# #### Monsanto



## RandyMac

The Four Steps Required to Keep Monsanto OUT of Your Garden


----------



## farmer steve

i guess its all a matter of choice. Some countries refuse to import GMO corn and soybeans yet their poulations are starving to death.everybody is entitled to their choices,thats why we live in the good ole USA. KEEP ON GROWIN.


----------



## poorboypaul

Baker Creek Heirloom seed company.


----------



## Arbonaut

They make a big old thick cardboard box for thier product. I lived in one for a couple days stranded in a blizzard. I had a bag of black licorice, melted snow in my hands to drink and I was damn glad to have it.


----------



## Arbonaut

We are getting some Strawberries here for about $1 per pound from Dole in Watsonville CA. They are the biggest ever. They are either havin' an exceptional year there (for the second year) or these are genetically modified. They just almost can't be this good. Straight from Valhalla.


----------



## ft. churchill

My wife and I plant alot of saved seeds, others come from peaceful valley, pinetree, or seeds of change. The strawberries you speak of are a perfect example of the trash that they call fruits and veggies at the super markets. Remember how strawberries used to have aroma, a sweet taste and a wonderful flavor. Now it's only about the size. Ya might as well pop a piece of styrofoam in your mouth. The ones we grow are about the size of the end of a man's thumb and are filled with the old time qualities.


----------



## Stihlofadeal64

ft. churchill said:


> My wife and I plant alot of saved seeds, others come from peaceful valley, pinetree, or seeds of change. The strawberries you speak of are a perfect example of the trash that they call fruits and veggies at the super markets. Remember how strawberries used to have aroma, a sweet taste and a wonderful flavor. Now it's only about the size. Ya might as well pop a piece of styrofoam in your mouth. The ones we grow are about the size of the end of a man's thumb and are filled with the old time qualities.



<=== Raises his hand to place an order for the old time strawberries. You have me convinced 
here at my screen, all I need is a taste test!


----------



## Arbonaut

ft. churchill said:


> My wife and I plant alot of saved seeds, others come from peaceful valley, pinetree, or seeds of change. The strawberries you speak of are a perfect example of the trash that they call fruits and veggies at the super markets. Remember how strawberries used to have aroma, a sweet taste and a wonderful flavor. Now it's only about the size. Ya might as well pop a piece of styrofoam in your mouth. The ones we grow are about the size of the end of a man's thumb and are filled with the old time qualities.



Did you just say I was feeding myself and my family trash? No pal that's candy bars. That is trash. The strawberries the last couple of years are top notch. Sometime thang are not black and white. Ice cream bars also is filled with old time quality so is DDT and lead arsenate.


----------



## tbow388

*You know it never occurred to me.*

"Monsanto"

You know, it just went right over my head until I was walking into one of my local feed and farm supply stores (Scruggs Farm, Lawn and Garden)

I now remember this going on in my community.

Scruggs Brothers, Monsanto Battle in Seeds Case


----------



## olyman

monsanto sucks!!!! they have tried to put decorah.iowa seed savers exchange out of business..they have also put the squeeze on many smaller seed corn co's,,and bought em out..one was 1 mile west of town here..no longer in existence....they want to control all the seeds of the world..........


----------



## farmer steve

olyman said:


> monsanto sucks!!!! they have tried to put decorah.iowa seed savers exchange out of business..they have also put the squeeze on many smaller seed corn co's,,and bought em out..one was 1 mile west of town here..no longer in existence....they want to control all the seeds of the world..........



opcorn:


----------



## luckydozenfarm

I don't have a problem with them. I grow 200+ acres of their DeKalb Triple-Pro corn and its the best stuff. I don't have to spray Atrazine herbicide (that's the really bad stuff) or dangerous pesticides over my corn.

Haven't had to put on my chem suit to mix chemicals in over 6 years. There are a lot of people out there who don't know anything about GMO's yet bash Monsanto like they know what they are talking about with genetics.

I work closely with Monsanto as a farm test grower and researcher, and I've been to numerous seminars and have had extensive experience growing, analyzing, and evaluating GMO crops. 

They have isolated the gene that produces the same crystal protein (cry-endotoxins) produced by Bacillus thuringiensis, a common soil bacterium. They have genetically engineered these plants to produce these cry-endotoxins, which have been PROVEN to not be harmful to humans and untargeted insects such as Monarch butterflies, and have de-engineered the possibly harmful beta-exotoxins that are present in the naturally occurring Bt cys proteins. Previously, common Pyrethroid pesticides would kill EVERYTHING!! 

That being said, if you took a bottle of Dipel, which is considered an organic Bt pesticide, you would be spraying the naturally occurring soil-borne Bt. However this Bt has not been modified to remove the beta-exotoxins that have shown to have very slight effects in non-targeted insects and humans over a long-period, and under heavy exposure. GMO corn and soybeans have been engineered to not express this beta-exotoxin. So am I suggesting that GMO corn could be safer and less-toxic than an actual CERTIFIED ORGANIC pesticide?? Well figure in that I also haven't had to use Atrazine herbicide in 6 years and instead switched to Glyphosate, I'd say that's a plus. Atrazine has shown to be harmful in many tests as it leaches heavily into groundwater supplies. Glyphosate breaks down in days when it touches the soil. 

I used to spray corn with pyrethroids such as Ambush, Pounce and Baythroid. With all of these you need to be heavily protected when mixing and spraying. Dangerous chemicals that you were eating and never had a problem with it. Now I don't have to spray any pesticides, and that saves fuel also.

The newest thing they are working on is getting a GMO that is drought resistant and can produce 100+ bushel corn in areas that see less than 20 inches of rainfall a year. Think about how that could help lessen the world's hunger problem and free up previously unusable farmland.

So before you jump on the Kill Monsanto train, why don't you do some research OFF the internet and go to one of the grower seminars they hold. Talk to farmers and see what they think also. I think you will come to a different conclusion.


----------



## Dalmatian90

> My wife and I plant alot of saved seeds,



Don't know if I'm getting more of a penny pincher or what, but for what retail seed packets are starting to cost that's sounding better and better 

I'm not a GMO opponent, but I'm not a supporter either -- I think there is a lot of very complex science that hasn't been done yet that needs to be done. 

Those wonderful properties, like producing cry-endotoxins without beta-exotoxins means there are new proteins in the plant -- proteins in this case that probably never before existed in nature (since they're producing something different from bT), never mind in corn. How will those affect plant, animal, and human health in a long term and large scale? 

I guess I think back to Thalidomide on that. Ends up that the molecule exists in two forms, mirror images of each other. The left-handed version being a good sedative. The right-handed version a horrible mutagen. Happens that amino acids are all left handed. The science on the safety of Thalidomide was good -- it's just neither did they ask all the questions (what happens if pregnant women took it?), nor do I suspect they even knew some of the questions to ask (modern understanding of DNA was occuring simultaneously to the commercialization of Thalidomide; I don't know the detail scientific history of the time but the potential impact of chemicals with both left- and right- handed forms with amino acids and mutation may not have yet been recognized.)

And that's one of the keys -- science is only as good as the questions you ask. A lot can be missed if you don't look, and I don't believe we're looking hard enough at GMO.

I am NOT a supporter of Monsanto -- they have the values system of scumbags. 

There is poor information out there too.

We don't have a food production problem on earth, we do have a food distribution problem. Those are separate issues. It's more then a bit disengenous talking about 100 bushel corn on 20" of rain being needed to feed a world...when we already produce so much of the damn stuff we force-feed it to our cars to get rid of it.

We have benefited enormously from the "Green Revolution" -- but it is also not clear whether better hybrids and synthetic fertilizers were necessary. An equal amount of science focused on more intensive management technigues probably would've yielded similar results. 

There is a key difference, however. "Green Revolution" technology is highly marketable because of it's dependence on purchased inputs -- seeds that you need to buy since most farmers won't grow their own hybrid seed sources, fertilizers to buy, pesticides to buy, more equipment to finance, etc. The profits flow to capital. Intensive management isn't -- there isn't a lot to sell to a biodynamic farm; there is even less to sell on a regular basis. The profits to be wrung are the farmers, but it takes a.lot.more.thought on his part then having the local elevator come out and whip up a recipe of what to apply when to download into Greenstar.

Saying glyphosate breaks down in days is, at best, playing loose with the English language.

It's average half-life is 32 days -- in a typical application, half the glyphosate is still there a month later. Generally 90% will have broken down within six months. 

Is that shorter then more persistent chemicals like Atrazine? Absolutely.

Do I use glyphosate (and 2,4-D) myself for a few particular problems? Yep.

Is Roundup different then glyphosate? Yep. Roundup is really bad for aquatic animals, due to the surfacants used to increase its effectiveness. There are glphosate based herbicides that are approved for aquatic use. Understanding just what is doing what is our biggest challenge.


----------



## forestryworks

Dalmatian90 said:


> It's more then a bit disengenous talking about 100 bushel corn on 20" of rain being needed to feed a world...when we already produce so much of the damn stuff we force-feed it to our cars to get rid of it.



Agreed.



luckydozenfarm said:


> Glyphosate breaks down in days when it touches the soil.



Only if it falls on bare soil. The fact that it breaks down faster than other herbicides doesn't mean it's safe.



> The newest thing they are working on is getting a GMO that is drought resistant and can produce 100+ bushel corn in areas that see less than 20 inches of rainfall a year. Think about how that could help lessen the world's hunger problem and free up previously unusable farmland.



No one is fixing the world's hunger problem until we fix the issue of food waste in the USA. We waste 40-50% of what we grow (a small portion of that is expected, obviously), yet we want to "feed the world"? Ain't happening, not by a long shot. And we overproduce enough as it is.

That "unusable" land you're speaking of is better left as grassland for grazing, open space, hunting and fishing, or for "perennializing" current industrial farming - perennial crops with the yields of annuals. It'll happen. People just need to stop being so economically and environmentally myopic. You know, like feeding the world.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

forestryworks said:


> Agreed.
> 
> 
> 
> Only if it falls on bare soil. The fact that it breaks down faster than other herbicides doesn't mean it's safe.
> 
> Nothing in the world is "safe". With that argument, more people die from water than from glyphosate, I'm sure you would agree.
> 
> 
> No one is fixing the world's hunger problem until we fix the issue of food waste in the USA. We waste 40-50% of what we grow (a small portion of that is expected, obviously), yet we want to "feed the world"? Ain't happening, not by a long shot. And we overproduce enough as it is.
> 
> I agree, less waste throughout the production of food, distribution, and consumption would be great. We don't get up in the morning at 4:00 am ready to end world hunger, I can assure you. They get up to make money off their labor, just like yourself and everyone else on this forum.
> 
> That "unusable" land you're speaking of is better left as grassland for grazing, open space, hunting and fishing, or for "perennializing" current industrial farming - perennial crops with the yields of annuals. It'll happen. People just need to stop being so economically and environmentally myopic. You know, like feeding the world.



What perennial crop are you talking about exactly? Grass for hay? You do know that hay is the most widely harvested crop that is already in production, right? More "unusable" acres in America are devoted to hay than any other crop. Grass is a versatile, indigenous plant that grows well in many areas and can do well in poorer soils that can't support row crops.

I'm gonna level with you guys on this. Farmers have to grow more food in the next 50-100 years than has EVER BEEN GROWN since the dawn of agriculture. We have close to 9 BILLION people on this planet and its growing exponentially. Glyphosate, Atrazine, BT crops, etc etc aren't the biggest problem we all are facing right now. It's declining water supplies, above and below ground. The Ogallala aquifer is declining rapidly out near us. Most of the water is pumped out of it to supply central pivot irrigation to the crops in the southern plains of Texas and Oklahoma. Look at Google satellite maps and see how many there are. Drive through the Texas panhandle and see the green fields of wheat and sorghum then look at how nothing is growing in the dry ditches along the road. How are we going to tell the next generation that live out there that they won't have any water because we need it to grow hog feed today? 

That amount of land can't go back to grazing, unless you want a tremendous backlash in the prices of food. It simply is too much land already in production that the market has priced ourselves into a corner. The spot price of corn today is dependent on the future supplies coming into production. Would people benefit from having a GMO that can produce the same yield in dryland farming than in irrigated fields? Of course they would. The purpose of GMO traits isn't solely to produce MORE food, its purpose is to produce more or the same amount using less resources and dangerous chemicals, which in turn save money and the planet. Are they 100% perfect? I'm not saying that they are, we are still testing long term effects. But on the same hand they haven't been proven to be dangerous through countless tests for years. If they come out tomorrow and say that GMO causes kidney failure or something, then ABSOLUTELY, I wouldn't grow them. 

