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Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

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Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#111
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything I've read on organic farming and permaculture nearly always yields higher per acre output You'd really need to cite some sources on that

For example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6320530/ Again, it certainly wouldn't replace the cereal crops, but for fruits and vegetables that are perishable and prone to absorbing pesticides, I could easily see small scale local agg replacing our current system if the price of carbon were accurately reflected (i.e. carbon tax)

that study doesn't show that "organic farming and permaculture nearly always yields higher per acre output"

It's about cultivating vegetables in a specific, labour intestine, urban environment, and is partly speculative.

It's not about organic farming yields in general which are generally significantly lower that those of conventional farming.

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#113
post #22
post #2

ultrasonic washer are by far the best way to wash fruits & veges of these things, in Korea ultrasonic washer-sinks are picking up in popularity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-JZkiGigDw&t=261s research citation https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688301/

The trend of "we fucked up big time and need to create additional waste to take negate our fuck ups" is really worrying. Installing ultra sonic cleaners, reverse osmosis machines, AC units, &c. in every single of our houses/flats won't be sustainable

Sounds a lot like software development

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#114
post #32
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a specific product recommendation? I did a search and got a lot of junk or questionable results.

It's just starting to get early adopter traction in an early adopter country, so it'll probably be a while until you can find something locally. https://www.rahatsmall.com/ http://www.livinghertz.com/ are apparently 2 popular consumer brands in Korea. I just searched aliexpress for "ultrasonic food cleaner", they probably work but no idea how they compare. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001039347867.html?spm=a2g0o.…

I see some 10W models, 50W models and 100W models - how much power is appropriate?

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#115

I'm no fan of communism, but one thing I think communism did better is that allotment gardens and and small cottage gardens where much more attainable under communism for poor people. So even poor people could grow their own food. I live in Ontario where the price of real estate is bonkers. If you own land, you can't even build a shed without there being a main building. And you can't build anything under 800 sqft. T…

Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor Great Leap Forward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward Stalin allowed for the household plot, because.... everyone was starving due to communism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_plot During the Holodomor and in "the breadbasket" of Ukraine, people were arrested for not yielding _all_ of their produce to the state. Now the effect of terrorizing peo…

Europe and Russia has a history of peasants growing their own food. Subsequently farmland was divided into small lots. With lots of small farmers. This did not sit well with ideological goals of communism and also the soviets were in a military race with the west. Stalin wanted the state to be productively competitive with the high output large farms in America. So centrally controlled economy, and taking away land from the former peasants was one way he thought he would achieve that. But it failed in famine and the country side still to this day has many smaller farms. The land is just divided differently there. Locally grown organic food is how people still feed themselves through many parts of the world. But with globalization the price of food is low enough that local small farms can't compete on price. But still offer higher quality food in many regards. They're just squeezed out by mega farms. Also twice as many people in the world now, so need more food cheap to feed them. Globalization has made same things better and some things worse at the same time.

It makes it an interesting idea that poor people own more land in poor countries and are more self sufficient. The current form of capitalism in Canada and America is creating an underclass of people that are totally reliant on the state through debt schemes or direct welfare programs. Their labour has so little value, their salaries don't even cover rent and food. Inflation will make this more apparent than ever before.

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#116
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same school of thought that says that one should lower taxes and invest less in road fixing and schools. Instead, cars wear out faster/need more repairs and wealthier parent pay for tutors to make up the difference. 40+ years of externalizing costs has taken its toll.

IMO the issue is ideologies vs actuaries/statisticians ... It's shocking how both the "left"/"right" agree on many values, but also so disagree on how to achieve them. Eg: Both sides care about children, productive economy, value of education

Using education as an example, I think great harm has come as a result of making it a government monopoly. Not sure how it is in the US but in Europe there's not really a free market with regards to how children are taught. So there's no room for a competitor to come in and say "we can do it better", because when this happens (and it does happen occasionally) they are just shut down by police.

The school I went to was a Dalton school (though basically only in name, as explained below), one of the pioneering futuristic school systems developed in the early 20th century which said that people would learn more if they are allowed to learn about what they actually care about. My school had a copy of the original book describing the Dalton school system in the library. Almost everything described in the Dalton school from 1905 would be illegal if it were done today.

My point is, I'm fairly left-leaning but I support a radical deregulation of education on all levels: this seems to be one area where we should let the free market take care of things. And of course, if it turns out that a different way of teaching works better, there's nothing (except inertia) stopping the public schools from adopting the same methodology, making it universally available.

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#117
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US we had victory gardens during times of war rationing. I personally grow one still today, but not everyone has the space, time and inclination to learn how to grow plants and preserve a harvest.

Just curious, what method do you use to protect against squirrels? They're kind of crazy here, will eat everything. I had one chew through a plastic bird feeder to get at the seeds.

I have a fence, and dogs are often in the backyard. Squirrels don't really bother most of what I grow anyway since they're mostly started indoors and transplanted.

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#118
post #22
post #2

ultrasonic washer are by far the best way to wash fruits & veges of these things, in Korea ultrasonic washer-sinks are picking up in popularity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-JZkiGigDw&t=261s research citation https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688301/

The trend of "we fucked up big time and need to create additional waste to take negate our fuck ups" is really worrying. Installing ultra sonic cleaners, reverse osmosis machines, AC units, &c. in every single of our houses/flats won't be sustainable

You got it wrong.

"we fucked up big time, but the rich will be able to shield themselves with additional waste, while the poor can suck it up"

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is a tradeoff. It's very easy to label things as waste in isolation. The reality is pesticides and other crop technologies substantially increase efficiency of the land we're using. This means per capita: we're using less land (more back to nature), losing less crop (less fuel/maintenance wasted), and requiring an increasingly smaller percentage of the population to tend to crops.

No, absolutely not everything is a tradeoff, many things like eating meat or going to a casino are a total waste of resources

Yeah well, not sure about that meat thing buddy, not sure...

Re: Pesticide residues could negate the health benefits of fruits and vegetables

#120
post #58

I can't wait until vertical farming becomes cheap enough to overtake traditional farming methods. Pesticide use will be a thing of the past while all of our food is grown locally in controlled environments. Optimizing for food taste instead of pesticide or weather resistance. Not to mention the reduced carbon footprint (due to transportation), significant decrease in water usage, and increased efficiency.

What you are looking is called a greenhouse, they are what enable Netherlands to be the world's 2nd largest exporter of food and much of UK vegetables come from there.

Vertical greenhouses trade space efficiency for energy efficiency, you have to provide lights because they can't make full use of natural sunlight.

This only makes sence for some low-calorie foods, like berries and salads - you have to provide too much light to grow something calorious like -potato

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