5 ms·

My take away from the article, as with most articles which utilize a question as a title, is "No". At least not as long as we continue to allow the agriculture

by Carrok 2y ago

My take away from the article, as with most articles which utilize a question as a title, is "No". At least not as long as we continue to allow the agriculture industry to blanket a not-insignificant portion of the earth with glyphosate.

doctorpangloss 2y ago
> At least not as long as we continue to allow the agriculture industry to blanket a not-insignificant portion of the earth with glyphosate. How is it possible that something so obvious and so catastrophic has been allowed to go on for decades? Why have so many well-meaning smart people been co-opted by Green Revolution stories?
- mulmen 2y ago
  > Why have so many well-meaning smart people been co-opted by Green Revolution stories? What does this mean?
- nerdponx 2y ago
  Because the ugly truth is that you can't actually feed the world population any other way. Once your money is in the Ponzi scheme, the only way to get anything back is to ride it out and hope you're at the bottom of the pyramid.
  - Carrok 2y ago
    > you can't actually feed the world population any other way Citation very much needed. This sounds like it was written by a member of the Monsanto PR team. There are.. other ways, than indiscriminately spraying plant poison everywhere.
    - AlexandrB 2y ago
      You can certainly farm in other ways, but it's a question of yield. High yield requires removing any competition to the plants you're cultivating - including milkweed. The fact that it's done with glyphosate is an implementation detail. If you want to produce the same amount of food with lower yield techniques you need more land - so more deforestation and destruction of natural habitats, which is hardly an improvement.
      - Carrok 2y ago
        Considering we waste almost a full 1/4th globally [0], and almost 40% here in the USA [1], do we need to produce the same amount of food? 0: https://www.wri.org/research/reducing-food-loss-and-waste https://www.wri.org/research/reducing-food-loss-and-waste 1: https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/ https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/
        bradley13 2y ago
        Add to that stupid crops, like corn grown for ethanol or HFCS. Both could completely stop, and the world would be a better place.
    - Mistletoe 2y ago
      https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-lanka-organic-fertilizer-pesticide-agriculture-farming https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-la... This is a very famous example.
      - Carrok 2y ago
        It's almost like there is more involved in a successful migration to a less synthetic approach to agriculture than simply stopping using fertilizers and pesticides.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      > There are.. other ways, than indiscriminately spraying plant poison everywhere. You are welcome to throw your hat into the farming ring and show the world how it is done.
      - Carrok 2y ago
        You seem to be implying that no one has successfully farmed without pesticides.
        lotsofpulp 2y ago
        Not at all. I am implying that if you know how to farm in a different manner than the current widely used methods and deliver enough food at an acceptable price to the population, then you should do it. But I suspect that people around the world who have decades of farming experience are paying for glyphosate for a reason.
        legacynl 2y ago
        Just so you know that kind of reasoning is flawed. Farmers are perfectly capable of using less glyphosphate, but the problem is that their buyers pay them so little that it isn't cost effective to do anything other than spray glypho everywhere. With the health risks associated with glyphosphate, I assume a lot of farmers actually would love to stop using that shit.
        lotsofpulp 2y ago
        My comments were not intended to insinuate that farmers were not physically capable of producing food without glyphosate. Clearly, a farmer is not going to work for a loss, so the context of what is possible (from the farmer’s perspective) is assumed to be within the existing business and political environment. Which is obviously that not using glyphosate makes your product priced too high.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      There are more expensive ways, but the world's population – even the moderately rich segment of that population – cry that they can barely afford the food as-is. Feeding the world's population requires more than the capability to produce food.
  - artursapek 2y ago
    Sure you can. Glyphosate is used because food prices got stuck in a race to the bottom due to commoditization. Farmers deal with shrinking margins and rely on govt subsidies and poison in competition with each other to raise commoditized corn and other crops. The ultimate result is we have cheaper, less nutritious food and a devastated natural ecosystem.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      Glyphosate was demonized to create justification for trade barriers in agricultural products. The anti-GMO clamor is similar.
      - artursapek 2y ago
        Bless your heart
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Perhaps because it's not catastrophic?
galangalalgol 2y ago
I thought glyphosate killed plants, does it kill insects too?
- Carrok 2y ago
  > "As a result, farmers increased glyphosate use while reducing the use of other herbicides," Swinton noted. "This became particularly concerning for monarch butterflies since their host plants are strongly associated with row crops and their numbers began a sharp decline during the period of glyphosate adoption." It kills the plants where insects happen to live and breed.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  Roundup kills milkweed, a common weed in corn and soybean fields, also used in some other crops. Monarch caterpillars _exclusively_ feed on milkweed. This is not a case of glyphosphate toxicity, but habitat destruction because it does the job on the label well. And folks tend to apply it lots of places it doesn't necessarily need to be used. Heavily farmed areas need to have some more land set aside for biodiversity and better managed to that end. Additionally there are concerns about insecticides affecting monarchs in an entirely different thread, in particular increasingly banned neonicotinoid insecticides.
  - throwup238 2y ago
    > And folks tend to apply it lots of places it doesn't necessarily need to be used. Glyphosate is the easiest way to keep a property clear of plants for fire insurance reasons in California, which is really unfortunate. My family had a big conflict with our neighbor over his use of roundup to clear his land because they were trying to grow a bunch of their own stuff.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      If he got herbicide on their property a lawsuit would have been justified. If their concern was over slight contamination, not enough to noticeably affect plant growth, then not. It's not like it would have significant effect on human health in that situation, if it has any effect at all.
dyauspitr 2y ago
I don’t understand how people grew things without glyphosate. Getting rid of the weeds manually is extremely labor intensive. It’s many hundreds of hours of hired labor every week.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  People didn't remove all the weeds before glyphosate. Nor did all the work manually.
  - dyauspitr 2y ago
    What do you mean they didn’t do it manually?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      There are several types of weed removal equipment one can plug on a tractor at the different stages of the life-cycle of the crops.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    they used a culivator. Basically a hoe you pull behind the tractor. this of course burned a lot more fuel [read CO2]
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      And chewed up the soil.
- stevenwoo 2y ago
  Smaller farms, smaller plots, greater variety in crops. There's a bit in episode eight of the documentary series Omnivore contrasting farmers in Mexico versus industrial farming in the USA, showing one of the remaining farmers in Mexico and how they do corn, talking about how a million Mexican farmers were put out of work because they could not compete with lower cost imported corn from the USA after NAFTA.
ta_1138 2y ago
If I look at the crop that isn't useful for pollinators, and occupies the largest amount of land area in the US, the result is not corn which is sprayed with insecticides: It's lawns. The Kentucky bluegrass or fescue that is cut so short it never seeds? Might as well be concrete as far as insects are concerned. But we not only allow, but often mandate that acres upon acres of land are kept that way, or the owner gets a fine. American suburbs make more space ecologically dead per inhabitant than anything else we do: The greyest of cities at least take less space.
- keybored 2y ago
  That’s hard to believe. Lawns take up such a small space. It had to until recently (robots) be mowed manually, at least for residental lawns. The American West is so devoid of lawns clusters (metro areas) that all of it except the West Coast should have excellent insect conditions, if lawns have such a large impact. This feels like explaining pollution by studying how many bottles are thrown into bodies of water in Orange County.
jonstewart 2y ago
The article specifically cites a study from the past year that shows the major current factor in pollinator decline is not RoundUp, but insecticide use. I don't mean this as an apologia for RoundUp (or Monsanto). There's a need for more attention on, and regulation of, harmful pesticides, though.