What I am saying is that we don't have many options with this expanding population to be throwing good technology out the window, for no other reason that we just don't understand it. People in the 1600's would burn medicine men at the stake for sorcery if they came up with some healing potion that actually worked. 

As a corn farmer here in Texas for 36 years, I believe I've said all I need to say on the topic. If you still disagree and think Monsanto is the worst company on the planet then that's your problem. Barring some unforeseen event, GMO's are here to stay, so you might as well get used to it, maybe even learn a little more about it. I for one have no problem with their products and I enjoyed some of our first Bt , Round-up Ready sweet corn of the season last night and it was delicious. It was a joy to pick pesticide free corn in a completely weed free field.


----------



## forestryworks

luckydozenfarm said:


> What perennial crop are you talking about exactly? Grass for hay? You do know that hay is the most widely harvested crop that is already in production, right? More "unusable" acres in America are devoted to hay than any other crop. *Grass is a versatile, indigenous plant that grows well in many areas and can do well in poorer soils that can't support row crops*.



You proved my point. I'll expound below.



> I'm gonna level with you guys on this. Farmers have to grow more food in the next 50-100 years than has EVER BEEN GROWN since the dawn of agriculture. We have close to 9 BILLION people on this planet and its growing exponentially. Glyphosate, Atrazine, BT crops, etc etc aren't the biggest problem we all are facing right now. It's declining water supplies, above and below ground. The Ogallala aquifer is declining rapidly out near us. Most of the water is pumped out of it to supply central pivot irrigation to the crops in the southern plains of Texas and Oklahoma. Look at Google satellite maps and see how many there are. Drive through the Texas panhandle and see the green fields of wheat and sorghum then look at how nothing is growing in the dry ditches along the road. How are we going to tell the next generation that live out there that they won't have any water because we need it to grow hog feed today?
> 
> That amount of land can't go back to grazing, unless you want a tremendous backlash in the prices of food. It simply is too much land already in production that the market has priced ourselves into a corner. The spot price of corn today is dependent on the future supplies coming into production. Would people benefit from having a GMO that can produce the same yield in dryland farming than in irrigated fields? Of course they would. The purpose of GMO traits isn't solely to produce MORE food, its purpose is to produce more or the same amount using less resources and dangerous chemicals, which in turn save money and the planet. Are they 100% perfect? I'm not saying that they are, we are still testing long term effects. But on the same hand they haven't been proven to be dangerous through countless tests for years. If they come out tomorrow and say that GMO causes kidney failure or something, then ABSOLUTELY, I wouldn't grow them.
> 
> What I am saying is that we don't have many options with this expanding population to be throwing good technology out the window, for no other reason that we just don't understand it. People in the 1600's would burn medicine men at the stake for sorcery if they came up with some healing potion that actually worked.
> 
> As a corn farmer here in Texas for 36 years, I believe I've said all I need to say on the topic. If you still disagree and think Monsanto is the worst company on the planet then that's your problem. Barring some unforeseen event, GMO's are here to stay, so you might as well get used to it, maybe even learn a little more about it. I for one have no problem with their products and I enjoyed some of our first Bt , Round-up Ready sweet corn of the season last night and it was delicious. It was a joy to pick pesticide free corn in a completely weed free field.



Humans don't eat hay. I'm talking about grain crops that have been hybridized with perennial grasses - this gives us the yield of grains but the root system of perennial grasses (this is exactly what they mean when they talk about getting to the "root" of the 10,000 year old farming problem). Those crops aren't fully here yet, but they will be. Annual crops are headed for the wayside in the coming decades, and good riddance, they do nothing for soil fertility. Yes, I'm aware of soybeans and their ability to fixate nitrogen - but that won't fix the problem of bare soil.

And on the subject of the Ogallala Aquifer, it is well established in many circles that a good sized portion of it are going to lose all their water within the next 50 years if they keep farming as they are now. Better start dryland farming today, with every other row held in place by perennial native grass. Annual crops are a huge part of the reason for the decline in soil fertility in the Great Plains - adding fertilizer is just a cute little band aid. And if you want clean water, that is able to get back into the Aquifer, you would be wise to unfarm and plant more grassland - it is perennial, native grasslands that cleans our water and recharges the aquifers - cropfields do not. Which is more important, yields of crops and cash in hand, or stabilizing the water supply of the Aquifer?

Every summer I drive through the Panhandle of TX on my way to cooler climes and I see those crop circles, those big fancy pivot irrigators, and all that water gettin' blown away by the West Texas wind. Common sense tells me, if somebody has to artificially water what they are growing, and on such a landscape scale, they probably shouldn't be growing that in the first place. Water is way more important than cash crops. What else do I see? Bare soil. All those planted windbreaks and crop residue (in which there's still bare soil showing) are just band aids for looming and larger problems. The Dust Bowl will repeat itself and only a fool will think it won't, because most of the Great Plains, the Southern parts especially, are only going to get drier in the coming decades. Healthy grasslands are the only option for saving the Ogalalla Aquifer - that plant community is adapted to the harsh climate of the Great Plains, it has 12,000+ years of evolutionary history there and it rightfully belongs there. Leave the farming to the more mesic areas in the East.

As an added note on groundwater depletion, in my home county in Texas, oil companies pulled 1.8 billion gallons of groundwater out of the Trinity Aquifer in 2012 for the sole purpose of well fracturing. That's something else that needs to change, too. Once it's mixed with those nasty fracturing chemicals, that water is useless. _And it was perfectly good to begin with_.

_“The trouble with water – and there is trouble with water – is that they’re not making any more of it. They’re not making any less, mind you, but no more either. [...] People, however, they are making more of, many more – far more than is ecologically sensible – and all those people are utterly dependent on water for their lives, for their livelihoods, their food, and increasingly, their industry. Humans can live for a month without food but will die in less than a week without water. Humans consume water, discard it, poison it, waste it, and relentlessly change the hydrological cycles, indifferent to the consequences; too many people, too little water, water in the wrong places and in the wrong amounts.”_ – Marq de Villers

Industrial farming has an ego problem, basically. They think the more they produce, the less hungry people there will be. Kinda like praying, not really helping but thinking that you are. Again, with 40-50% of the annual US food crops wasted, no American farmer is making a dent on world hunger. So, if they are so concerned about the subject, why don't they volunteer their time or money and go to those places? Don't get me wrong, I'm not against farming, especially the small healthy-soil oriented family farms - they're the ones that give farming a good public image. But industrial farming? Meh. They can keep shooting themselves in the foot and ask for more subsidies.

_“The human gluttony gene, bolstered by the very real images of starving Africans, pushes us to grow tons more food than the world economic system can absorb or deliver. Federal farm policy, out of fear of hunger and of the farm lobby, continues to encourage overproduction through subsidies and support programs. The significant irony is that the scientific term for the stuff that is killing the Gulf of Mexico is “nutrients”—fertilizer that feeds the growth of microorganisms in water, whose dead bodies poison the ocean downriver. And it is the overproduction of food, the staff of life, that actually threatens the life and health of our planet.”_ — George B. Pyle


----------



## luckydozenfarm

forestryworks said:


> You proved my point. I'll expound below.
> 
> 
> 
> Humans don't eat hay. I'm talking about grain crops that have been hybridized with perennial grasses - this gives us the yield of grains but the root system of perennial grasses (this is exactly what they mean when they talk about getting to the "root" of the 10,000 year old farming problem). Those crops aren't fully here yet, but they will be. Annual crops are headed for the wayside in the coming decades, and good riddance, they do nothing for soil fertility. Yes, I'm aware of soybeans and their ability to fixate nitrogen - but that won't fix the problem of bare soil.
> 
> And on the subject of the Ogallala Aquifer, it is well established in many circles that a good sized portion of it are going to lose all their water within the next 50 years if they keep farming as they are now. Better start dryland farming today, with every other row held in place by perennial native grass. Annual crops are a huge part of the reason for the decline in soil fertility in the Great Plains - adding fertilizer is just a cute little band aid. And if you want clean water, that is able to get back into the Aquifer, you would be wise to unfarm and plant more grassland - it is perennial, native grasslands that cleans our water and recharges the aquifers - cropfields do not. Which is more important, yields of crops and cash in hand, or stabilizing the water supply of the Aquifer?
> 
> Every summer I drive through the Panhandle of TX on my way to cooler climes and I see those crop circles, those big fancy pivot irrigators, and all that water gettin' blown away by the West Texas wind. Common sense tells me, if somebody has to artificially water what they are growing, and on such a landscape scale, they probably shouldn't be growing that in the first place. Water is way more important than cash crops. What else do I see? Bare soil. All those planted windbreaks and crop residue (in which there's still bare soil showing) are just band aids for looming and larger problems. The Dust Bowl will repeat itself and only a fool will think it won't, because most of the Great Plains, the Southern parts especially, are only going to get drier in the coming decades. Healthy grasslands are the only option for saving the Ogalalla Aquifer - that plant community is adapted to the harsh climate of the Great Plains, it has 12,000+ years of evolutionary history there and it rightfully belongs there. Leave the farming to the more mesic areas in the East.
> 
> As an added note on groundwater depletion, in my home county in Texas, oil companies pulled 1.8 billion gallons of groundwater out of the Trinity Aquifer in 2012 for the sole purpose of well fracturing. That's something else that needs to change, too. Once it's mixed with those nasty fracturing chemicals, that water is useless. _And it was perfectly good to begin with_.
> 
> _“The trouble with water – and there is trouble with water – is that they’re not making any more of it. They’re not making any less, mind you, but no more either. [...] People, however, they are making more of, many more – far more than is ecologically sensible – and all those people are utterly dependent on water for their lives, for their livelihoods, their food, and increasingly, their industry. Humans can live for a month without food but will die in less than a week without water. Humans consume water, discard it, poison it, waste it, and relentlessly change the hydrological cycles, indifferent to the consequences; too many people, too little water, water in the wrong places and in the wrong amounts.”_ – Marq de Villers
> 
> Industrial farming has an ego problem, basically. They think the more they produce, the less hungry people there will be. Kinda like praying, not really helping but thinking that you are. Again, with 40-50% of the annual US food crops wasted, no American farmer is making a dent on world hunger. So, if they are so concerned about the subject, why don't they volunteer their time or money and go to those places? Don't get me wrong, I'm not against farming, especially the small healthy-soil oriented family farms - they're the ones that give farming a good public image. But industrial farming? Meh. They can keep shooting themselves in the foot and ask for more subsidies.
> 
> _“The human gluttony gene, bolstered by the very real images of starving Africans, pushes us to grow tons more food than the world economic system can absorb or deliver. Federal farm policy, out of fear of hunger and of the farm lobby, continues to encourage overproduction through subsidies and support programs. The significant irony is that the scientific term for the stuff that is killing the Gulf of Mexico is “nutrients”—fertilizer that feeds the growth of microorganisms in water, whose dead bodies poison the ocean downriver. And it is the overproduction of food, the staff of life, that actually threatens the life and health of our planet.”_ — George B. Pyle



OK let's get back to the real world, if we may. Fantasy crops like perennial grains would be wonderful, and if my Dodge diesel 3500 dually ran off unicorn farts we'd all be saved. I would think you know as a farmer that perennial plants need water and fertilizer too. You can't just harvest and pull nutrients out of the field and put nothing back in year after year. That's wishful thinking, but until we are closer on your perennial grasses idea, we need to keep looking at viable alternatives closer to fruition like GMO drought resistant corn.

Monsanto | Genuity DroughtGard Hybrids

I think its funny how people complain about industrialized farming. I just got back from a trip to South Vietnam where my father flew in the Air Force and I was surprised on how they plant rice in Vietnam. Do you know how?? ONE PLANT AT A TIME BY HAND!! Do you know they do it in East Texas?? They plant seeds with an AIRPLANE!! How do they harvest it? ONE PLANT AT A TIME BY HAND!! How do we harvest it here? A 400hp Case Combine that harvests hundreds of acres a day...

So what does that do for us in America where industrialized farming is the norm? It frees up human labor to go on and do other things, and makes the price of food very low. Certainly, there are drawbacks to low priced food: wastage, obesity, pollution, for sure. But I saw what misery those people in Vietnam go through every day JUST TO EAT..If we went back to that way of life people in America will riot, I'm sure of it. At the very least we would move back to third world country status. So that's never going to happen, let's just take that option off the table. As for the "ego problem", we don't have one. We are here to make as much money for our products as we can. Just like any other place of business, and I'm sure just like the one you work for. That's called capitalism and there are winners and losers by design. 

