Hi,
Douglas, I fully share your thoughts as expressed in your great one sentence.
wytze
Douglas Hinds wrote:
> Hi Dave,
>
> Monday, March 06, 2000, 12:12:58 AM, you wrote what appears to be a
> justification of GMOs, as a logical logical and perhaps even
> appropriate reaction to the problems facing conventional farmers who
> currently depend on an agricultural production system that fails to
> take into account the interdependent nature of the ecosystem in which
> agricultural (a biological activity involving organisms that evolved
> over many, many millenniums) occurs.
>
> In short: A shallow, unenlightened and oversimplified, bits and pieces
> approach to agriculture that excludes the need for understanding the
> life cycles of all the organisms involved and the interrelationships
> that do (or could be made to) apply; an approach that concentrates
> instead on the use of concentrated synthetic, toxic non-biological
> commodities that interfere rather than integrate with (thus taking
> advantage of) the web of biological activity that occurs (or could be
> made to occur) in an agricultural production system that DOES view
> agriculture as a biological activity in itself (within the context of
> a greater field of present or potentially present living
> participants); might just do something as absurd (and do it
> consistently and logically, given it's own deficient premises) as
> developing GMO commodities to complement the proprietary range of
> concentrated synthetic, toxic non-biological commodities they already
> sell.
>
> That was all one sentence and contains a basis for understanding my
> views in a nutshell. Unfortunately, I fear that those who don't
> understand it or fail to take it to heart are beyond my reach at this
> time and will have to reached through other concrete (less conceptual)
> means, in a future that some of are busy constructing.
>
> I would be interested in knowing how many others here on this list
> share (or don't share) my point of view (which obviously can be
> expanded on more explicitly).
>
> Douglas
>
> *********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
>
> DM> ================================================
> DM> Source: http://www.purefood.org/ge/playinggd.htm
> DM> ================================================
>
> DM> This also helps explain monocropping in a GE dependent world.
> DM> Please read it with a more open mind than usual. We never fully
> DM> understand until we explore, I am trying - DAVE
>
> DM> ------
>
> DM> Michael Pollan wrote a very thought-provoking article called "Playing
> DM> God in the Garden" which you can find in the October 25, 1998 issue
> DM> of The New York Times Magazine. In his own wonderful meandering way
> DM> he discusses the New Leaf Superior potatoes (which contain Bt) he has
> DM> obtained from Monsanto, planting them in his garden, watching them
> DM> grow, and finally making the decision about whether or not to eat his
> DM> harvest. In between he interviews representatives from the EPA,
> DM> Monsanto, a Harvard geneticist, a conventional potato farmer, an
> DM> organic potato farmer, as well as other pertinent people to help him
> DM> make up his mind. It's great "food for thought" and may help you
> DM> think through the controversy. Personally, I want to have the choice
> DM> not to fill my body with a pesticide which is what Bt is, safe or
> DM> not. I also choose to drive a car, choose not to take most
> DM> medicines--that's what makes me hysterical, when my choice is taken
> DM> away.
>
> DM> {FYI, I have pulled out just one interviewed portion Michael wrote:}
>
> DM> Danny Forsyth laid out the dismal economics of potato farming for me one
> DM> sweltering morning at the coffee shop in downtown Jerome, Idaho.
> DM> Forsyth,
> DM> 60, is a slight blue-eyed man with a small gray ponytail; he farms 3,000
> DM> acres of potatoes, corn and wheat, and he spoke about agricultural
> DM> chemicals like a man desperate to kick a bad habit. "None of us would
> DM> use
> DM> them if we had any choice," he said glumly.