by Carrok 2y ago

doctorpangloss 2y ago

> At least not as long as we continue to allow the agriculture industry to blanket a not-insignificant portion of the earth with glyphosate. How is it possible that something so obvious and so catastrophic has been allowed to go on for decades? Why have so many well-meaning smart people been co-opted by Green Revolution stories?

mulmen 2y ago
> Why have so many well-meaning smart people been co-opted by Green Revolution stories? What does this mean?
nerdponx 2y ago
Because the ugly truth is that you can't actually feed the world population any other way. Once your money is in the Ponzi scheme, the only way to get anything back is to ride it out and hope you're at the bottom of the pyramid.
- Carrok 2y ago
  > you can't actually feed the world population any other way Citation very much needed. This sounds like it was written by a member of the Monsanto PR team. There are.. other ways, than indiscriminately spraying plant poison everywhere.
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    You can certainly farm in other ways, but it's a question of yield. High yield requires removing any competition to the plants you're cultivating - including milkweed. The fact that it's done with glyphosate is an implementation detail. If you want to produce the same amount of food with lower yield techniques you need more land - so more deforestation and destruction of natural habitats, which is hardly an improvement.
    - Carrok 2y ago
      Considering we waste almost a full 1/4th globally [0], and almost 40% here in the USA [1], do we need to produce the same amount of food? 0: https://www.wri.org/research/reducing-food-loss-and-waste https://www.wri.org/research/reducing-food-loss-and-waste 1: https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/ https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/
      - bradley13 2y ago
        Add to that stupid crops, like corn grown for ethanol or HFCS. Both could completely stop, and the world would be a better place.
  - Mistletoe 2y ago
    https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-lanka-organic-fertilizer-pesticide-agriculture-farming https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-la... This is a very famous example.
    - Carrok 2y ago
      It's almost like there is more involved in a successful migration to a less synthetic approach to agriculture than simply stopping using fertilizers and pesticides.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    > There are.. other ways, than indiscriminately spraying plant poison everywhere. You are welcome to throw your hat into the farming ring and show the world how it is done.
    - Carrok 2y ago
      You seem to be implying that no one has successfully farmed without pesticides.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        Not at all. I am implying that if you know how to farm in a different manner than the current widely used methods and deliver enough food at an acceptable price to the population, then you should do it. But I suspect that people around the world who have decades of farming experience are paying for glyphosate for a reason.
        legacynl 2y ago
        Just so you know that kind of reasoning is flawed. Farmers are perfectly capable of using less glyphosphate, but the problem is that their buyers pay them so little that it isn't cost effective to do anything other than spray glypho everywhere. With the health risks associated with glyphosphate, I assume a lot of farmers actually would love to stop using that shit.
        lotsofpulp 2y ago
        My comments were not intended to insinuate that farmers were not physically capable of producing food without glyphosate. Clearly, a farmer is not going to work for a loss, so the context of what is possible (from the farmer’s perspective) is assumed to be within the existing business and political environment. Which is obviously that not using glyphosate makes your product priced too high.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    There are more expensive ways, but the world's population – even the moderately rich segment of that population – cry that they can barely afford the food as-is. Feeding the world's population requires more than the capability to produce food.
- artursapek 2y ago
  Sure you can. Glyphosate is used because food prices got stuck in a race to the bottom due to commoditization. Farmers deal with shrinking margins and rely on govt subsidies and poison in competition with each other to raise commoditized corn and other crops. The ultimate result is we have cheaper, less nutritious food and a devastated natural ecosystem.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    Glyphosate was demonized to create justification for trade barriers in agricultural products. The anti-GMO clamor is similar.
    - artursapek 2y ago
      Bless your heart
pfdietz 2y ago
Perhaps because it's not catastrophic?