As for the subsidies...don't expect me to pay for my $300,000 combine by myself and to be able to get a Quarter Pounder off the dollar menu. I'm not saying there isn't fraud in the system, but to kill the patient due to an illness would be shooting yourself and America in the foot. Removing subsidies would force out many smaller farms and would leave you with ONLY large farms with the working capital to move forward, forcing even higher prices at the supermarket. The only consequence to removing subsidies is higher prices and less competition, plain and simple.

I agree with you that we should never have to irrigate fields. That's the point I was making in the first place. Either get GMO the crops to produce the same or more with less water and fertilizer, or move on to other areas with better rainfall. I spoke yesterday with our DeKalb (a Monsanto Brand) seed rep here in our county and he was telling me that they are field trialing a new variety of Drought-Gard corn a few counties over to the west of us near San Antonio. We get 45+ inches of rain here in Waller county but 100 miles to the west near San Antonio they get less than 20". I am excited to see this technology get off the ground and I plan on taking a trip out to see it in person in a few weeks. It is planted in a field that has never been planted to corn due to the lack of rainfall in the area. They are expecting 85-100 bushels per acre on the crop all dryland, no irrigation. 

Listen, I'm not against your idea of hybridizing perennial native grasses with row crops. I'm open to any idea of better methods and sustainable farming, but we need to keep our hand and feet working with what we have now. If perennial hybrids gets up and working you can bet I'll be on board with it. 

I have two kids in elementary school and they started their first garden this year. I couldn't be more proud of them and I want this farm to be here for them and their kids. 

Oh and BTW...humans do eat hay...we eat the cows that eat the hay, same thing in my book.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

“The human gluttony gene, bolstered by the very real images of starving Africans, pushes us to grow tons more food than the world economic system can absorb or deliver. Federal farm policy, out of fear of hunger and of the farm lobby, continues to encourage overproduction through subsidies and support programs. The significant irony is that the scientific term for the stuff that is killing the Gulf of Mexico is “nutrients”—fertilizer that feeds the growth of microorganisms in water, whose dead bodies poison the ocean downriver. And it is the overproduction of food, the staff of life, that actually threatens the life and health of our planet.” — George B. Pyle

You are quoting George B. Pyle??...SMH....really? 

Have you actually read his book? That book is nothing more than a socialistic liberal dream land where everyone holds hands and sings Koombaya. He knows the problems farmers face b/c I think he is from Kansas, but dude, he needs a real world economic lesson. I would love to have him get from behind the desk and spend a day harvesting corn with me.

Besides we don't have the luxury of time for his wishful thinking, huge over the top ideas, and a complete overhaul of the agricultural socio-economic system hoping it was the right move. We do, however, need to move towards more sustainable farming using less inputs such as nitrogen fertilizers, irrigation, diesel fuel, and chemicals. His book does point out that the problem isn't food capacity its the lack of funds to purchase food. True, but that's certainly not agriculture's fault to remedy. The only help industrialized agriculture can and should provide is the economies of scale pricing that can be accomplished with the right mechanized tools at our (or their) disposal. It's a well known economic FACT that people will receive lower wages for a task that a machine can accomplish more efficiently. It was the case with the cotton industry also back in the late 1800's. With the advent of the cotton picker, tractor and cotton gin, prices for cotton and the manual labor to produce cotton (discounting free slave labor) fell through the roof. A boon for consumers wouldn't you say? It left little profit for any cotton producer who didn't have the money for the equipment. Today, remove the equipment, the GMO cotton seeds, the large, industrialized, technologically-efficient farms, add in a few socialist labor unions for all the new hand pickers/planters and you'll have a $200 box of Q-tips. I promise you that.


----------



## Dalmatian90

> You can't just harvest and pull nutrients out of the field and put nothing back in year after year.



Which is why it's folly to believe you're going to feed the world from the American grain basket.

You ship off the nutrients, to be crapped out into a river in India, Africa, or China to float on down to the ocean and cause an algae bloom there. 

Meanwhile we're turning natural gas into nitrogen and mining the finite resources of Florida's phosphate deposits to replace the nutrients we're shipping overseas and flushing out to sea ourselves. Those of us here won't live to see the exhaustion of world phosphate mines, but we will see the U.S. become dependent on Moroccan phosphate within the next 20 years.

Any sustainable agricultural system on the scale of centuries is going to need to recapture nutrients from the population they're feeding, and even after processing the waste and concentrating the nutrients, you'll want them reasonably close by to keep the costs of shipping down. Nitrogen we can make easy enough. Potassium we're in good shape on for the next thousand years or more with current technology. But within a century or two we're probably looking at having to feed 5-7 Billion people with no more rock phosphate left.

We need the bulk of the world's calories to be produced near the bulk of the world's people, so among other good reasons to do so...the nutrients can be recycled easily 

As to the $200 box of Q-tips, that's hyperbole.

16% of our spending on food goes to farmers. The other 84% is shipping, processing, marketing, retail, etc. 

To double our farmers gross income...it would take a 16% increase in food prices.

We could increase our farm costs, and thus what we need to pay them, significantly without catastrophic impact on consumer prices.


----------



## Marco

Sustainable farming only matters if you are not going to go broke doinng it and family farm means you make enough to impress the ladies to have relations with you


----------



## Sawyer Rob

Rogue Oregon Wheat Inflames Foes of Gene-Altered Crops - Bloomberg

SR


----------



## forestryworks

luckydozenfarm said:


> Oh and BTW...humans do eat hay...we eat the cows that eat the hay, same thing in my book.



Yes, but only to an extent.

You do realize that a very small amount of the beef produced in the US is grass fed? Corn fed junk beef controls the market. And even if cattle are grass fed, but then grain finished, that just defeats the whole point.

100% grass fed bison for me. 



luckydozenfarm said:


> “The human gluttony gene, bolstered by the very real images of starving Africans, pushes us to grow tons more food than the world economic system can absorb or deliver. Federal farm policy, out of fear of hunger and of the farm lobby, continues to encourage overproduction through subsidies and support programs. The significant irony is that the scientific term for the stuff that is killing the Gulf of Mexico is “nutrients”—fertilizer that feeds the growth of microorganisms in water, whose dead bodies poison the ocean downriver. And it is the overproduction of food, the staff of life, that actually threatens the life and health of our planet.” — George B. Pyle
> 
> You are quoting George B. Pyle??...SMH....really?



There's no arguing with that quote.


----------



## Marco

*Some crap they are allowed to print*

Toni Nagy: What Every Parent Should Know About Monsanto
Apparently she hasn't heard that half of agent orange was severlly restricted since 1970 and banned in the mid 80's and that's only because they overcooked the 2,4,5T. 
God Damn, since rodent chunks contain peanuts, peanuts must be rat poison.


----------



## farmer steve

Marco said:


> Toni Nagy: What Every Parent Should Know About Monsanto
> Apparently she hasn't heard that half of agent orange was severlly restricted since 1970 and banned in the mid 80's and that's only because they overcooked the 2,4,5T.
> God Damn, since rodent chunks contain peanuts, peanuts must be rat poison.



hey it's on the internet,it must be true


----------



## bucknfeller

forestryworks said:


> Yes, but only to an extent.
> 
> You do realize that a very small amount of the beef produced in the US is grass fed? Corn fed junk beef controls the market. And even if cattle are grass fed, but then grain finished, that just defeats the whole point.
> 
> 100% grass fed bison for me.




What do you think those "grass fed" beef eat in the winter time? I'm sure in someones imagination there are lush green pastures all winter long  There's a guy not far from me who has a good "grass fed beef" scam going on, I've seen the sprayers out in his hay fields on numerous occasions.  

In my opinion, if a beef isn't penned up and finished out on grain for the last 30-45 days, it isn't fit to eat.


----------



## Dalmatian90

> There's a guy not far from me who has a good "grass fed beef" scam going on, I've seen the sprayers out in his hay fields on numerous occasions.
> 
> In my opinion, if a beef isn't penned up and finished out on grain for the last 30-45 days, it isn't fit to eat.



First, I have no fracking clue how spraying hayfields somehow makes grass fed a scam. 

Second, some of the best beef I've eaten is grass fed, supplemented with silage in winter. Raised a mile as the crow flies from me. Herd has been managed for decades with a mix of Hereford & Charolais blood.


----------



## bucknfeller

Dalmatian90 said:


> First, I have no fracking clue how spraying hayfields somehow makes grass fed a scam.
> 
> Second, some of the best beef I've eaten is grass fed, supplemented with silage in winter. Raised a mile as the crow flies from me. Herd has been managed for decades with a mix of Hereford & Charolais blood.



First, I just find it amusing that the yuppies around here think they're eating something so natural, and wholesome, when in reality, those "grass fed" herds are ingesting all those chemicals that are sprayed directly on the hay they're eating.

Second, if they're eating silage, than they can not be sold as grass fed. Silage corn has been genetically modified for many years to produce more fodder than other varieties. And for me, the only thing worse than tasting wild onion in a beef that hasn't been properly finished out, is having one that wasn't taken off the silage prior to slaughter, leaving that sour residual in the meat.

I just find the whole thing laughable, sorry some of you fail to see the humor.


----------



## Dalmatian90

> I just find the whole thing laughable, sorry some of you fail to see the humor.



Because it seems to some of us that you're laughing to a comedian who only exists in your mind.

It would take a particularly poor farmer to slaughter animals just off silage...because why the #### did you feed them all winter long?

Never said it was sold as grass fed -- they don't. But they have been out munching meerily away at pasture all spring, summer, and fall up until slaughter without the grain finishing you believe is necessary.

Nor are people going for grass fed necessarily looking to avoid any chemicals. I do have organic options in my area, I don't usually purchase from them (other then my milk which happens to be organic but that's not the controlling part of my decision to buy raw) -- mostly I purchase from more conventional local farmers. 

And their animals, even without the organic stamp, eat a diet far more natural for them and do so in a way that is better for the environment ,both locally and globally, and the local economy than any feedlot beef or confined pork is.


----------



## bucknfeller

One of the most inhumane things I've ever seen was an organic dairy. Cows that would normally be treated with antibiotics, and be healthy again in a few days are left in "sick pens" to suffer it out, some of them make it, some of them don't. Sometimes they are sold to other farmers where they can be properly medicated and nursed back to health.

Some of the same whacko's that are out preaching about animal rights, are the ones buying "organic milk".  You probably fail to see the humor, or the irony there as well. 

The whole "organic" fad is just a joke in my opinion. I've seen so many farmers who tried to go organic, either go tits up, or switch back to conventional methods after they find out it just isn't practical. I've seen 220 bushels/acre of conventional corn right across the lane, on the same farm as 17 bushels/acre of trashy organic corn 

If all farmers went organic, the world would starve to death in short order.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

bucknfeller said:


> On of the most inhumane things I've ever seen was an organic dairy. Cows that would normally be treated with antibiotics, and be healthy again in a few days are left in "sick pens" to suffer it out, some of them make it, some of them don't. Sometimes they are sold to other farmers where they can be properly medicated and nursed back to health.
> 
> Some of the same whacko's that are out preaching about animal rights, are the ones buying "organic milk".  You probably fail to see the humor, or the irony there as well.
> 
> The whole "organic" fad is just a joke in my opinion. I've seen so many farmers who tried to go organic, either go tits up, or switch back to conventional methods after they find out it just isn't practical. I've seen 220 bushels/acre of conventional corn right across the lane, on the same farm as 17 bushels/acre of trashy organic corn
> 
> If all farmers went organic, the world would starve to death in short order.




I'm with you on that. 

We tried to fill an order for organic tomatoes a few years back and the stink bugs destroyed 60-70% of the tomatoes that could have easily been saved with a dose of Malathion. But since no one wants to eat tomatoes with yellow stink bug punctures, we lost the contract and the money invested. Had consumers been willing to pay the premium for the loss we incurred, that would have been ok with us. No such luck. 

Ordinary consumers have been so far removed from food production that its almost laughable when a "city-slicker" can't tell a bull from a cow at our place. We run a pick-your-own veg stand and it never ceases to amaze me on what people say sometimes. 

I pointed a few people down to the row of onions the other day and they came back and said they couldn't find them. I went back over to the row and had to show them that the onions, being a root, are UNDER the ground. But they sure were adamant that I provide proof they were organically grown. 

