Bonfire of regulations

[Scouse]

As in an inverse correlation.

Not always. (Your poster boy reduces it - but then it's got it GM-ed into it's very structure).

Very often this is the result*:




*from a quickly googled harvard paper. Of course, YMMV, but I'm not going to get into graph tennis. The above is largely a truism. And an unnecessary truism considering we can nearly eliminate use and massively increase calorie and nutrition density and benefit biodiversity through intense organic methods and crop rotation - as long as we increase human involvement. More farming jobs has to be better than more deliveroo riders.

 

[Scouse]

Aside from that - we know that pesticide use and GM crops create a harmful ecological arms race and if they're in the wild, they're in the wild - so they pollute other crops.

We're not intellectually capable of using these techologies safely at our current levels of understanding. So we should be safe - and learn as much as we can before using them indiscriminately.

Precautionary principle.

 

[Wij]

Not always. (Your poster boy reduces it - but then it's got it GM-ed into it's very structure).

Very often this is the result*:

View attachment 44984


*from a quickly googled harvard paper. Of course, YMMV, but I'm not going to get into graph tennis. The above is largely a truism. And an unnecessary truism considering we can nearly eliminate use and massively increase calorie and nutrition density and benefit biodiversity through intense organic methods and crop rotation - as long as we increase human involvement. More farming jobs has to be better than more deliveroo riders.

The whole point of 'Roundup-ready' GM crops was to make them more tolerant of Glyphosate so that it could be applied earlier when the crop is more vulnerable which would then reduce the need for more of it later.

Your graph only shows Glyphosate which may be misleading as on Roundup-ready crops it may be replacing the use of other pesticides. Also it doesn't appear to control for increases in yield so the usage per hectare may increase but the usage per kg of usable yield may have decreased.

 

[Wij]

Also organic farming uses pesticides and herbicides. Just different ones, often with a worse LD50 value or that basically haven't been studied because 'natural' is assumed to mean safe.

 

[Scouse]

Also organic farming uses pesticides and herbicides. Just different ones, often with a worse LD50 value or that basically haven't been studied because 'natural' is assumed to mean safe.

Oh do eff off. I've provided the actual evidence on this before and you didn't read it. It's not remotely comparable.


Edit: Plus - "bonfire of regulations" is the point of this thread. And we're having this bonfire, clearly.

 

[Raven]

The thing is. Climate is changing, at a rapid pace. We could turn everything off and never back on again tomorrow, and it won't reverse it. We need to adapt plants to survive it because they don't have the time to survive it. We want far less pesticides in the environment, GMO is the only realistic way we can change quickly. It will also mean less land usage, and you will see factory growing sites, which means more space for subsidised fallow land.

I don't like the idea but we haven't got a lot of choice.

 

[Scouse]

We want far less pesticides in the environment, GMO is the only realistic way we can change quickly

Absolutely not. GMO goes hand in hand with pesticide use.

If we want to achieve high food density, less chemical use, biodiversity enhancements and protect our soil then large scale monocultural farming is OUT. Small scale intensive organic (vegetables, not meat products) with more intensive manual labour is in.

Not seen a whif of anything else that can achieve those aims in a wholistic manner. But then, I've been saying all along that we don't make it as a species - and I've yet to see a single thing that makes me think we will.

Regardless - race to the bottom / bonfire of regulations IS happening.

 

[Jupitus]

Wholistic vs. Holistic – Which is Correct? - Writing Explained

Is wholistic a word? What is the difference between holistic and wholistic? How do you spell holistic. Find out here. Wholistically definition...

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[Jupitus]

Sorry @Scouse but it was twanging an OCD nerve

 

[Scouse]

Wholistic vs. Holistic – Which is Correct? - Writing Explained

Is wholistic a word? What is the difference between holistic and wholistic? How do you spell holistic. Find out here. Wholistically definition...

writingexplained.org

.

 

[Gwadien]

Absolutely not. GMO goes hand in hand with pesticide use.

If we want to achieve high food density, less chemical use, biodiversity enhancements and protect our soil then large scale monocultural farming is OUT. Small scale intensive organic (vegetables, not meat products) with more intensive manual labour is in.

Not seen a whif of anything else that can achieve those aims in a wholistic manner. But then, I've been saying all along that we don't make it as a species - and I've yet to see a single thing that makes me think we will.

Regardless - race to the bottom / bonfire of regulations IS happening.

I think you (and many environmental activists) need to find a middle ground...

I don't see us returning to an agrarian society for a long time to come, and it'll because the robots push us out of cities rather than choosing to.

Fundamentally advances in agrarian sciences allowed countries to grow, and growth is still the most important to the modern world. I think asking people to abandon that is pretty optimistic.

How would it work out economically too since you're asking for most of the population to become essentially subsistence farmers?

So yeah, defo err on the side of caution, but we also need to explore ways of making things work before throwing them in the bonfire too.

 

[Scouse]

Not asking for that at all @Gwadien.

I'm saying we can do biodiversity, high calories, high nutrients, soil preservation, practically zero pesticide use and dramatically reduce the land we use.

It's not new. It doesn't hold society back. What we're using now is the "new" method of agriculture - not what I'm suggesting - and it's fucked, fucking us, fucking the natural world - all so a smaller number of people can slice bigger.

Food isn't hard. We've been doing it for millennia. It's when we decided we could "improve" it with chemicals and machinery we took a wrong turn.

Better food for all, in balance with nature. We have to sacrifice monocultural ideas.

But we won"t.