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> horrific to engineer a crop to make the farmer subservient You know why we use selective herbicides? Because they improve yield. Farmers are practical peop
by ethbr0 5y ago
> horrific to engineer a crop to make the farmer subservient
You know why we use selective herbicides?
Because they improve yield.
Farmers are practical people.
- yarky 5y agoAnd that's exactly why they're doing it, because there are more important things than yield, e.g. food sovereignty. Italy did something similar to target the cheap (high yield) canadian grain imports, but using labelling instead of an outright ban on glyphosate.
- JamisonM 5y agoSorry, what Canadian grain imports have anything to do with glyphosate? There are no varieties of Wheat, Oats, or Barley registered in Canada that a resistant to glyphosate.
- yarky 5y ago[here](https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/italy-canada-durum-wheat-dispute-1.4191615 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/italy-canada-durum-wheat-dispu...) is the story. The point being glyphosate is widely used in Canada to increase yield and italians didn't like that either.
- JamisonM 5y agoYeah, in oats now the harvest is managed in terms of if a pre-harvest desiccant was applied crops are binned and handled separately. I dislike this being spelled out in terms of "increasing yield" as it is actually more about managing quality. Pre-harvest applications of glyphosate are mostly a thing of the past in wheat anyway, the varieties dry down better now - it was mostly a artifact of the Canadian transition from drying crops in windrows to leaving them stand. The genetics have caught up now.
- bobsmooth 5y agoThey're comparing Mexico banning GMOs to stop Us corn imports to Italy requiring labelling to stop Canadian grain imports.
- sampo 5y ago> what Canadian grain imports have anything to do with glyphosate? You want wheat (and other grains) to be dry before harvest. Harvesting when wet increases losses due mold growth. Wet stems cause sticking and blocking in the harvest machinery. In many countries it's common to apply a defoliant: You kill or half-kill the foliage of the crop plants, and wait a small number of days, so grains and stems get drier before the harvest. This use of glyphosate has nothing to do GMOs (there is no GMO wheat in markets anywhere). In a small number of countries, it's forbidden to use chemicals (plant poisons) to force desiccation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_desiccation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_desiccation https://saifood.ca/crop-desiccation/ https://saifood.ca/crop-desiccation/
- JamisonM 5y ago"Plant poisons" eh?
- sokoloff 5y agoGlyphosate is not considered a selective herbicide. It’s a borderline freak of nature that some varieties of corn can tolerate it.
- nemo44x 5y agoYou can engineer “round-up resistant” crop seed and then nuke the field leaving only your crop as survivor. In this context it is, but yes it is otherwise not.
- JamisonM 5y agoSo if the farmers didn't grow glysophate resistant corn instead they would grow non-GMO wheat and spray it with "selective" herbicides that kill wild oats and broadleaf plants over those acres and society would be better.. how exactly? Roundup is a lot cheaper than Axial Extreme + MCPA or Velocity M3 or Tandem or Rexade.. and, TBH, Roundup isn't tha good at killing a lot of the weeds that those other products kill very well. It's just not as simple as you might think.
- JamisonM 5y agoYes, this whole narrative that farmers are idiots and that the agricultural industrial complex is manipulating us is both extremely popular here on HN and highly offensive. If farmers don't want to grow GMO/glyphosate resistant crops they have options, I personally grow mostly non-GMO crops and make plenty of money doing it. Basic economics applies to GMOs like like it applies to microchips or flip-flops and the capital owners (in this case land owners) have agency in this process.