Yes sir they are... I added 3 loader buckets of cow manure right before planting them. 

Cow manure??? You mean I put my hands in that and you expect people to eat something growing in cow manure???? I'm calling the health dept and having you shut down...

True story....


----------



## bucknfeller

luckydozenfarm said:


> I'm with you on that.
> 
> We tried to fill an order for organic tomatoes a few years back and the stink bugs destroyed 60-70% of the tomatoes that could have easily been saved with a dose of Malathion. But since no one wants to eat tomatoes with yellow stink bug punctures, we lost the contract and the money invested. Had consumers been willing to pay the premium for the loss we incurred, that would have been ok with us. No such luck.
> 
> Ordinary consumers have been so far removed from food production that its almost laughable when a "city-slicker" can't tell a bull from a cow at our place. We run a pick-your-own veg stand and it never ceases to amaze me on what people say sometimes.
> 
> I pointed a few people down to the row of onions the other day and they came back and said they couldn't find them. I went back over to the row and had to show them that the onions, being a root, are UNDER the ground. But they sure were adamant that I provide proof they were organically grown.
> 
> Yes sir they are... I added 3 loader buckets of cow manure right before planting them.
> 
> Cow manure??? You mean I put my hands in that and you expect people to eat something growing in cow manure???? I'm calling the health dept and having you shut down...
> 
> True story....



I hear ya buddy. My father, and stepmother own and manage a pretty good sized farm market. I hear all kinds of crap like that. The world is full of stupid people.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

Just because something is organic doesn't make it safe.

You can get Listeria from cantaloupes and it can be life threating if they are grown on improperly aged manure. Listeria gets in the netting of the melon and is pushed through it when a knife cuts into it.

Same goes for greens like spinach and lettuce. 

I've never heard of anyone dying eating a cantaloupe grown on 13-13-13...lol


----------



## bucknfeller

Speaking of lopes, now the FDA, and Dept. of Ag. are pushing for all the growers to start bleaching their lopes prior to sale. The equipment needed to do so costs around $40,000. That has stopped a lot of the local growers here. One of the guys I know, is a great farmer, he grew the best cantaloupes I've ever eaten, they were like candy. He said he just couldn't justify spending that kind of money to get set up, so he quit growing them all together. Now he just grows watermelons.

Now at first glance, this plan might seem like it is a good thing, and our government is trying to help insure food safety for all. But if you really read into it, you will see that it is the California growers who are pushing heavily for this. That is because they wish to dominate the market, and push out all of the little local growers. Same reason they flooded the east coast with low cost Strawberries for several years, that was to drive the market down so low, that the farmers around here couldn't afford to grow them. So they took out their berry patches, and went on to other crops. Now, that they have the market tied up, they just keep pushing up the prices again.

So while some of these food safety laws may appear to be for the good of the people, you can bet your ass if you research it a little, it all comes down to dollar signs.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

bucknfeller said:


> Speaking of lopes, now the FDA, and Dept. of Ag. are pushing for all the growers to start bleaching their lopes prior to sale. The equipment needed to do so costs around $40,000. That has stopped a lot of the local growers here. One of the guys I know, is a great farmer, he grew the best cantaloupes I've ever eaten, they were like candy. He said he just couldn't justify spending that kind of money to get set up, so he quit growing them all together. Now he just grows watermelons.
> 
> Now at first glance, this plan might seem like it is a good thing, and our government is trying to help insure food safety for all. But if you really read into it, you will see that it is the California growers who are pushing heavily for this. That is because they wish to dominate the market, and push out all of the little local growers. Same reason they flooded the east coast with low cost Strawberries for several years, that was to drive the market down so low, that the farmers around here couldn't afford to grow them. So they took out their berry patches, and went on to other crops. Now, that they have the market tied up, they just keep pushing up the prices again.
> 
> So while some of these food safety laws may appear to be for the good of the people, you can bet your ass if you research it a little, it all comes down to dollar signs.



We never grew them very much other than a row or two. Even before those bleaching machines cantaloupes were a low margin crop to begin with. We have perfect conditions at our place to grow them: sandy loam soil, lots of heat and humidity and low pest pressure, but for the space and time you could have planted something else and made more money. Especially since the whole Listeria scare of 2011 and 2012. Being as close as I am to Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley, fresh produce is a dime a dozen especially watermelons, peppers and cantaloupes. I stay away from those crops from a commercial standpoint because even during bumper crop years you can barely squeak out a profit. Tomatoes, Sweet corn, pumpkins, lettuce, are my best sellers. We sell to walk-ups but mostly restaurants are our biggest buyers. They have an insatiable demand for salad products. For example, I sold over 20 tons of Romaine Lettuce this spring to just 5 restaurants.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

Can We Trust Monsanto with Our Food?: Scientific American


Exactly..


----------



## blades

Monsanto's litagation practices are where the rub is, not particularly their products although they are quite pricy by some standards.They have a habit of suing a small farmer due to cross pollination (due to mother nature's fickle winds). This bullying using the courts systems is where most of the objections arise. 

I got sued by another co many years back, they said I copied there product. Hell I didn't even know they had that particular item. For that matter that they even existed. As we had been making our own for 60 years and selling it. ( real big business here maybe 50 pieces a year at $7.00 per each) LSS just stopped offering it not worth a court case, even though my Co. is twice the age of theirs, so who copied who. ( my co. started in 1932) Point is cost of litigation just to prove who is right is beyond the ability of many small operations. This is what Monsanto banks on in there effort to control the world seed supply. A single supplier is not a good thing in any area. I have yet to see the Govt. clamp down on their practices even though the govt has done so in the past in similar conditions in other markets.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

blades said:


> Monsanto's litagation practices are where the rub is, not particularly their products although they are quite pricy by some standards.They have a habit of suing a small farmer due to cross pollination (due to mother nature's fickle winds). This bullying using the courts systems is where most of the objections arise.
> 
> I got sued by another co many years back, they said I copied there product. Hell I didn't even know they had that particular item. For that matter that they even existed. As we had been making our own for 60 years and selling it. ( real big business here maybe 50 pieces a year at $7.00 per each) LSS just stopped offering it not worth a court case, even though my Co. is twice the age of theirs, so who copied who. ( my co. started in 1932) Point is cost of litigation just to prove who is right is beyond the ability of many small operations. This is what Monsanto banks on in there effort to control the world seed supply. A single supplier is not a good thing in any area. I have yet to see the Govt. clamp down on their practices even though the govt has done so in the past in similar conditions in other markets.




Monsanto doesn't go around suing people for pollen blowing in the wind. That's just a myth, and besides I don't know of many REAL farmers who save that year's seed to plant next year's crop, especially corn seeds. No farmer worth his salt, anyway. You lose a lot of the F1 hybrid traits of the variety by doing that.

They did sue one guy because he went down to the grain elevator, bought some seeds off the mill, and planted them KNOWING FULL WELL that he was taking advantage of the Roundup Ready technology without paying for it. These traits are OWNED by the parent company, just like you can't use musician's songs, a writer's words, or an artist's work without due compensation. I would have sued the pants off that guy also. That's as good as coming into my woodlot and filling your pickup with firewood and driving off to me. Kinda things that get you shot here in Texas. 

You and others I am finding out on other blogs also don't seem to be aware that Dupont also sells GMO's. They are labeled as Pioneer seeds. So forget about a single supplier of seeds and world domination of the seed supply. The competition between the two is fierce here in Texas and the price of seed has dropped quite a bit in the last couple years due to that.


----------



## blades

tell me something, the guy "bought the seed from the mill" , how did this not pay whatever? ( that where we got ours, at the co-op feed, seed ,mill)
Is it required to by a seperate lic. from the orginial seed producer now days to plant them?

Do not remember any thing like that back on the farm 25 years ago.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

blades said:


> tell me something, the guy "bought the seed from the mill" , how did this not pay whatever? ( that where we got ours, at the co-op feed, seed ,mill)
> Is it required to by a seperate lic. from the orginial seed producer now days to plant them?
> 
> Do not remember any thing like that back on the farm 25 years ago.




He literally went down and got a few bags of shelled corn, knowing they came from a RR field and planted them. Then collected enough seed every year to start again. He used the technology and sprayed Roundup over the field to control weeds and did not pay for the technology or get a license from Monsanto. Pure theft.

As anyone like myself who has grown both RR and non-RR corn, I can say that RR is worth every penny @ around $200-250 per bag. You spray at V-5 stage and maybe V-8 stage and that's it. Not a single weed in the field-100% effective. Cost of weed management per acre is about $3 per acre. Mechanical weed control is about $30 per acre last time we did it.

Yes, you have to have a license to buy the seed, see pics below. 

View attachment 306023
View attachment 306024


----------



## blades

well new to me, ranks right up there with the city charging the property owner a fee for water runoff when it rains or snow melts. ( honest, this is what they are doing here to commercial lots, inaddition to property taxes) guess it would be the same as a lic for a computer program use or in that venue anyway.


----------



## Dalmatian90

bucknfeller said:


> One of the most inhumane things I've ever seen was an organic dairy. Cows that would normally be treated with antibiotics, and be healthy again in a few days are left in "sick pens" to suffer it out, some of them make it, some of them don't. Sometimes they are sold to other farmers where they can be properly medicated and nursed back to health.
> 
> Some of the same whacko's that are out preaching about animal rights, are the ones buying "organic milk".  You probably fail to see the humor, or the irony there as well.



I've never agreed with the absolute ban on therapeutic antibiotics for animals in organic certified systems. 

I guess I do find humor in self-imposed ignorance -- whether it's citiots, or folks who dismiss "organic" with a wave of their hand.

I will take the farm that's caring for its herd of cows spending most of their day out on pasture for being more humane everyday then the one using loafing barns and docking the tails of every single cow so they can speed up their thrice a day milkings. I've been on both in my area, and ones in between.

Doesn't matter if they call themselves organic or not -- since there are plenty of organic factory farms in the U.S. I know which system is better for the cows overall, and which is more likely to get their cows sick in the first place.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

Dalmatian90 said:


> I've never agreed with the absolute ban on therapeutic antibiotics for animals in organic certified systems.
> 
> I guess I do find humor in self-imposed ignorance -- whether it's citiots, or folks who dismiss "organic" with a wave of their hand.
> 
> I will take the farm that's caring for its herd of cows spending most of their day out on pasture for being more humane everyday then the one using loafing barns and docking the tails of every single cow so they can speed up their thrice a day milkings. I've been on both in my area, and ones in between.
> 
> Doesn't matter if they call themselves organic or not -- since there are plenty of organic factory farms in the U.S. I know which system is better for the cows overall, and which is more likely to get their cows sick in the first place.



I agree Dal..but the fact of the matter remains that most people will not pay the extra price for good quality products. Hell, there are so many more people of food stamps now that we can't even get the farm bill passed through Congress without tacking on more food stamps. Man, I grow food for a living, and I am FED UP with people who complain about everything. 

What they want is the Grade AA eggs, Prime+ beef, organic this, organic that, no chemicals, no insect damage, fresh as the day it was picked, and pay nothing for it with food stamps...and then if that's not enough they want to complain that farmers are making all the money and screwing the people over!! Are you serious? Its like my momma used to say to us kids...IF YOU DON'T LIKE WHAT'S FOR DINNER, GO MAKE YOUR OWN. 

Seriously, go make your own food people and see how hard it is.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

yeah ok..


----------



## Marco

I seen a deal on PBS once where an African American worked for the Glidden paint company and was able to synthasize a hormone to help his barren wife from a soybean.


----------



## Marco

When I was 12 I got my appendix taken out, 100 years ago I would have bean dead. What you got? We need to accept advancements before we complain.


----------



## Philbo

I guess my family and I are among the so few Americans that are completely willing to pay more for quality, pesticide-free, environmentally friendly grown food. Hell, I work full-time in a health food store that is very restrictive about what ingredients are allowed in the food they sell, and I am leary of a lot of the stuff we sell even though it's labelled "organic, free-range, grass-fed, non-GMO, etc." Those aren't necessarily the most important things.

My family is actually doing everything we can reasonably do on our own land to produce our own quality food (veggie garden, dairy goats, pigs for pork.) It is way more work than most Americans seem to want to deal with, though. I think the more people start doing whatever they reasonably can to produce _something_ for themselves, and then seeking out local farmer's markets first, the better off we'll be. Of course, there will likely always be things that everyone needs to purchase from the supermarket, but all things food related have gotten waay too convenient and cheap to the point where it's endangering the whole infrastructure. Quality food should cost accordingly, and people should have no problem justifying it's price tag if they are truly concerned with their health. My family lives on a relatively very low annual salary, yet we spend more money on quality food than almost anyone we know because we value it as a building block of our health.

