West African farmers have succeeded in cutting the use of toxic pesticides, increasing yields and incomes and diversifying farming systems as a result of an international project promoting sustainable farming practices.Here’s the problem they are addressing: Continue readingAround 100 000 farmers in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal are participating in a community-driven training programme (West African Regional Integrated Production and Pest Management (IPPM) Programme) executed by FAO.
Tom Philpott asks in Grist about
Why Monsanto is paying farmers to spray its rivals’ herbicides
…Monsanto has been forced into the unenviable position of having to pay farmers to spray the herbicides of rival companies.Roundup, trade name for glysophate, doesn’t work anymore because the weeds mutated: Continue readingIf you tend large plantings of Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” soy or cotton, genetically engineered to withstand application of the company’s Roundup herbicide (which will kill the weeds — supposedly — but not the crops), Monsanto will cut you a $6 check for every acre on which you apply at least two other herbicides. One imagines farmers counting their cash as literally millions of acres across the South and Midwest get doused with Monsanto-subsidized poison cocktails.
The move is the latest step in the abject reversal of Monsanto’s longtime claim: that Roundup Ready technology solved the age-old problem of weeds in an ecologically benign way.
Robert Langreth writes in Forbes that
Forbes Was Wrong On Monsanto. Really Wrong.
Forbes made Monsanto the company of the year last year in The Planet Versus Monsanto. I know because I wrote the article. Since then everything that could have gone wrong for the genetically engineered seed company….has gone wrong. Super-weeds that are resistant to its RoundUp weed killer are emerging, even as weed killer sales are being hit by cheap Chinese generics. An expensive new bioengineered corn seed with eight new genes does not look impressive in its first harvest. And the Justice Department is invesigating over antitrust issues. All this has led to massive share declines. Other publications are making fun of our cover story.Maybe Forbes should improve its “invesigating” [sic] skills.
-jsq
Researchers tracked the pesticides’ breakdown products in children’ urine and found those with high levels were almost twice as likely to develop ADHD as those with undetectable levels.Then they try to greenwash the problem by saying to wash food before eating. Sure, that will help a bit, but many of the chemicals are inside the food, not just on it.The findings are based on data from the general U.S. population, meaning that exposure to the pesticides could be harmful even at levels commonly found in children’s environment.
“There is growing concern that these pesticides may be related to ADHD,” said researcher Marc Weisskopf of the Harvard School of Public Health, who worked on the study.
“What this paper specifically highlights is that this may be true even at low concentrations.”
Organophosphates were originally developed for chemical warfare, and they are known to be toxic to the nervous system.
The problem is that by waging chemical warfare on weeds, we’re waging chemical warfare on ourselves.
-jsq
PS: Glysophate (RoundUp) is an organophosphate.
Roy Roberson writes in Farm Press about
http://southeastfarmpress.com/cotton/herbicide-resistance-0525/:
Deep tilling of crop land pocked and rutted by heavy equipment used on rain and snow soaked, often frozen farm land may not only clean up the land, but may have a significant positive effect on managing herbicide resistant weeds, especially Palmer pigweed.Back to the future! “Deep tilling” is the current buzzword for plowing. That’s how my father farmed, with a bottom plow, a subsoiler, a harrow, and a cultivator.
The same article continues to defend no-till:
There is no doubt about the many benefits of minimum or no-till cropping systems. Reduced-tillage saves farmers money in equipment, improves soil quality, improves the environment by making the soil more porous and produces better drainage. The list of benefits goes on and on.Promotes more erosion, is my observation. And how does no-till save farmers money if they have to pay for increasing amounts of pesticides to try to deal with mutant weeds like pigweed? Continue reading
Note the cultivator. The host had to explain what it was and show it several times so people would understand it. Yes, that’s how farmers used to control weeds before pesticide vendor propaganda convinced people of things like “don’t throw dirt on peanuts.” The cultivator throws dirt on weeds next to the peanuts, thus suppressing the weeds and releasing the peanuts.
Gretchen remarks:
Organic growing isn’t a specialty market, it’s a matter of safety. Chemicals sprayed on peanuts, soy beans, cotton and corn are TOXIC. Good management and kindness to the earth can grow crops in a sustainable way. Just say no to chemical spraying.Peanut growers may not like manual labor, but they’re having to resort to that anyway, because their pesticides have produced the mutant pigweed, which pesticides don’t kill. Spraying more and different herbicides doesn’t do it, either. The only way is physical removal of the pigweed. And a cultivator can do that without manual labor (the report mentions that). Oh yeah: and you don’t have to pay for pesticides to apply with a cultivator.