galangalalgol 2y ago

I thought glyphosate killed plants, does it kill insects too?

Carrok 2y ago
> "As a result, farmers increased glyphosate use while reducing the use of other herbicides," Swinton noted. "This became particularly concerning for monarch butterflies since their host plants are strongly associated with row crops and their numbers began a sharp decline during the period of glyphosate adoption." It kills the plants where insects happen to live and breed.
colechristensen 2y ago
Roundup kills milkweed, a common weed in corn and soybean fields, also used in some other crops. Monarch caterpillars _exclusively_ feed on milkweed. This is not a case of glyphosphate toxicity, but habitat destruction because it does the job on the label well. And folks tend to apply it lots of places it doesn't necessarily need to be used. Heavily farmed areas need to have some more land set aside for biodiversity and better managed to that end. Additionally there are concerns about insecticides affecting monarchs in an entirely different thread, in particular increasingly banned neonicotinoid insecticides.
- throwup238 2y ago
  > And folks tend to apply it lots of places it doesn't necessarily need to be used. Glyphosate is the easiest way to keep a property clear of plants for fire insurance reasons in California, which is really unfortunate. My family had a big conflict with our neighbor over his use of roundup to clear his land because they were trying to grow a bunch of their own stuff.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    If he got herbicide on their property a lawsuit would have been justified. If their concern was over slight contamination, not enough to noticeably affect plant growth, then not. It's not like it would have significant effect on human health in that situation, if it has any effect at all.

dyauspitr 2y ago

I don’t understand how people grew things without glyphosate. Getting rid of the weeds manually is extremely labor intensive. It’s many hundreds of hours of hired labor every week.

marcosdumay 2y ago
People didn't remove all the weeds before glyphosate. Nor did all the work manually.
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  What do you mean they didn’t do it manually?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    There are several types of weed removal equipment one can plug on a tractor at the different stages of the life-cycle of the crops.
- bluGill 2y ago
  they used a culivator. Basically a hoe you pull behind the tractor. this of course burned a lot more fuel [read CO2]
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    And chewed up the soil.
stevenwoo 2y ago
Smaller farms, smaller plots, greater variety in crops. There's a bit in episode eight of the documentary series Omnivore contrasting farmers in Mexico versus industrial farming in the USA, showing one of the remaining farmers in Mexico and how they do corn, talking about how a million Mexican farmers were put out of work because they could not compete with lower cost imported corn from the USA after NAFTA.

ta_1138 2y ago

If I look at the crop that isn't useful for pollinators, and occupies the largest amount of land area in the US, the result is not corn which is sprayed with insecticides: It's lawns. The Kentucky bluegrass or fescue that is cut so short it never seeds? Might as well be concrete as far as insects are concerned. But we not only allow, but often mandate that acres upon acres of land are kept that way, or the owner gets a fine. American suburbs make more space ecologically dead per inhabitant than anything else we do: The greyest of cities at least take less space.

keybored 2y ago
That’s hard to believe. Lawns take up such a small space. It had to until recently (robots) be mowed manually, at least for residental lawns. The American West is so devoid of lawns clusters (metro areas) that all of it except the West Coast should have excellent insect conditions, if lawns have such a large impact. This feels like explaining pollution by studying how many bottles are thrown into bodies of water in Orange County.

jonstewart 2y ago

The article specifically cites a study from the past year that shows the major current factor in pollinator decline is not RoundUp, but insecticide use. I don't mean this as an apologia for RoundUp (or Monsanto). There's a need for more attention on, and regulation of, harmful pesticides, though.