Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study • Hacker News Board

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#321

Post by ptah » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 1:24 PM UTC

mkl wrote: post #319

ptah wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i saw a documentary about manuka honey recently. apparently it can be done in UK too?

Manuka is a tree native to New Zealand and Australia, so that seems unlikely. Do you mean similar beekeeping techniques with different flowering plants? I just did a search for [manuka honey uk], and found there's an awful lot of woo-woo around what to me in NZ is fairly ordinary honey!

new zealand climate (especially in the south) is not far off UK climate as far as i can tell. i found this http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/cornwall/hi/people_and_places/na...

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#322

Post by whenanother » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 1:28 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #255

whenanother wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the agriculture shills keep pushing this notion that their way of growing with chemicals is the the most productive way when I've yet to see a study that indicates that any of what they've done has increased crop yields.

If farmers couldn't increase yields they wouldn't buy all of that expensive chemical stuff. If you could farm without buying chemicals or reducing yields, you should go out and do it, you would put everyone else out of business and make a killing.

one of running theme about growing misanto’s products was that your yields never goes up. they’ve never could honestly show that gmo products could increase yields. they kept implying it all the time but they never could prove it. gmo never ever increased crop yields. and by gmo i don’t mean cross breeding plants.

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#323

Post by dekhn » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 1:54 PM UTC

aszantu wrote: post #201

dekhn wrote: post #176

It is soooo painful watching non-biologists debate pesticide impact based on watching biased, nonscientific reports. In the same way it's easy to train an ML model that is garbage, but you have to an expert in ML to understand why, it's easy to make mistaken conclusions with complex systems like biology/agriculture. I see comments below like "pesticides are bitter and that's why vegetables grown with pesticides are b…

wheat and corn aren't bitter, still they have natural pesticides called lectins. Strawberries are sweet still they have tannins which are toxic to humans. Some green plants taste sweetish or salty, yet they contain oxalates which can damage internal tissues and organs, joints and bones.

Hi, I am unable to find any literature supporting strawberry toxicity.

(also it's not clear if you're trying to refute my point or not).

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#324

Post by windexh8er » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #277

windexh8er wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you're not accounting for the nutritional density [0] per yield being reduced and also the fact that the majority of cash crop goes to feeding livestock. [0] https://rodaleinstitute.org/why-organic/issues-and-prioritie...

Why does he have to account for livestock? That has nothing to do with the argument he's responding to. Your other argument isn't especially persuasive, either. Statistically, is vitamin deficiency a serious public health problem in America? Whatever "protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin, and vitamin C" reduction there has been in corn over the last 50 years, it's extremely unlikely to have offset a factor…

[3> Why does he have to account for livestock? That has nothing to do with the argument he's responding to.

Actually it does. 90 million acres of corn were planted for livestock in 2018 [0] and we know that the nutritional density of corn has declined [1]. So the long term is we just keep yielding higher with lower nutritional value? The main reason we're after higher yields is livestock and mass produced "junk" food which provides what positive value? The sustainability problem aside, how does this benefit us globally and long term?

> Statistically, is vitamin deficiency a serious public health problem in America?

Is it a problem? Yes. [2] In America? Past studies [3] have shown this and I don't think it's a stretch to just look at the health epidemic here which is, generally, systemic from poor overall nutrition. [4]

Sure, the productivity factor is in our "favor", at least by the numbers. But it's very clear that there is negative impact that extends beyond just the yielded nutritional value. It flows down into additional consumption and requirements to fortify nutritionally sparse natural ingredients.

[0] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feedgra... [1] https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1... [2] https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/55/396/353/489122 [3] https://www.cdc.gov/nutritionreport/pdf/4Page_%202nd%20Nutri... [4] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/10/15/too-fat-to-fi...

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#325

Post by bwaldrep » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

windexh8er wrote: post #324

tptacek wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does he have to account for livestock? That has nothing to do with the argument he's responding to. Your other argument isn't especially persuasive, either. Statistically, is vitamin deficiency a serious public health problem in America? Whatever "protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin, and vitamin C" reduction there has been in corn over the last 50 years, it's extremely unlikely to have offset a factor…

[3> Why does he have to account for livestock? That has nothing to do with the argument he's responding to. Actually it does. 90 million acres of corn were planted for livestock in 2018 [0] and we know that the nutritional density of corn has declined [1]. So the long term is we just keep yielding higher with lower nutritional value? The main reason we're after higher yields is livestock and mass produced "junk" food…

The claim being responded to was that there is no evidence that "growing with chemicals" has increased crop yields. Evidence was provided that crop yields have increased as the industry has switched to "growing with chemicals." The percentage of those yields ultimately going to livestock is unrelated.

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#326

Post by bbddg » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #292

bbddg wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top 3 richest people (Gates, Buffet, Bezos) own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the country.

That's because the bottom 50% of the country own almost nothing. They rent and have debts. The net worth of the entire bottom quintile is negative -- if you have a dollar in your pocket you don't owe to someone then you have more wealth than the bottom 20% of the country.

Yeah and what's your point? That's a huge fucking problem.

