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Yet there are questions about the sustainability of some modern techniques: > Such weeds have grown stronger and more numerous over the past 20 years — a resul

Yet there are questions about the sustainability of some modern techniques: > Such weeds have grown stronger and more numerous over the past 20 years — a result of herbicide overuse. By spraying so much glyphosate, farmers inadvertently caused weeds to evolve resistant traits more quickly. Alongside rampant antibiotic use for livestock which leads to antibiotic resistance in bacteria, and monocrops leading to poor nutrients in the soil, some things which can increase output in the short run and lead to disaster in the long run.

flyGuyOnTheSly 9y ago
>>a result of herbicide overuse. By spraying so much glyphosate, farmers inadvertently caused weeds to evolve resistant traits more quickly. That is my main concern, personally. Why fight nature? It's futile. You can't win in the long run. What are farmers going to do when dicamba stops working? Or it's offspring?
- rhizome 9y ago
  It's amazing that we as humans haven't developed a built-in argument against suppression-resistance technologies. After at least a couple of decades of race conditions in antibiotics, now we're importing it to agriculture. It has to be seen as a dead end. A profitable dead end, but a dead end nonetheless.
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  > Why fight nature? It's futile. You can't win in the long run. What does that even really mean? Are modern childbirth techniques "fighting nature"? What about using soap? I challenge anyone to come up with a meaningful notion of "fighting nature". Is it futile? Why? What's the justification for that claim?
  - flyGuyOnTheSly 9y ago
    >What does that even really mean? My apologies, I should have specified. By "fighting nature" I was referring to creating the worlds most powerful herbicide (that will become powerless in a few years because nature will force it to). I was referring to spending hundreds of millions of dollars fighting the Asian Flying Carp species that literally are decimating our waterways in terms of enjoyment. Stuff like that. Everybody hates weeds, and nobody likes getting their neck broken when they are on a powerboat racing down the river because a fish flew up and hit them. But we can't really stop the weeds from growing of the fish from spreading in the long run. So why bother? It just seems like such a wasted effort.

flyGuyOnTheSly 9y ago

>>a result of herbicide overuse. By spraying so much glyphosate, farmers inadvertently caused weeds to evolve resistant traits more quickly. That is my main concern, personally. Why fight nature? It's futile. You can't win in the long run. What are farmers going to do when dicamba stops working? Or it's offspring?

rhizome 9y ago
It's amazing that we as humans haven't developed a built-in argument against suppression-resistance technologies. After at least a couple of decades of race conditions in antibiotics, now we're importing it to agriculture. It has to be seen as a dead end. A profitable dead end, but a dead end nonetheless.
jamesrcole 9y ago
> Why fight nature? It's futile. You can't win in the long run. What does that even really mean? Are modern childbirth techniques "fighting nature"? What about using soap? I challenge anyone to come up with a meaningful notion of "fighting nature". Is it futile? Why? What's the justification for that claim?
- flyGuyOnTheSly 9y ago
  >What does that even really mean? My apologies, I should have specified. By "fighting nature" I was referring to creating the worlds most powerful herbicide (that will become powerless in a few years because nature will force it to). I was referring to spending hundreds of millions of dollars fighting the Asian Flying Carp species that literally are decimating our waterways in terms of enjoyment. Stuff like that. Everybody hates weeds, and nobody likes getting their neck broken when they are on a powerboat racing down the river because a fish flew up and hit them. But we can't really stop the weeds from growing of the fish from spreading in the long run. So why bother? It just seems like such a wasted effort.