Roundup (glyphosate)

[Texans42]

You have the answers and the experience. No reason to take it personal when someone disagrees about the necessity of glyphosate.

If I’m encouraged by those that are successful without it that’s on me and no insult to anyone else.

I changed it.

Lol, your whole narrative is making assumptions about farmers and farming practices

[JonW]

I changed it.



Lol, your whole narrative is making assumptions about farmers and farming practices

Maybe we both are


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[Texans42]

Maybe we both are


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Fair enough

[Pilgrim]

If I remember correctly Gabe Brown estimates that a family should be able to make a living, with no off-farm employment, off of 150 acres. Young people are interesting in agriculture again, and it’s not due to commodities.

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I don’t know who Gabe Brown is but I would tend to agree with him. Problem is, few families can afford 150 tillable acres. Hence the need for large scale agricultural production.

[JonW]

I don’t know who Gabe Brown is but I would tend to agree with him. Problem is, few families can afford 150 tillable acres. Hence the need for large scale agricultural production.

Certainly. Most don’t have that luxury. He does a good job of story-telling on how people have started with a patio garden and then scaled up over time. People like him make the world a better place.

http://brownsranch.us

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[panhandlehunter]

You can go take a tour of his place for a meager thousand bucks. Lol

[Longue Carabine]

Just noticed this thread was revived. And no shortage of attitude present.

Some of the posts are borderline misinforming so I wanted to clarify that per the WHO and UN, daily exposure to more than 1 mg/kg of body weight of glyphosate is considered a cancer risk, and 0.5 mg/kg of body weight/ day per the European Food Safety Authority who chose to be more conservative. Does this mean that everyone who gets exposed to those levels will get cancer? No. Because susceptibility to cancer varies tremendously from person to person, and these organizations are choosing the low end to be cautious. When you see someone claim they saw a study that said it was "safe" or a study has shown that it definitely does not cause cancer, realize that it's per the testing criteria of the study. They are testing specific doses at specific frequencies, for specific lengths of time, and for specific biologic targets. I.e. was breast tissue sampled? Organ tissue? What was sampled? A study determines a result for finite testing criteria, and their determination can ONLY be applied to the specific conditions of that test. And yes, I am aware that many other herbicides and pesticides are worse.

As for the commercial farming topic, I see it as an issue of growing dependency with increasing detrimental costs. Yes it may be the fastest way to produce a maximum volume, especially in harder to grow areas. But, fertilizer runoff and herbicide (that are more enduring than glyphosate) and pesticide runoff is poisoning thousands of square miles of water shed. The Gulf of Mexico alone has a desert devoid of life that is thousands of square miles as a direct result. Over $30 BILLION has been spent trying to mitigate this, but with minute success. There is also significant water table contamination in susceptible areas. And as the population adjusts and gets used to increased availability of food and continues to grow, it will put even more demand on these growing techniques, which of course will exacerbate the negative side effects. I.e. greater concentrations of these chemicals accumulating, more collateral damage, and very likely people getting sick.

[Farmdog]

I need to read this post at bedtime. Thankfully I’m not a college professor

[SaintBlaise]

I agree, it's all lawyer driven. So, I'm fair complected, used the farm grade round up for years. And I've also had some skin cancer removed. Guess I can make a claim.

I think it's real funny when you read the labels or hear the commercials about their 'organic' style (fill in the blank). My top three.
1. Water - in America, you are better off drinking tap water. The enzymes help your immune system. Bottled water is pure.
2. Chickens - free ranged chickens. Really, does that mean low-fence.
3. Cows - antibiotic free. Right, I want the Ribeye from the wormy cow.

[Farmdog]

I’m wearing a big *** Basel cell carcinoma owie on my face too, I wonder what door prizes I get

[GoneSouth]

I agree, it's all lawyer driven. So, I'm fair complected, used the farm grade round up for years. And I've also had some skin cancer removed. Guess I can make a claim.

I think it's real funny when you read the labels or hear the commercials about their 'organic' style (fill in the blank). My top three.
1. Water - in America, you are better off drinking tap water. The enzymes help your immune system. Bottled water is pure.
2. Chickens - free ranged chickens. Really, does that mean low-fence.
3. Cows - antibiotic free. Right, I want the Ribeye from the wormy cow.

You obviously don’t understand antibiotic free

[Hart8]

You can beat this up all day long because it is in the media but you all still want fuel for your cars and boats, perscription Rx drugs, freon for air conditioning and all other products out there that are hazardous in the chemical process to make, waste after it is made or in using the product. For instance gas has benzene, known cancer causing agent still use it every day. I wish I could find a could bottle of Chloridane for termite control.

I was gonna say the same thing about gasoline.People rinse their hands in it,pour it on the ground,without thinking twice.
Maybe I'm too simple minded,but it seems like everything causes cancer.New stuff,old stuff..
The way I see it,I'm not gonna live forever.Gonna die of something one day.Maybe cancer...Whether it's caused by roundup,or the 2nd hand smoke riding in that old Bronco back in the 80's.