Also, thinking that (even more) increased food production/surplus from the USA is going to solve the world/African hunger problem is over-simplifying very complex political and natural resource situations. These situations very often result in a wide range of conflicts that displace people from their traditional grazing and farming lands. The problems persist and people are semi/permanently forced from _their_ land because of a number of terrible reasons. They end up cramped together in internally displaced or refugee camps with no real resources or physical space to farm and graze animals as they had; thus they become dependent on external food aid. If the governments and resources of African countries were managed better then it would be a step in the right direction for the African hunger problem. I'm still oversimplifying this to be sure, but don't think that more food surplus from us is going to solve their problems which are deeply rooted in both European colonialism and corruption.


----------



## blades

99% corruption just like our own Gov. from the top down.


----------



## farmer steve

I had a customer come into the market on sat. wanting to know if my sweet corn was GMO.I told her no but asked her why. She said she didn't want corn that had harmful chemicals in it. She then told me how she was freaked out by worms in sweet corn. I did tell her that my sweet corn was sprayed to prevent worms and she said that was ok as long as it wasn't corn that was "injected" with Glyphosate.??. She read on the internet that every corn seed was injected with roundup.??. She is a very good customer who seems to be educated but has read some things that she doesn't understand.She bought 2 1/2 dozen of corn and thanked me for helping her understand more about GMO crops. She didn't know soybeans and cow corn were GMO,but that didn't seem to matter. She does eat meat and drink milk. I did agree with her that that we are still in the early stages of these products and there is still a lot to be learned. I also told her if she reads it on the internet to check out the source as some "non profit groups" are making big $$ on peoples ignorrance.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

I hear you Steve...Here is the problem as I see it...Everyone has to eat, but I would say 90% of people have no idea how to raise and grow their own food. Heck, I've been farming for 34 years and I learn something new every day. 

The other day I was grocery shopping with my wife and I was looking at the butter section and I was amazed at how many non-butter spreads there are. I actually had to look hard to find real butter. Most of them were marketed to the health nuts of the world, the same people who have a huge problem with GMO's. 

So it's ok to eat refined vegetable by-products (usually corn oil..and most likely GMO corn oil...LMAO!!) in replacement of real butter, but not ok to eat GMO corn where less than 1 TEN-BILLIONTH (1/10,000,000,000) of its genetic code was slightly modified? That makes no sense to me. 

I don't mind stupid people in the world, but the ones who go around making statements about something they know nothing about that irritates me.


----------



## Mike Cantolina

Eat it up if you want, but I'll pass.

Longest-Running GMO Safety Study Finds Tumors in Rats - Natural Health - MOTHER EARTH NEWS


----------



## hanniedog

Sounds like a real scientific study to me..... not.


----------



## farmer steve

Mike Cantolina said:


> Eat it up if you want, but I'll pass.
> 
> Longest-Running GMO Safety Study Finds Tumors in Rats - Natural Health - MOTHER EARTH NEWS



studies done with aspartame the artificial sweetner on rats also produced the same type of tumors and cancers,but nobody goes after the big soft drink makers.


----------



## NCTREE

You can have your roundup ready seeds it's not for me. If farmers would just learn responsible practices then they wouldn't need roundup. Love the land and it will love you back, it's amazing what a little bit of hard work will get you. Everyone now days just wants the easy way out with less work. This isn't the way are forefathers did it so why should we. Industrialized farming has ruined this country and made it almost impossible for the small time real farmers to survive. Good news though I see a turning trend in favor of the small local farmers as people become more aware of what they are really eating. This is my girl:smile2: at the local farmers market, she's an organic farmer at a CSA farm with over 300 members. Isn't she beautiful!

View attachment 310224


http://action.responsibletechnology.org/o/6236/t/0/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=1150514


----------



## Dalmatian90

farmer steve said:


> studies done with aspartame the artificial sweetner on rats also produced the same type of tumors and cancers,but nobody goes after the big soft drink makers.



Oh please -- I can remember vociferous complaints about saccharine safety when I was young -- late 70s, early 80s.

While taste is certainly part of it, I'm sure health concerns over artificial sweeteners remain one of the reasons diet soda sales aren't increasing enough to offset the decline in regular soda sales. Though while soda is declining at 4% per year, I'm not quite sure how much is just shifting to "non carbonated" sodas...had an "ice tea" last week that including phosphoric acid as an ingredient, guess the Coca Cola bottler had to get rid of it somehow


----------



## farmer steve

Dalmatian90 said:


> Oh please -- I can remember vociferous complaints about saccharine safety when I was young -- late 70s, early 80s.
> 
> While taste is certainly part of it, I'm sure health concerns over artificial sweeteners remain one of the reasons diet soda sales aren't increasing enough to offset the decline in regular soda sales. Though while soda is declining at 4% per year, I'm not quite sure how much is just shifting to "non carbonated" sodas...had an "ice tea" last week that including phosphoric acid as an ingredient, guess the Coca Cola bottler had to get rid of it somehow



just the facts maa'm.:msp_smile:


----------



## mooboy76

hanniedog said:


> Sounds like a real scientific study to me..... not.



It took some digging, but here is the actual study. It is a real scientific study, but it also has some flaws.

Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize

As an aside, it really bugs me when blogs or media outlets do not provide a direct link to studies they paraphrase. Especially when they incorrectly paraphrase them (not the case here).



Mike Cantolina said:


> Eat it up if you want, but I'll pass.
> 
> Longest-Running GMO Safety Study Finds Tumors in Rats - Natural Health - MOTHER EARTH NEWS



At first glance, the study looks good. Long (for rat) study duration, multiple treatment options, and lots of sampling timepoints with a variety of data collected at each timepoint.

Unfortunately, the researchers slipped up a bit in their design. I have read their rebuttals to the critiques, and I do understand that they were under cost constraints and also seemed very keen to compare their study to a previous 'landmark' study. 

There may be additional factors that others can tease out, but the three things I don't like about the study are:

1) The control group was a bit small. With nine treatment groups of 10 rats per sex each, I'd want more than 10 of each as controls. I think I'd want more than 10/sex for the treatments too, especially considering the next point. Ten individuals sounds like a lot, but animals are not always as uniform as we'd like. Then again, there is huge pressure to reduce the number of individuals used in a study on the Animal Welfare side of it. Maybe they couldn't get approval for more rats and as it is, they probably spent $4000-$8,000 on rats alone. It might be overkill, but I would also like to see a control group that does not undergo isoflurane anesthesia, after the initial baseline blood/urine draw, and is only weighed and palpated for tumors until the study endpoint. Isoflurane shoudn't have any effect, but it is always nice to head off critiques at the pass.

2) The choice of rat breed was a bit iffy. The breed of rat used is known to suffer from various tumors and other cancerous conditions, with incidence increasing with age. This breed, coupled with the small cohort size, can result in misleading data. This critique came up in a few communications and the rebuttal was that carcinogenesis studies at the National Toxicology Program are standardizing to this breed of rat and that a 'sensitive' breed is preferred. While the Sprague Dawley is being evaluated by the NTP for a 'Default' breed, it is not being touted as THE breed to use for all studies. So, while it may be appropriate for their comparison study (90 days), that breed is not great for a 2 year study.

3) Food was choice and not portioned. Without controlling how much the rats ate, there is a problem differentiating between the effects associated with over-eating and your treatment. Some rats will stuff themselves silly if they favor the taste of the food. If they continually do this, then they can become overweight and/or suffer from other metabolic problems. Along similar lines, it is difficult to tell if a few rats are consuming most of the provided food/water, which may skew your data. Maybe this is nit picking. I guess they are only looking for any effect, and can let other studies figure out how to quantify any dose dependent responses.

I would be very interested if they could repeat the study with bigger cohorts, controlled food access, and less problematic rat breed.

It is definitely a good start to an area that should be explored at greater depth.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

mooboy76 said:


> It took some digging, but here is the actual study. It is a real scientific study, but it also has some flaws.
> 
> Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize
> 
> As an aside, it really bugs me when blogs or media outlets do not provide a direct link to studies they paraphrase. Especially when they incorrectly paraphrase them (not the case here).
> 
> 
> 
> At first glance, the study looks good. Long (for rat) study duration, multiple treatment options, and lots of sampling timepoints with a variety of data collected at each timepoint.
> 
> Unfortunately, the researchers slipped up a bit in their design. I have read their rebuttals to the critiques, and I do understand that they were under cost constraints and also seemed very keen to compare their study to a previous 'landmark' study.
> 
> There may be additional factors that others can tease out, but the three things I don't like about the study are:
> 
> 1) The control group was a bit small. With nine treatment groups of 10 rats per sex each, I'd want more than 10 of each as controls. I think I'd want more than 10/sex for the treatments too, especially considering the next point. Ten individuals sounds like a lot, but animals are not always as uniform as we'd like. Then again, there is huge pressure to reduce the number of individuals used in a study on the Animal Welfare side of it. Maybe they couldn't get approval for more rats and as it is, they probably spent $4000-$8,000 on rats alone. It might be overkill, but I would also like to see a control group that does not undergo isoflurane anesthesia, after the initial baseline blood/urine draw, and is only weighed and palpated for tumors until the study endpoint. Isoflurane shoudn't have any effect, but it is always nice to head off critiques at the pass.
> 
> 2) The choice of rat breed was a bit iffy. The breed of rat used is known to suffer from various tumors and other cancerous conditions, with incidence increasing with age. This breed, coupled with the small cohort size, can result in misleading data. This critique came up in a few communications and the rebuttal was that carcinogenesis studies at the National Toxicology Program are standardizing to this breed of rat and that a 'sensitive' breed is preferred. While the Sprague Dawley is being evaluated by the NTP for a 'Default' breed, it is not being touted as THE breed to use for all studies. So, while it may be appropriate for their comparison study (90 days), that breed is not great for a 2 year study.
> 
> 3) Food was choice and not portioned. Without controlling how much the rats ate, there is a problem differentiating between the effects associated with over-eating and your treatment. Some rats will stuff themselves silly if they favor the taste of the food. If they continually do this, then they can become overweight and/or suffer from other metabolic problems. Along similar lines, it is difficult to tell if a few rats are consuming most of the provided food/water, which may skew your data. Maybe this is nit picking. I guess they are only looking for any effect, and can let other studies figure out how to quantify any dose dependent responses.
> 
> I would be very interested if they could repeat the study with bigger cohorts, controlled food access, and less problematic rat breed.
> 
> It is definitely a good start to an area that should be explored at greater depth.




What people forget is that there is already a study going on with REAL PEOPLE...Millions of real people eating TONS of it everyday with no REAL discernible, attributive effects of consuming GMO's. In fact GMO's are everywhere in food and also used in cosmetics, plastics, fuel and other things. I have no love affair with GMO's other than they increase the profitability of farming grains, reduce input costs and the use of environmentally unsafe chemicals, and they have the ability of increasing food production with out increasing the amount of acres farmed. And as a farmer that is a big deal. It means that growing corn at $4.00/bu is going to bring a profit, rather than breaking even like with conventional corn. 

In what used to take years of breeding trials to modify a gene to express a desirable trait, a geneticist can do it in weeks within a lab. This is nothing new. This isn't witchcraft or sorcery. We knew we could do it back in the 1930's but only until recently with high powered computers could we map the entire billions of genetic code to know which protein chains did what.

People will also say "well the long term effects have not been studied thoroughly"...ok..GMO corn came out in 1996..17 years ago...millions of people have been consuming it everyday for the last 17 years. Not lab rats, not monkeys...actual people..millions of them. You, me and that other guy across the room eat it everyday and prob don't even know it. Watch the documentary King Corn, its a real eye-opener.


----------



## Dalmatian90

> In what used to take years of breeding trials to modify a gene to express a desirable trait, a geneticist can do it in weeks within a lab. This is nothing new.



Really?

There used to be programs to breed corn plants with bacterium in order to transfer the genes that produce the Bt toxin to corn?


----------



## luckydozenfarm

Dalmatian90 said:


> Really?
> 
> There used to be programs to breed corn plants with bacterium in order to transfer the genes that produce the Bt toxin to corn?




Sure...Cry1Ab, Aa, and Ac are the endotoxins common to the soil bacterium B. thurigensis, by nature. It's not uncommon to find plants that are naturally resistant to insect larvae by producing their own methods. And that was the point I was making exactly, it would take decades to hybridize this trait the old fashioned way...planting corn, scouting the fields for undamaged ears, planting those seeds again, repeat, repeat. If this was even possible to do...who knows.

