotomy, at least as far as the decision maker is concerned.

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