So, it’s time to stop poisoning our air, water, plants, animals, and people and move away from petrochemical pesticides. Organic is the way to go, and we know how to get there.
-jsq
It’s a funny thing about monocultures. They’re highly vulnerable to anything
that affects that particular variety.
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho writes:
The scene is set at harvest time in Arkansas October 2009. Grim-faced farmers and scientists speak from fields infested with giant pigweed plants that can withstand as much glyphosate herbicide as you can afford to douse on them. One farmer spent US$0.5 million in three months trying to clear the monster weeds in vain; they stop combine harvesters and break hand tools. Already, an estimated one million acres of soybean and cotton crops in Arkansas have become infested.The palmer amaranth or palmer pigweed is the most dreaded weed. It can grow 7-8 feet tall, withstand withering heat and prolonged droughts, produce thousands of seeds and has a root system that drains nutrients away from crops. If left unchecked, it would take over a field in a year.
Meanwhile in North Carolina Perquimans County, farmer and extension worker Paul Smith has just found the offending weed in his field [3], and he too, will have to hire a migrant crew to remove the weed by hand.
Here’s the good news: Continue reading
The answer in
1939
turns out to be about the same as in
2010:
minority shares by its own executives, and the majority by, well:
Last week’s survey of stockholders—lavish to the point of including pictures of “typical” Monsanto stockholders in the “typical” city of Cincinnati—was frankly designed to prove that Monsanto is not owned or run by any of “America’s 60 Families.”So, mostly funds in 1939. And 71 years later, it’s even more so. Continue readingOutstanding as of June 1, 1938, were 1,241,816 common shares held by 4,300 men, 4,084 women, 2,708 trusts, groups, institutions. Mr. Queeny holds only 3.4% has beneficial interest in about 4.5% more through relatives and trusts. One officer of the company owns 1.47%, no others own more than .25%.
The magazine named as “stockholders, once removed,” students in 42 universities which together own 1% of Monsanto and the 25,000,000 policyholders in 72 insurance companies which together own 3%. Tucked away in a graph was the fact that 81% of the company’s shares is owned in blocks of 101 or more shares ($102-to-$104 a share last week).
By the late ’80s, the chemicals had started taking a toll. Mr. Govindan’s land dried up. Yields declined. Mr. Govindan said the quality of his crops did, too. In the old days, he told me, if you cooked too much rice for dinner you could keep it overnight and eat it the next day for breakfast. Now, rice from the fields around Molasur turned rotten overnight.How bad is it?Other things had changed: labor was more expensive, the price of fertilizers and seeds had increased, and the overall cost of living had outstripped the rise in crop prices.
The scientist M.S. Swaminathan, often referred to as the father of India’s green revolution, has spoken of a “disaster” in Indian agriculture. The sociologist Dipankar Gupta has written of “hollowed” villages.So is the Indian government being realistic about the problem?According to a recent report in The Hindu newspaper, almost 200,000 farmers committed suicide between 1997 and 2009 — a national tragedy (although it is rarely treated as such) brought on by rising debt and the resulting economic and existential despair.
Mr. Govindan wondered about something else, too. Farming had always seemed a special profession to him, with a vital, even noble, role in feeding the nation. He wondered why the country didn’t see it that way anymore. Just the previous night, he had watched Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on television, assuring the nation that it wouldn’t face food shortages. Mr. Govindan felt something didn’t add up. He pointed to the barren fields; he said you couldn’t even grow peanuts on them anymore. “I don’t understand,” he said, “Where is all the food supposed to come from?”Well, if India follows the U.S. model, the food will come from a tiny number of agrobusinesses that will end up owning most of the land.
Guess which company came in
worst of all in Swiss firm Covalence’s survey of least ethical companies?
Hint: it’s Forbes’ Company of the Year.
Monsanto, the Missouri-based agriculture giant, ranked dead last in the Covalence ethical index. The company, which leads the world in the production of genetically-engineered seed, has been subject to myriad criticisms. Among them: the company is accused of frequently and unfairly suing small farmers for patent infringement.Worse than Philip Morris, Chevron, or Halliburton. Quite an accomplishment!