I'm just saying...until there is conclusive, hard, repeatable scientific evidence PROVING that GMO's are harmful in ANY way, I don't see any reason not to use them. I wouldn't even mind labeling them if that's what people want.

The only thing that I fault GMO's on is their public relations effort. I mean we have more people wanting to legalize marijuana, a schedule 1 drug, than ever before all do to the immense PR support. Sometimes, I just don't understand people, that's why I live out in the boondocks.


----------



## Marco

Last saturday the hose barb broke off the bottom of the sprayer at 30 gallons to one quart of Glyphosphate 41, I'll let you know if I die. Postive battery cap left on the tractor and a stick in the fencerow looked good.


----------



## Marco

Had the foresite to wire up the 1946 SC Case 12v negative ground so I can put a Trimble or Garmin on him some day.


----------



## ddhlakebound

luckydozenfarm said:


> Sure...Cry1Ab, Aa, and Ac are the endotoxins common to the soil bacterium B. thurigensis, by nature. It's not uncommon to find plants that are naturally resistant to insect larvae by producing their own methods. And that was the point I was making exactly, it would take decades to hybridize this trait the old fashioned way...planting corn, scouting the fields for undamaged ears, planting those seeds again, repeat, repeat. If this was even possible to do...who knows.
> 
> I'm just saying...until there is conclusive, hard, repeatable scientific evidence PROVING that GMO's are harmful in ANY way, I don't see any reason not to use them. I wouldn't even mind labeling them if that's what people want.
> 
> The only thing that I fault GMO's on is their public relations effort. I mean we have more people wanting to legalize marijuana, a schedule 1 drug, than ever before all do to the immense PR support. Sometimes, I just don't understand people, that's why I live out in the boondocks.



No personal offense intended, but this is TOTAL BS. 

By the very definition of GMO (genetically modified organism)......Genetically engineered or genetically modified organisms (“GMO”s, or “GM foods”) are defined as those in which “the genetic material (“DNA”) has been altered in such a way that does not occur naturally.”

FDA and Regulation of GMOs

It would not "take a long time" to breed our GMO's......It could not EVER happen. We are combining genes which were previously completely incompatible. And we do not know the effects.


----------



## ddhlakebound

luckydozenfarm said:


> What people forget is that there is already a study going on with REAL PEOPLE...Millions of real people eating TONS of it everyday with no REAL discernible, attributive effects of consuming GMO's. In fact GMO's are everywhere in food and also used in cosmetics, plastics, fuel and other things. I have no love affair with GMO's other than they increase the profitability of farming grains, reduce input costs and the use of environmentally unsafe chemicals, and they have the ability of increasing food production with out increasing the amount of acres farmed. And as a farmer that is a big deal. It means that growing corn at $4.00/bu is going to bring a profit, rather than breaking even like with conventional corn.
> 
> In what used to take years of breeding trials to modify a gene to express a desirable trait, a geneticist can do it in weeks within a lab. This is nothing new. This isn't witchcraft or sorcery. We knew we could do it back in the 1930's but only until recently with high powered computers could we map the entire billions of genetic code to know which protein chains did what.
> 
> People will also say "well the long term effects have not been studied thoroughly"...ok..GMO corn came out in 1996..17 years ago...millions of people have been consuming it everyday for the last 17 years. Not lab rats, not monkeys...actual people..millions of them. You, me and that other guy across the room eat it everyday and prob don't even know it. Watch the documentary King Corn, its a real eye-opener.



It's not terribly difficult to compare the health of countries where gmo's have never been allowed to the health of the USA. Countries banning gmo's are not doing so because they fear additional profits from agriculture. But no worries, were healthy in America, right? Oh, wait......not so much. Cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and on and on and on. I'm sure none of that stuff has anything to do with what we put in our bodies, does it?


----------



## Dalmatian90

> I'm just saying...until there is conclusive, hard, repeatable scientific evidence PROVING that GMO's are harmful in ANY way, I don't see any reason not to use them. I wouldn't even mind labeling them if that's what people want.
> 
> The only thing that I fault GMO's on is their public relations effort. I mean we have more people wanting to legalize marijuana, a schedule 1 drug, than ever before all do to the immense PR support. Sometimes, I just don't understand people, that's why I live out in the boondocks.



Ironic choice in an example:

Marijuana is a schedule 1 drug for one official reason -- 



> On August 14, 1970, the Assistant Secretary of Health, Dr. Roger O. Egeberg wrote a letter recommending the plant, marijuana, be classified as a schedule 1 substance,...
> "Since there is still a considerable void in our knowledge of the plant and effects of the active drug contained in it, our recommendation is that marijuana be retained within schedule 1 at least until the completion of certain studies now underway to resolve the issue."



Of course the politics of the issue makes that research to resolve the issue difficult to carry out.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Why I changed my mind on weed - CNN.com

If you want to follow the example of marijuana, then GMOs should be banned until conclusive, hard, repeatable scientific evidence proves them safe.

If you think the opposite should apply, then there is no reason for marijuana to be schedule 1.

I'm quite comfortable, just from comments made by supporters in this thread, saying the evidence that GMOs will do harm is clear -- such as rapidly increasing resistance to Bt thus removing an effective organic control from the toolbox of folks who are limited in what they can and will use. Whether they have human health impacts is a considerable void in our knowledge.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

ddhlakebound said:


> It's not terribly difficult to compare the health of countries where gmo's have never been allowed to the health of the USA. Countries banning gmo's are not doing so because they fear additional profits from agriculture. But no worries, were healthy in America, right? Oh, wait......not so much. Cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and on and on and on. I'm sure none of that stuff has anything to do with what we put in our bodies, does it?



Yeah because everyone in Europe is cancer, diabetes, heart disease free due to the fact that the disallow GMO's. What were we thinking? You are right ddh, you have found a link to GMO's and their negative effects while 1000's of scientists all across the world completely missed that.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

Dalmatian90 said:


> Ironic choice in an example:
> 
> Marijuana is a schedule 1 drug for one official reason --
> 
> 
> 
> Of course the politics of the issue makes that research to resolve the issue difficult to carry out.
> 
> Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Why I changed my mind on weed - CNN.com
> 
> If you want to follow the example of marijuana, then GMOs should be banned until conclusive, hard, repeatable scientific evidence proves them safe.
> 
> If you think the opposite should apply, then there is no reason for marijuana to be schedule 1.
> 
> I'm quite comfortable, just from comments made by supporters in this thread, saying the evidence that GMOs will do harm is clear -- such as rapidly increasing resistance to Bt thus removing an effective organic control from the toolbox of folks who are limited in what they can and will use. Whether they have human health impacts is a considerable void in our knowledge.




I have no problem with marijuana at all one way or another. Yes there are politics involved with the reason(s) that marijuana is classified as schedule 1. I would also suspect that there is no "official 1 reason" as you suggest. A quick perusing of the internet and you can find many theories, conjecturing, and downright conspiracy theories to why weed is outlawed. But that's not my point, in fact that was my point that weed should NOT be banned, and that GMO promoters should follow their public relations lead. 

America has become a country of irrational fear due to things we have no personal knowledge of, but only the information we obtain from others (TV, Internet,). We fear terrorists on airplanes, we fear black people walking around neighborhoods at night, we fear GMO's, etc etc. And then we take that irrational fear to the next level by "doing something about the problem" even if there actually isn't a real problem. So what does that lead us? Pat downs of kids and grandmas at airports, security guards shooting people, and banning GMO's, etc etc. 
This GMO issue has reached a religious-like fervor. Don't get me wrong, I am not for anything that is bad for you. Like I said before, should they be proven in multiple experiments to be harmful, by all means I wouldn't grow the stuff. And if you don't want to eat them, that's fine by me. Let's label them as such and if you guys want to pay more for non-GMO's that's totally ok for me. But don't forget farming is just like any other business, if you speak with your mouth but not your wallet, no one is listening. If you have ever seen how the broiler chicken business stays in the black financially, you would never eat a Chic-Fil-A sandwich ever again. Everyone talks a big game, but the chicken farmers are still overcrowding their houses with these Cornish Cross hybrid super-chickens that go from chick to slaughter in under 6 weeks. And they will continue to do so, as long as the line at Chic-Fil-A is out the door come lunch time. Raising conventional chicken meat is about 4 times more expensive to produce, no one would buy enough of it to make it profitable. 

My issue mainly centers on the fact that where does all this hatred for GMO's come from? It's not from the scientific community. Even with the fact that it's much easier to prove something is bad for you than to prove something is good for you, we haven't been able to come up with a single example. Not even one. So what is it? 

Dalmation states that, "I'm quite comfortable, just from comments made by supporters in this thread, saying the evidence that GMOs will do harm is clear." 

Really? You get your "evidence" from people off this forum you prob don't even know? And that's good enough for you? Come on Dal, I suggest go to a grower seminar that Monsanto holds and talk to the scientists there with an open mind. Then if you still think that way, well then you have both sides to the story to compare.
The only explanation I can come up with is the irrational fear that the mob mentality creates, and the knee jerk reaction that comes with it.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

Let me give another example:

I HATE sweet potatoes. I hate everything about them. I get physically ill watching someone stirring them in a bowl and hearing the slopping sound the make. If they somehow find a way into my mouth I will probably vomit uncontrollably. Sweet potatoes, I believe, are the devil's handywork and I would be a happy man if the world was completely rid of sweet potatoes.

Now, I'm a rational adult here. Is the problem with the potatoes themselves? No, it's my problem, and I know that. 

Have we PROVEN that sweet potatoes are directly harmful to the public at large? Of course not, its my physical reaction to them limited to myself and possibly others, due to the fact that millions of people have eaten them for a long period of time, without consequential negative effect directly contributed to eating sweet potatoes.

Do people depend on them for their nutritional value? Yes, there are places in Africa I believe that it's their main staple of food.

Do other people hate sweet potatoes and have the same feelings I do about them? Yes, my brother for one is the same way, and I'm sure I can throw a stick down a crowded street and hit someone who hates them also. 

Do I get on the internet and make up false accusations and experiments by feeding rats sweet potatoes and measuring their cancerous tumors, because I have to get rid of sweet potatoes at any cost, for the my perceived benefit to humanity? Do I get on the internet and spread the fear of God upon anyone that dares to eat sweet potatoes?
Of course not, no sane, rational person would do something like that. I know that there isn't anything wrong with them. I personally don't care for them myself, but they have a benefit to society that is real, no matter how much I want them gone. 

Would I appreciate the fact that anything containing sweet potatoes be labeled as such, and would I pay extra money for something that uses a more expensive, alternative ingredient? Sure, that would be great, and you better believe I would pay more. 

You see that's my point.


----------



## Gologit

luckydozenfarm said:


> You see that's my point.



We understand your points. Most of us also understand that you're a farmer and that your opinions are linked directly to your wallet.


----------



## luckydozenfarm

Gologit said:


> We understand your points. Most of us also understand that you're a farmer and that your opinions are linked directly to your wallet.



Well by that if you mean that I'm not one for losing money by growing an inferior product for the consumer, then yes.


----------



## farmer steve

Gologit said:


> We understand your points. Most of us also understand that you're a farmer and that your opinions are linked directly to your wallet.



yes and farming is just like logging or any other business.you have to have the right tools to make money.i know i wouldn't go out to saw firewood with some piece of crap saw from sears and expect to get a good day sawin in with it and bring home a couple of cords to sell. GMO crops are just another tool only for farmers.85% of this years corn crop is GMO. that corn crop will feed this country this year wether it be in corn flakes,milk or meat.the t-shirts and underwear most of us have are probably made with GMO cotton. i do believe that there has to be continued testing on these products to ensure everyones safety.


----------



## ddhlakebound

luckydozenfarm said:


> My issue mainly centers on the fact that where does all this hatred for GMO's come from? It's not from the scientific community. Even with the fact that it's much easier to prove something is bad for you than to prove something is good for you, we haven't been able to come up with a single example. Not even one. So what is it?



Still spreading BS like it's peanut butter.....

Apparently you think the "scientific community" consists of Monsatano's and Syngenta's labs, which are paid to APPROVE those products, not TEST them.