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#327

Post by notacoward » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

your-nanny wrote: post #226

notacoward wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't "let it return" any more. Land left alone will gravitate toward a state that's anything but natural, as the already-unnatural mix of species both within the land and in its surroundings assert themselves. Where I live, the most likely outcome is a patch of poison ivy. Other places, kudzu. Still others, a haven for invasive beetles or snakes or small carnivores. Returning land to a natural state takes work a…

I call bullshit on this notion of natural and unnatural. You mean return the land to some imagined pristine prior state, which in the North American context means managed landscapes, because the NA landscape was managed in lots of ways by native inhabitants. This pristine wilderness is just an imagination of white settlers. You are not going to rid the South of Kudzu. The only thing you can do is facilitate a ecologi…

> You mean return the land to some imagined pristine prior state

I'm not sure if "you" there was supposed to mean me or GP, but I had already explicitly challenged the concept of "natural" before you showed up (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20668387). Be careful of putting words in others' mouths, and especially of flinging terms like "bullshit" at others. Some might conclude that your own jeremiad better deserves that label.

> The only thing you can do is facilitate a ecological equilibrium in which Kudzu is now a part.

In the specific case of kudzu, perhaps. More generally, it's much more complex than that. "Only minor changes from how it is now" is as broken as "like it was 100 years ago" and for much the same reason. Other outcomes have proven possible, many times. Invasive species have been eliminated, once-native species reintroduced (locally of course). We might not know exactly what does and does not constitute a "natural" state after hundreds (or thousands) of years of human influence, but there's no reason to assume that the state resulting from passive neglect would be optimal in any sense. By many measures, such as species diversity or health/longevity, it's often objectively worse than alternatives.

> I also think you are overemphasizing the harm.

Interesting, since I didn't actually predict any harm. I predicted outcomes which you yourself categorize as harmful, even as you advocate for (in)action which makes them inevitable.

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#328

Post by ShlomoS » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #255

whenanother wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the agriculture shills keep pushing this notion that their way of growing with chemicals is the the most productive way when I've yet to see a study that indicates that any of what they've done has increased crop yields.

If farmers couldn't increase yields they wouldn't buy all of that expensive chemical stuff. If you could farm without buying chemicals or reducing yields, you should go out and do it, you would put everyone else out of business and make a killing.

[dead]

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#329

Post by carapace » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

Elrac wrote: post #305

carapace wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steady on my friend. I'm an ecology nut but you have to give credit where credit is due: e.g. artificial nitrogen fertilizer really has been an incredible advance, to the point where we have literally been turning oil into people ever since it was invented. The "Green Revolution", pesticides, and even GMOs work , it has to be admitted. Here is the rub though: For how long? The final verdict on agriculture is yet to b…

I mostly agree with what you said but I'd like to point out a glitch in your argument about halfway through: where you say "because it has, for millions ... of years." I'd say that's not valid, because what happened for millions of years is a far cry from what modern agriculture is (mostly) accomplishing: (a) actually establishing food security, and (b) for a freakishly large number of one particular species. When yo…

> I'd say that's not valid, because what happened for millions of years is a far cry from what modern agriculture is (mostly) accomplishing: (a) actually establishing food security, and (b) for a freakishly large number of one particular species.

What I mean in the most general sense is that the natural systems that have evolved have a record of durability of ~4500000Ky whereas agriculture in general is ~12Ky and modern agriculture is ~0.2Ky, and the current system seems to be crashing.

I don't think we can count modern agriculture as successful at food security yet. On the other hand we have good reasons to believe that "eco-mimetic" food production will prove more durable.

> I could be wrong, but I suspect that a model of agriculture strongly similar to "historic ecological food production" might only work for a significantly smaller human population.

I suspect you're right, and that the ideal population of an "M-type planet" might be no more than a few hundred thousand people.

However, leave out "historical" and I think we have options for "ecological food production" handling the ~12B expected peak concurrent population. I think something like arcologies combined with Christopher Alexander's "City Country Fingers" could be the skeleton of a workable path from the status quo to some sort of high-density ecological civilization. (Along with e.g. E.O. Wilson's Half-Earth idea.)

Personally I suspect that we evolved to be Nature's waldoes† and we are supposed to "super charge" the ecosystem, but that's getting into sci-fi stuff. Arcologies and Pattern Language are sci-fi enough for now, eh?

† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldo_(short_story)

Re: Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides: study

#330

Post by papreclip » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

mindfulhack wrote: post #283

carapace wrote: post #229

Slightly tangential, but I want to point out that there's a way forward without pesticides and without economic disaster: We can switch to a "horticultural" mode of civilization. The idea is that we use applied ecology to create curated ecosystems that have a high proportion of plants that are agriculturally productive. (Not to be mysterious, I'm talking about Permaculture et. al. but that term seems to upset a few p…

I never thought I'd read a permaculture comment on HN. I love this community. I was in organic farming for a while, and I get that it's economically more expensive, but the fact that this is a problem is a cultural construct - it's only a 'problem' if people choose to pay more towards disposable electronics and movies at the cinema instead of good, quality, environmentally-friendly food. I think that big chemical agr…

If I'm remembering correctly from my chemistry lectures, there's an upper limit on how much nitrogen can be fixed "organically", and it's nowhere near enough to support the current world population. It's not only a question of cost.

That said, I think a lower global population is desirable for many reasons.