>
> DM> I asked him to walk me through a season's regimen. It typically begins
> DM> early in the spring with a soil fumigant; to control nematodes, many
> DM> potato farmers douse their fields with a chemical toxic enough to kill
> DM> every trace of microbial life in the soil. Then, at planting, a systemic
> DM> insecticide (like Thimet) is applied to the soil; this will be absorbed
> DM> by the young seedlings and, for several weeks, will kill any insect that
> DM> eats their leaves. After planting, Forsyth puts down an herbicide --
> DM> Sencor or Eptam -- to "clean" his field of all weeds. When the potato
> DM> seedlings are six inches tall, an herbicide may be sprayed a second time
> DM> to control weeds.
>
> DM> Idaho farmers like Forsyth farm in vast circles defined by the rotation
> DM> of a pivot irrigation system, typically 135 acres to a circle; I'd seen
> DM> them from 30,000 feet flying in, a grid of verdant green coins pressed
> DM> into a desert of scrubby brown. Pesticides and fertilizers are simply
> DM> added to the irrigation system, which on Forsyth's farm draws most of
> DM> its
> DM> water from the nearby Snake River. Along with their water, Forsyth's
> DM> potatoes may receive 10 applications of chemical fertilizer during the
> DM> growing season. Just before the rows close -- when the leaves of one row
> DM> of plants meet those of the next -- he begins spraying Bravo, a
> DM> fungicide, to control late blight, one of the biggest threats to the
> DM> potato crop. (Late blight, which caused the Irish potato famine, is an
> DM> airborne fungus that turns stored potatoes into rotting mush.) Blight is
> DM> such a serious problem that the E.P.A. currently allows farmers to spray
> DM> powerful fungicides that haven't passed the usual approval process.
> DM> Forsyth's potatoes will receive eight applications of fungicide.
>
> DM> Twice each summer, Forsyth hires a crop duster to spray for aphids.
> DM> Aphids are harmless in themselves, but they transmit the leafroll virus,
> DM> which in Russet Burbank potatoes causes net necrosis, a brown spotting
> DM> that will cause a processor to reject a whole crop. It happened to
> DM> Forsyth last year. "I lost 80,000 bags" -- they're a hundred pounds each
> DM> -- "to net necrosis," he said. "Instead of getting $4.95 a bag, I had to
> DM> take $2 a bag from the dehydrator, and I was lucky to get that." Net
> DM> necrosis is a purely cosmetic defect; yet because big buyers like
> DM> McDonald's believe (with good reason) that we don't like to see brown
> DM> spots in our fries, farmers like Danny Forsyth must spray their fields
> DM> with some of the most toxic chemicals in use, including an
> DM> organophosphate called Monitor.
>
> DM> "Monitor is a deadly chemical," Forsyth said. "I won't go into a field
> DM> for four or five days after it's been sprayed -- even to fix a broken
> DM> pivot." That is, he would sooner lose a whole circle to drought than
> DM> expose himself or an employee to Monitor, which has been found to cause
> DM> neurological damage.
>
> DM> It's not hard to see why a farmer like Forsyth, struggling against tight
> DM> margins and heartsick over chemicals, would leap at a New Leaf -- or...
>
> DM> =======================================================================
> DM> And so I ask if this is how a typical non-organic daily regimen of food
> DM> exists, why are we so complacent? And why not be concerned of GM foods?
> DM> Pesticides will never be a thing of the past unless we act accordingly.
> DM> =======================================================================
>
> DM> Source: http://www.purefood.org/ge/playinggd.htm
>
> DM> Recycler Dave - passing it along...... Geez, eating can be hard (not)!
>
> DM> Can you thankfully share your opinions and experiences, mostly other
> DM> research as to what you feel works, will work and why?
>
> DM> ====================
> DM> recycler@eclipse.net
> DM> ====================
>
> DM> More Info:
>
> DM> Campaign for Food Safety (formerly known as the Pure Food Campaign)
> DM> 860 Highway 61, Little Marais, Minnesota 55614
> DM> Activist or Media Inquiries: (218) 226-4164, Fax: (218) 226-4157
> DM> Ronnie Cummins E-mail: alliance@mr.net http://www.purefood.org
>
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