Institute for Responsible Technology - Doctors Warn: Avoid Genetically Modified Food

Doctors Warn Avoid Genetically Modified Food

http://www.physicalexamnyc.com/data...n-between-increase-in-organ-disease-and-gmos/

Data show correlations between increase in neurological diseases and GMOs - Seattle GMO | Examiner.com

GMO Risks | GMO Awareness

Significant Health Hazards of Genetically Engineered Foods


----------



## ddhlakebound

luckydozenfarm said:


> Well by that if you mean that I'm one for making money by growing an inferior product for the consumer, then yes.



Fixed it for you.


----------



## Dalmatian90

> Dalmation states that, "I'm quite comfortable, just from comments made by supporters in this thread, saying the evidence that GMOs will do harm is clear."
> 
> Really? You get your "evidence" from people off this forum you prob don't even know? And that's good enough for you? Come on Dal, I suggest go to a grower seminar that Monsanto holds and talk to the scientists there with an open mind. Then if you still think that way, well then you have both sides to the story to compare.



Oh, I assure you -- I have a VERY open mind, and I'm quite well read and familiar with the subject and a sales seminar from Monsanto isn't going to provide information to change it.

Even if there are no health impacts on people, we still come back to some real basic tenets:

1) With the Bt gene, we've transferred a gene through technology that no amount of conventional breeding, given an unlimited amount of time, could achieve.

It may be possible that bacteria in nature may transfer genes to plants. There isn't much science on that type of natural horizontal gene transfer (though it occurs very frequently and well documented between bacteria) beyond some hypothetical speculation. When, and if, it occurs nature would take eons before such a plant might become widespread, not decades.

2) Farmers, like most everyone else, are not known for following protocols perfectly over the long term.

You know, like farmers who are sued by Monsanto for using seed without a licensing agreement.

One of those protocols is to plant reservoir crops of non-GE crops to try and prevent resistance from developing in target pests.

Whether or not they're effective protocols, when you combine it with the attitude professed by some of the supporters here of "so what, everything becomes resistant, we just need to be ready to move on to the next product when that occurs" does not bode well for the idea that those protocols will be effectively implemented.

3) So we'll take a gene -- for the Bt toxin -- and transfer it to crops in a way that is unlikely to occur in nature and apply it on a mass scale. We can expect pests today that can be controlled by a judicious use of Bt when needed will likely develop resistance when exposed widely and continually. We have any number of examples of this over the last century of agriculture and human health.

Which means perhaps in my lifetime, perhaps in the next generation its likely one of the safest and most targetted of "organic" pesticides will cease to be effective on many caterpillars -- leaving the organic folks high and dry, while the better living through chemistry folks simply move on to the next thing without caring what they've destroyed in their wake.


----------



## ddhlakebound

luckydozenfarm said:


> Yeah because everyone in Europe is cancer, diabetes, heart disease free due to the fact that the disallow GMO's. What were we thinking? You are right ddh, you have found a link to GMO's and their negative effects while 1000's of scientists all across the world completely missed that.



So are you saying that all the countries which have banned GMO's have done so because they FEAR ADDITIONAL PROFITS from each acre?

It's cute that you're able to ignore facts and magnify hyperbole in your efforts to pimp the GMO's. Shill much?


----------



## luckydozenfarm

I know I will never convince anyone otherwise, and that's fine. I'm not some representative from Monsanto. I grow their products and they have a very fine instructional seminars that detail anything you would want to know about GMO products. If you have never been to one then you have a single sided opinion on the matter, in my mind. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. 

That being said, I hope you guys have a wonderful day.


----------



## NCTREE

*If you care about what your really putting into your body watch this, it's an interview with Dr. Huber on glyphosate(roundup) and the science behind it. It's long but well worth watching. He sums it up great by saying, "Future historians aren't going to judge us by how many tons of pesticides we apply or don't apply, but how willing we are to sacrifice our children in the next generation as well as jeopardize the very basis of our own existence all based upon failed promises and flawed science. The only benefit is it affects the bottom line of a few companies."  *


----------



## sgreanbeans

wow


----------



## jollygreengiant

ddhlakebound said:


> So are you saying that all the countries which have banned GMO's have done so because they FEAR ADDITIONAL PROFITS from each acre?
> 
> It's cute that you're able to ignore facts and magnify hyperbole in your efforts to pimp the GMO's. Shill much?



And there it is, the inevitable shill comment. To heck with the facts, if someone says anything that is in favour of GMO's well then they are automatically a shill. Also a label thrown around wildly by those against GMO's who have no argument to stand on.


----------



## jollygreengiant

luckydozenfarm said:


> I know I will never convince anyone otherwise, and that's fine. I'm not some representative from Monsanto. I grow their products and they have a very fine instructional seminars that detail anything you would want to know about GMO products. If you have never been to one then you have a single sided opinion on the matter, in my mind. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
> 
> That being said, I hope you guys have a wonderful day.



Don't let this stop you from speaking out on this topic. Your voice is exactly what is needed:the voice of someone who uses this technology every day and sees its advantages and disadvantages. It's a rarity when most of what you hear is from people who are against GMO's but yet haven't set foot on a farm in their life. 

I work with this technology on a daily basis. Yes, it does have some drawbacks; as does all technology. And I am not a Monsanto fanboy as I don't agree with some things they have done. But I also see the upside of this technology, and it is something modern ag needs.


----------



## jollygreengiant

NCTREE said:


> *If you care about what your really putting into your body watch this, it's an interview with Dr. Huber on glyphosate(roundup) and the science behind it. It's long but well worth watching. He sums it up great by saying, "Future historians aren't going to judge us by how many tons of pesticides we apply or don't apply, but how willing we are to sacrifice our children in the next generation as well as jeopardize the very basis of our own existence all based upon failed promises and flawed science. The only benefit is it affects the bottom line of a few companies."  *




Mr Huber has pretty well exposed himself as a hack. Take a look at his recent presentation in Florida. He claims there is some sort of organism or virus associated with GMO's that is causing all sorts of human illnesses. He has been saying this for years now, yet he has not and refuses to release his information on this organism. Given our current abilities, this organism could be identified and analyzed in weeks, yet he won't release it? Instead he continues to travel around the country, being paid to speak about his findings. 

Something smells downright funny there...


----------



## Marco

I have several landowners I work with that let me work some ground and cut some hay, first thing I ask these people if they have any problem with Atrazine, Roundup or the deer on their property eating Roundup ready corn in the field. So far everybody is ok with it. Folks want grass fed beef and corn fed venison


----------



## jorge016

He's not talking about GMO "organisms or viruses" he's talking about the inability of soil organisms to breakdown a highly overused and often mismanaged herbicide. Will you still be willing to call the man a hack when you start seeing yield plateaus that you can't explain...then it it hits your bottom line.


----------



## Jkebxjunke

if you think about it... anything cross bread is genetically modified... so pretty much all grains and animals are gmo's . cross breeding has been going on for years... crossing one plant with another to try to get a desirable trait... what modern tech has done it has taken the luck part of it out... (say having to do 30 or so crosses to try to refine a trait... and then to keep propagating the desirable one) 
oh and how much food is given away by the gov to other nations.. to keep fostering their inflated unsustainable populations? if you cant feed em.. don't breed em.


----------



## Marco

Kinda waiting for 2,4D alfalfa, grasses would do well against it now.


----------



## Dalmatian90

> if you think about it... anything cross bread is genetically modified



No.

The "genetic modification" folks are talking about with "GMO" or "GE" (Genetic Engineering) in respect to this topic involve the transference of genes of in ways and and of types that are extremely rare in nature.

No matter how much you bred different varieties of corn together, before GMO corn with the trait became available, you would never get one to pick up the genes to produce Bt. Its just wasn't in the genes of the species. Now it is possible because we've added those genes to the plants.

Now, you might have Bt spontaneously occur. Theoretically enough monkeys equipped with typewriters would also eventually randomly type out the entire works of William Shakespeare, though it might take a period of time longer than the lifespan of the universe and everything would collapse into a giant black hole and go bang again before it happened.

Slightly more likely, though far less likely than me becoming President and Zooey Deschanel being First Lady, is you would have a virus pick up the Bt genes from the bacterium that normally produces it, then transfer those genes to a corn plant, and have that corn plant be able to pass on the newly acquired genes. With billions of years of evolution working away, it does happen in nature that a useful trait is picked up and passed on in the genetics of a species after being transferred by a virus, but extremely rarely.

But for all practical purposes, there is no "luck" involved that folks are short-circuiting by using GMO techniques -- most of the desired traits are being taken from other organisms and introduced to species to which conventional breeding would not have allowed the transference of the genes that produce the trait.


----------



## DavidBrown1212

As a modern commercial farmer, I feel like i need to clarify a few things. People in the USA are banned from eating GMO, directly. GMO only go to livestock feed, cosmetic, industrial uses, & fuel. I agree that Monsanto has had unfair advantage in the market, and im vvery dis appointed that Monsanto is my oly option in many ways. GMO save a huge quantity of pesticides, but lead to greater herbacide use. Any expert would agree that Glyphosate is less toxic than any common comercial pesticides, but the widespread use of glyphosate is a concern. Better than 2-4d by a damn sight, but still worrisome in the massive quantities. Glyphosate has saves millions of cubic yards of topesoil, so there is trade off. Without it we would be plowing ground, which we know is more harmefull to soils than any herbacide. Long story short is: If you think this is cut and dry, easy to reconcile these two points of view, you have oversimplified the situation.


----------



## ddhlakebound

David, your second sentence is utterly incorrect. What is it that makes you think that we are banned from consuming gmo's?

People in the US eat gmo's from all these crops:
Soy - '96 (difficult to find a packaged product not containing some form of soy)
Corn - '96 (difficult to find a packaged product not containing some form of corn)
Canola - '96
Cotton - '96 (cottonseed oil)
US grown Papaya - '98
Sugar Beets - '05


----------



## DavidBrown1212

All my round-up/BT crops are labeled not for human consumption. I have never seen anything else. I may be wrong. I grow non GE wheat for human consumption. This what everyone else I deal with does, so I onlyonly see GE go to the feed and fuel plant, and non GE go to food


----------



## bplust

opcorn:


----------



## DavidBrown1212

He is right, I stand corrected. My corn/soybeans are not aapproved for human consumption, but such a thing exists. Found primarily in processed foods, as mentioned. My bad.


----------



## farmer steve

DB1212, there is gmo sweet corn. labeled for human consumption. i hope!!!


----------



## exSW

The most immediate threat with GMO's is the narrowness of the genetic base of such a high percentage of our commodity crops being GMO.70% of the corn and 80% of the beans.Some where between 250-300 small seed companies have either been taken over or run out of business by the big boys and along with them their varieties and genetics.


----------



## Marco

You folks think you are so Holy, go live in the middle of Africa you Piased son's of a bitches, if we would not be living so long are retirement plans would not be so broke.


----------



## NCTREE

Marco said:


> You folks think you are so Holy, go live in the middle of Africa you Piased son's of a bitches, if we would not be living so long are retirement plans would not be so broke.


For me it's not about being right it's about knowing what the hell I'm putting in my body and having the freedom to decide. This is America isn't it?


----------



## exSW

Marco said:


> I have several landowners I work with that let me work some ground and cut some hay, first thing I ask these people if they have any problem with Atrazine, Roundup or the deer on their property eating Roundup ready corn in the field. So far everybody is ok with it. Folks want grass fed beef and corn fed venison


Gee then Wizzbang why do the deer eat my Blue River Non GMO/Organic soybeans and alfalfa before they wander over to the neighbors?Got a neighbor that milks cows,farms conventional.He will take a scoop full of conventional corn silage and GMO corn silage and throw 'em both in the feed bunk side by side.The cows will eat the conventional first every time.


----------



## hanniedog

Probably because your field is in the deers path to the local watering hole.


----------



## exSW

hanniedog said:


> Probably because your field is in the deers path to the local watering hole.


 One thing we got lots of is water,they don't have to walk far.


----------



## exSW

Marco said:


> Had the foresite to wire up the 1946 SC Case 12v negative ground so I can put a Trimble or Garmin on him some day.


 Better start digging through the fence row for the cultivators for that SC.You're gonna need 'em to get the RR volunteer corn out of your RR soybeans.


----------



## hanniedog

Fusilade will take care of the volunteer corn.