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[S-3 Ranch]

You obviously don’t understand antibiotic free

I was thinking the same thing. But some dewormer has some traces of antibiotics

“”I know of another, safer method of worming livestock ... one that my dad used for years. All it involves is giving the afflicted animal a bit of snuff in its normal ration of grain.

Why snuff? Well, if you were to read the label from a commercial worm medicine, chances are you'd find that the treatment consists mainly of powdered tobacco (probably 80 to 90 percent powdered tobacco, plus some antibiotics and fillers). OK. So why should you pay $1 or $1.50 for a half-ounce tube of doctored-up tobacco ... when you can buy a four-ounce tin of Levi Garrett snuff —which is nothing more than powdered tobacco anyway — for less than a buck? Why indeed! “”

[elgato]

The scale of the subject of agricultural practices, food quality and safety, environmental impacts and solutions to all the above is very hard to discuss with short clips on an internet thread.

Seems like what it must be to go to an AA mtg: Hi my name is Rusty. I'm a hobby farmer and I use glyphosate.And indeed I do, though sparingly and essentially never on plants animals eat.

I had hoped this thread would shift to the bigger issue of many modern ag practices of which GMO's and glyphosate are only a part. Perhaps the entirety of the subject is to hard to deal with effectively in short quips.

That said I'll throw a few statements/questions out to hopefully frame a couple of the issues. Starting with Genetically Modified Organism---The first Genetically Modified Organism was created in 1987 called the Flavor Savr tomatoe. Round Up Ready crops generally were introduced in 1996.Today roughly 93% of the corn and soy beans are GMO. 23 years from never existing in the history of life on earth to consuming the vast majority of tillable acres in the U.S.!!!

GMO's are created with genetic engineering by inserting genes from one organism to another " in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination" Genes have been transferred across species, and even across kingdoms .

Comparing GMO's to natural hybridization which has been going on for 30,000 years is like comparing the off spring of Brad Pitt and Anjelina Jolie to mating a frog with a soybean.

Considering that GMO's in our basic commodity foods have gone from Zero in 1996 to over 90% it is arguable that the health impacts of that are well understood. There simply hasn't been enough time for scientific longevity studies. I would remind that not too many years before 1996 doctors were recommending smoking cigarettes as healthy.

What is unarguable is that never in the history of carbon based life on planet earth before 1996 have Genetically Modified Organism been introduced much less become a staple of the food supply. Monsanto and other developers along with the EPA say that no problem . We can trust that cant we?

In 2015 39 countries have banned growing GMO crops while 28 % allow it. Are they all just snow flakes or could the lobbying system in the U.S. have any impact on acceptance?

Another impact of the increase in GMO crops is the unprecedented increase in herbicides, specifically glyphosate. Glyphosate was introduced in 1974. Since that time 1.6billion kg. has been sprayed on our food with 2/3 of it coming in the last 10 years. In 2014 the equivalent of 8/10 of a lb. of gly was sprayed on every tillable acre in the United States. AS a result it is found in virtually everywhere... every water way, it has been found in most beers, wine, Quacker, General mIlls ,Kellog foods, found in human urine from New York to Oregon, found in 80% of mothers milk in Brazil,....and the list goes on and on. Monsanto says it is safer than table salt. The EPA says it is safe up to 140mg per 154 lbs/body weight. We can trust that cant we?

It should also be stated that there has been up to a 40% decrease in the nutrient density af most foods directly resulting from soil depletion occurring from chemical and tillage farming. Delving deeper into that may be for another time.


For me the good news is that there are many commercial cutting edge farmers that are increasing profitability by decreasing input costs including the use of patented GMO seed and excessive dependence on herbicides , synthetic fertilizers and chemical farming all by working more in harmony with nature. They are increasing soil organic matter thus improving their soils, sequestering carbon in the soil where it is an asset vs releasing it into the atmosphere from tillage where it is a liability, improving water infiltration thus avoiding runoff and erosion plus becoming more drought tolerant and eliminating the use of pesticides . In the end it will likely be economics [ not yield ] that lead the way to a revolution in ag The mantra is being expanded from " maximizing the seed ability" to" profitably feeding the world while at the same time improving the environments water, air, and soil life and increasing the nutrient density of our foods to the benefit of human health" .

Enough for now. I have great respect for farmers. What a tough gig requiring incredibly high capital costs, scale, you have to be a mechanic, scientist, hydrologist, all while understanding complex govt. regulation, operating with razor thin margins and after all that you depend on nature for success. Hats off to them.

[sandhillhunter]

And in spite of all the scare tactics and pandemonium......

https://www.nature.com/scitable/content/life-expectancy-around-the-world-has-increased-19786

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2018-10-16/study-global-lifespan-to-increase-by-2040%3fcontext=amp

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