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

nationalgeographic.com

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

#81

Post by esarbe »

danmaz74 wrote: post #69
blodovnik wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Not better, more targeted poisons. Just stop poisoning and killing. Why is it the words of the poisoners are always so positive and optimistic, telling a beneficial tale of forward looking improvement. The words have been the same since the poisoning started in the 20th century through generation after generation of new better less dangerous poisons. Your message is this “oh no we’re no working on bad poisons, we…

Antibiotics are poisons for bacteria. Many life-saving medicines are poisons if you take too much of them. Should we call doctors poisoners?

False equivalence.

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

#82

Post by Retric »

enriquto wrote: post #70
Retric wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, they don’t actually give you a way to judge taste. With apples people learn of better tasting variety, but strawberries are unlabeled.

aren't they? here in France there are a few labelled varieties (not as many labels as apples, though)

At least in the US it looks like this: https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-fresh-fruits-berries-...

You don’t actually know anything about the strawberries in the bottom left other than their organic.

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

#83

Post by ThomPete »

blodovnik wrote: post #25

There’s no surprise here is there? We, as a society, poison pretty much everything as a standard part of the agricultural process. The outcome -the goal - of that is of course, death of vast numbers of insects. Mission accomplished. It’s a success story, strangely. The only thing that seems weird to me is how society was so easily convinced that soaking all our food in poison is OK and not a problem all good thumbs u…

The outcome is also better lives, less sickness, healthy crops etc. yes there are drawbacks but the goal isnt just good or bad its good and bad, the discussion we can have is whether is more good than bad or vice versa.

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

#84

Post by superpermutat0r »

gravelc wrote: post #71
smallnamespace wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The status quo is we keep doing what we are currently doing for decades. The risks of doing that are far greater in my opinion. Still a hard no. It's precisely this attitude that got us where we are today. 50 years ago, the response would have been 'the status quo is we're headed towards mass starvation as we become unable to feed the giant post-war population boom using traditional agricultural techniques'. Now we…

Of course the future is uncertain. I don't know that if my going to work tomorrow is not going to rip a hole in the space time continuum, but I'll risk it anyway. I know that's being facetious, but the point remains. There are clear and obvious dangers with current practices. They are not sustainable. One can never say for certainty that any change may not have unintended consequences, but in this case, they are bein…

Not that we do nothing. We can ban pesticides, return back to heuristic based agriculture where mistakes are localized and inventions are robust and of limited scale.

Pesticides are mostly used for crops that humans do not eat directly. Food safety was never about beans or sweet potato or other efficient plant sources of protein and calories, it was about wheat, soybean and corn.

Their introduction, just like the introduction of GMOs is a result of a livestock agriculture lobbyists that made sure to increase yield of meat and other animal based products by promoting the use of aggressive compounds. These products are not a strategy for food safety but for luxurious and wasteful eating.

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

#86

Post by mikorym »

The wording is a bit tricky, so one has to pay attention. 1) they are talking specifically about neonicotinoid pesticides and 2) this is because this is one of the pesticides that are known to have a disproportionately detrimental affect on bees.

There is an aspect of farming that is not discussed much in popular articles which is that of the timing of application. I believe that this is a concrete deliverable that both saves time and money and is feasible.

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

#87

Post by taneq »

rollthehard6 wrote: post #41
obituary_latte wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that society was convinced? Or was/is it that it is more “out of sight, out of mind”? I think for the layperson, little matters other than how much does it cost? If there is some invisible but safe-for-us chemical that increases yield and decreases cost, all the better for us, right? I think this is one of the great things to come out of the invention of the web. We are becoming better informed and this kind of…

Reminds of all those times we are told that 'customers demanded X', as if we all stood outside supermarkets with placards saying, "We demand huge strawberries that don't taste of anything". The market does what helps the market, it often isn't good for people or the planet they inhabit - that's the story of our current era and customers need to demand change on that basis.

Yeah but when faced with the choice between the tomatoes that were $8.50/kg and really nice but would go off in 2 days, vs. the tomatoes that were $4.50/kg and still nice and red and lasted a whole week but were pretty tasteless, you bought the latter, didn't you?

Customers demand things by paying money for them.

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

#88

Post by LargeWu »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #67
jimhi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did demand X though. The supermarkets had both tasteless strawberries and organic ones and we made our choice. Many supermarkets still have organic ones and we still pick the cheaper, larger, less tasty one.

I pay a premium for tasty, often seasonal fruit like strawberries and peaches because the difference in taste is night and day. One tastes better than candy. The other will teach kids not to eat fruit. A tip: Use your nose to sniff and distinguish between what’s ripe and tasty and what’s merely visually appealing.

I think you've touched on an important point here: Not only do we demand perfect looking produce, we demand it out of season, and we demand it to be shipped in from all over the world on a daily basis.

The reason we use pesticides is because farmers need to increase yields to meet demand. But what if we didn't demand asparagus in winter. What if we didn't demand apples in spring? What if people in northern climates didn't eat pineapple or coconut or bananas regularly? What if we bought food from the store that had bruises or imperfections?

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

#89

Post by blablabla123 »

obituary_latte wrote: post #36
blodovnik wrote: post #25

There’s no surprise here is there? We, as a society, poison pretty much everything as a standard part of the agricultural process. The outcome -the goal - of that is of course, death of vast numbers of insects. Mission accomplished. It’s a success story, strangely. The only thing that seems weird to me is how society was so easily convinced that soaking all our food in poison is OK and not a problem all good thumbs u…

Is it that society was convinced? Or was/is it that it is more “out of sight, out of mind”? I think for the layperson, little matters other than how much does it cost? If there is some invisible but safe-for-us chemical that increases yield and decreases cost, all the better for us, right? I think this is one of the great things to come out of the invention of the web. We are becoming better informed and this kind of…

> If there is some invisible but safe-for-us chemical that increases yield

In fact increased yield is also kind of good for the environment because this way agriculture needs less space. (Speaking of deforestation because of agriculture...) But still, insecticides, fungicides etc. have been used far too carelessly in the past and of course it takes years or sometimes decades to see the effects...

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

#90

Post by taneq »

pfdietz wrote: post #76
mhkool wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are neglecting the negative effects of spraying billions of tons of Roundup on the planet before the public knows for sure that it is a dangerous poison. Same with neonics, we sprayed too much and the insect populations shrunk too much and will not revive quickly since the poison is still in plants and soil. The obvious thing is that industries work for profit and have no sympathy with insects or the health of in…

I think this "Roundup is a dangerous poison" was a propaganda meme that came out of the need to demonize US agribusiness in Europe. It's a kind of social activism protectionism. I would not be at all surprised to learn it was sustained by funding from ag interests in Europe. OF course Roundup is not a dangerous poison. This is simply a lie that is repeated over and over by the dishonest and the gullible.

Poe's Law is strong with this one. I can't tell if you're serious or if this is advanced snarkasm.
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