----------



## exSW

More off farm inputs,more money from you to the chemical companies,another trip acrosss the field.I'm not going to tell anyone how they should farm.But I'm not going to let a multi billion dollar corporation dictate to me how I should farm, how I should eat or how I should feed my livestock.I have reservations about GMO's but my main ***** is how they've come to dominate commodity crops.The economic impact of some pathogen running through a very narrow plant genetic base is real.The economic power that a relative few corporations have over production agriculture is real.The productivity gains are not clear,just look at the planter and fertilizer application technology that has developed on the same timeline as GMO's( as a result of higher seed cost since you can't afford to waste a single kernal).I am well aware that the usual suspects have jumped on the no GMO band wagon and I wish they would shut the phuck up and let the grownups talk but we all know that's not going to happen.That is not an excuse for looking critically at the true concequences of GMO crops.


----------



## Marco

exSW said:


> Better start digging through the fence row for the cultivators for that SC.You're gonna need 'em to get the RR volunteer corn out of your RR soybeans.


 He's upfitted already and I don't grow soybeans


----------



## Marco

Well, that time a year again, time to think about seedcorn. Who all here pounding their shoe against the podium like Khrushchev against GMO's is going to help hoe my corn out for $40 an acre?


----------



## farmer steve

Marco said:


> Well, that time a year again, time to think about seedcorn. Who all here pounding their shoe against the podium like Khrushchev against GMO's is going to help hoe my corn out for $40 an acre?


 the neighbor man used to hoe his corn.probably 30-40 acres.he would wear out hoes,i mean wear them down to the handle. ain't no farmers like that anymore! his name was Noah!!!
Marco go down the the unemployment office ,maybe you can get some takers on $40 an acre.


----------



## NCTREE

Marco said:


> Well, that time a year again, time to think about seedcorn. Who all here pounding their shoe against the podium like Khrushchev against GMO's is going to help hoe my corn out for $40 an acre?


Try scaling down and growing food for the people and not for animals and sugar. That corn syrup rots your insides any ways. I find it much more rewarding growing good food for my people. Industrialize farming is what's wrong with America's ag system. The walmarts of the ag industry keep pushing the little man out ruining our land and producing inferior products with little nutrition value but I guess its more convenient to eat food out a box in a lazy society.


----------



## jollygreengiant

NCTREE said:


> Try scaling down and growing food for the people and not for animals and sugar. That corn syrup rots your insides any ways. I find it much more rewarding growing good food for my people. Industrialize farming is what's wrong with America's ag system. The walmarts of the ag industry keep pushing the little man out ruining our land and producing inferior products with little nutrition value but I guess its more convenient to eat food out a box in a lazy society.



Yes, because right now when the average North American diet has never been more nutritious , or cheap, we are somehow producing food that has no nutrition. Right

And if we only grow food for people, then where will livestock get their feed from?

Last I checked, sugar was considered food for human consumption.


----------



## jollygreengiant

exSW said:


> More off farm inputs,more money from you to the chemical companies,another trip acrosss the field.I'm not going to tell anyone how they should farm.But I'm not going to let a multi billion dollar corporation dictate to me how I should farm, how I should eat or how I should feed my livestock.I have reservations about GMO's but my main ***** is how they've come to dominate commodity crops.The economic impact of some pathogen running through a very narrow plant genetic base is real.The economic power that a relative few corporations have over production agriculture is real.The productivity gains are not clear,just look at the planter and fertilizer application technology that has developed on the same timeline as GMO's( as a result of higher seed cost since you can't afford to waste a single kernal).I am well aware that the usual suspects have jumped on the no GMO band wagon and I wish they would shut the phuck up and let the grownups talk but we all know that's not going to happen.That is not an excuse for looking critically at the true concequences of GMO crops.



The statement "more off farm inputs, more money from you to chem companies, another trip across the field" isn't true in this area. We are already going across the field to apply herbicide; so there is no additional trip across the field, and we simply change what herbicide we use depending on the weeds that are there. 

I do agree that it would be nice to see more companies involved with breeding and GM efforts, especially in corn and soybeans. But I just don't think we will see many because of the massive costs. Last I heard it takes on average 10 years and $10 million to bring a new GM trait to market. I don't think many small seed companies can afford that.


----------



## exSW

jollygreengiant said:


> The statement "more off farm inputs, more money from you to chem companies, another trip across the field" isn't true in this area. We are already going across the field to apply herbicide; so there is no additional trip across the field, and we simply change what herbicide we use depending on the weeds that are there.
> 
> I do agree that it would be nice to see more companies involved with breeding and GM efforts, especially in corn and soybeans. But I just don't think we will see many because of the massive costs. Last I heard it takes on average 10 years and $10 million to bring a new GM trait to market. I don't think many small seed companies can afford that.


 The whole idea behind RR was Roundup and its generic equivilents were cheap.The alternatives to deal with RR weeds(or plants out of place)are anything but.


----------



## jollygreengiant

exSW said:


> The whole idea behind RR was Roundup and its generic equivilents were cheap.The alternatives to deal with RR weeds(or plants out of place)are anything but.



Yes, dealing with roundup resistant weeds is becoming costly. The sad part is; roundup is a very good herbicide and it's a shame that it was misused to the point where we are now. It should never have been used so predominately.


----------



## Marco

What's the thinking on the golden rice? Is that bad?


----------



## NCTREE

http://organicconnectmag.com/former-gmo-engineer-drops-biotech-and-goes-organic/


----------



## exSW

Marco said:


> What's the thinking on the golden rice? Is that bad?


 Gee lets see if we can corner the poor people market too.


----------



## Marco

Those most in need of this new seed-based technology are those who can least afford buying an adequate diet, rich in essential nutrients. This has been taken into consideration by the creators of Golden Rice, Profs Peter Beyer and Ingo Portrykus, and the crop protection company Syngenta, who have worked together to make the latest, improved version of Golden Rice available for humanitarian use in developing countries, free of charge.
from http://www.goldenrice.org/index.php


----------



## Marco

Really is no market for the stuff in developed countries as they generally have enough vitamins.


----------



## exSW

Poverty in the third world is driven by politics not lack of food.A geographic area has a food shortage the other players in the area use it to gain political advantage and do what they can to keep food out.They will do the same thing with golden rice.


----------



## jollygreengiant

exSW said:


> Poverty in the third world is driven by politics not lack of food.A geographic area has a food shortage the other players in the area use it to gain political advantage and do what they can to keep food out.They will do the same thing with golden rice.



So then doesn't it make sense to make the limited food that they do get more nutritional?

Golden rice is going to be offered free of charge to small farmers. The trick will be getting it into the most isolated areas where it is needed the most.


----------



## exSW

Rice eating cultures are also picky about varieties and preparation.It's illogical in the face of hunger or malnutrition but true.You can't just say "here,eat this".


----------



## dingeryote

exSW said:


> Rice eating cultures are also picky about varieties and preparation.It's illogical in the face of hunger or malnutrition but true.You can't just say "here,eat this".



There is a LOT of truth to that.

The French at one time turned down Potatoes, and chose to starve themselves for the want of proper wheat.

From what I gather, the Golden rice dosn't appeal to the palets of several cultures in SW Asia, where rice is a staple but lacks the nutrients needed.

We need to start shipping Tobbasco with the rice or something.


----------



## NCTREE

Glyphosate linked to celiac disease:
http://nhrighttoknowgmo.org/BreakingNews/Glyphosate_II_Samsel-Seneff.pdf


----------



## treesmith

luckydozenfarm said:


> What people forget is that there is already a study going on with REAL PEOPLE...Millions of real people eating TONS of it everyday with no REAL discernible, attributive effects of consuming GMO's. In fact GMO's are everywhere in food and also used in cosmetics, plastics, fuel and other things. I have no love affair with GMO's other than they increase the profitability of farming grains, reduce input costs and the use of environmentally unsafe chemicals, and they have the ability of increasing food production with out increasing the amount of acres farmed. And as a farmer that is a big deal. It means that growing corn at $4.00/bu is going to bring a profit, rather than breaking even like with conventional corn.
> 
> In what used to take years of breeding trials to modify a gene to express a desirable trait, a geneticist can do it in weeks within a lab. This is nothing new. This isn't witchcraft or sorcery. We knew we could do it back in the 1930's but only until recently with high powered computers could we map the entire billions of genetic code to know which protein chains did what.
> 
> People will also say "well the long term effects have not been studied thoroughly"...ok..GMO corn came out in 1996..17 years ago...millions of people have been consuming it everyday for the last 17 years. Not lab rats, not monkeys...actual people..millions of them. You, me and that other guy across the room eat it everyday and prob don't even know it. Watch the documentary King Corn, its a real eye-opener.


Just because it hasn't bitten you all in the butt yet doesn't mean it won't. Also, I think you'll find that Americans are not very healthy any more on a country wide scale and it's getting worse


----------



## treesmith

luckydozenfarm said:


> Yeah because everyone in Europe is cancer, diabetes, heart disease free due to the fact that the disallow GMO's. What were we thinking? You are right ddh, you have found a link to GMO's and their negative effects while 1000's of scientists all across the world completely missed that.


the European union has trialled gm in large areas, mostly kept secret with absolutely no controls to restrict cross pollination or natural spread. It all comes down to the ethics of the people making money


----------



## treesmith

NCTREE said:


> Glyphosate linked to celiac disease:
> http://nhrighttoknowgmo.org/BreakingNews/Glyphosate_II_Samsel-Seneff.pdf


If just half of that is true(and I'm gluten intolerant myself) then f*** me sideways!


----------



## dingeryote

treesmith said:


> Just because it hasn't bitten you all in the butt yet doesn't mean it won't. Also, I think you'll find that Americans are not very healthy any more on a country wide scale and it's getting worse



Rats breed like Rats. 3-4 litters in a lifetime. 
Grain bin rats have been breeding like rats, and suffering no effects from GMO's since the ifrst grain bin was filled with GMO grains.
Better Rodenticides, sneaker barn cats, and better traps have come and gone.
The grain bin Rats are still there in the same numbers, breeding just as much, and living just as long.
If anything, the GMO's would translate into bieng healthier for the rats, in the face of increased toxicity in thier environment.
Which sucks for anyone trying to kill the little bastards.

Genetic or somatic effects are just not there in ANY real study done, by any credible group. 
The ******** and lies coming from the protectionist Eurotrash, as well as the globalists is getting to be laughable.

They would get better traction for thier agenda if they were just honest about thier agenda and objectives, and they wouldn't look like simple idiots in the process.

Bash Monsanto for something real, like the destruction of genetic diversity in a major food crop, and I'm on board. It's an actual issue.

Then again you can't scare dipshit leftist citiots and Oprah zombies with such things, as they are too stupid to consider it, and the ******** lies are the best tools the left has in thier box.

If you check the dietary habits of the avg. American against that of the avg. Euro, there are many glaring differences besides GMO's.
Correlation is not causation....except in leftist science.


----------



## treesmith

We still don't know what the long long term effects(if any) that GM can/will have. Plants have been selectively hybridised and cultivated for centuries to achieve better yields, resistance etc but genetic modification is a much bigger thing with possibly huge consequences if it goes wrong. I'm not saying it definitely will but nobody can say it definitely won't. It worries me and the possible consequences worry me. I believe in evolution and genetic mutation, what has over use of antibiotics given us other than superbugs, can we say with absolute certainty that GM cannot go the same way? When man plays God bad things happen 

Sent from my GT-I9210T using Tapatalk


----------



## ddhlakebound

Just thought I'd leave these here.....

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/03/rootworm-resistance-bt-corn/

http://www.offthegridnews.com/2014/...g-gmo-seeds-and-the-reason-will-surprise-you/


----------



## treesmith

“Five years ago the [GMO seeds] worked,” said farmer Christ Huegerich, who along with his father planted GMO seeds. “I didn’t have corn rootworm because of the Bt gene, and I used less pesticide. Now, the worms are adjusting, and the weeds are resistant. Mother Nature adapts.”

Looks like evolution to me

Sent from my GT-I9210T using Tapatalk


----------



## machinisttx

Arbonaut said:


> Did you just say I was feeding myself and my family trash? No pal that's candy bars. That is trash. The strawberries the last couple of years are top notch. Sometime thang are not black and white. Ice cream bars also is filled with old time quality so is DDT and lead arsenate.



GMO is garbage. A recent study found that it actually causes changes in your gut bacteria, among other things. There is a revolving door between the major food producers(monsanto for example), large pharmaceutical companies, and the FDA. Even if there were no negative effects on humans, GMO crops are creating far larger problems than they are solving just with pest and disease factors. In other words, the pests and diseases that usually affect a given crop, which GMO was supposed to negate, are now becoming even more resilient. In another case, GMO contains substances in the pollen that are poisoning bees. That alone is a very serious problem. No bees, no life.....anywhere.


----------

