safe/unsafe glyphosate use

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by Luke B, Dec 12, 2004.

  1. biofarmag

    biofarmag Junior Member

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    ff not that it matters except that I typed all that for nothing but that was a direct quote from what you posted.

    I don't deny what I said. I stand by it. There are heaps and heaps of organic farmers who are twits and who do very badly. They ARE fulltime farmers, and they're really really lousy at what they do. They make a living......a very poor one. There are also those who are open-minded and intelligent and are learning to do things better.

    one thing that always mystifyes me is that all these petro based pesticides herbicides and artificial fertilisers have only been around in the last 50 years ......... so if we believe those who now say they cant farm without them how did mankind manage to survive without them for thousands of year

    It's a different world now. I had an old lettuce grower tell me what he used to get for a box of lettuce 40 years ago.....and what a new car cost. He compared that with what they get today, and what a new car costs right now. Most growers used to supply to a local market. Nowadays you buy Bowen (Nth QLD) tomatoes in Victoria. Everything has gone up in price at a faster rate than has the produce. And people (the MAJORITY of people) won't buy product unless it looks perfect. Worms in apples were common, as were caterpillar marks on leafy veges. Nowadays even the bent and undersized stuff gets left in the paddock because the consumer wants a "better" product for a whole lot less. Yes, mankind survived without these things. But they also had greater losses and lower yields.....AND they could afford them!

    and as christopher has said a couple of times what about when oil runs out shouldnt we be looking to alternatives

    Did I ever say we shouldn't?

    and have you read Pat Coleby' s Natural Land Care ? I have noticed many farmers over here are changing to her methods it could be the start of the quiet revolution without using that dreaded O word that frightens them so much

    No, I haven't. Who's "frightened"?

    have a good day I have to go now

    Have a good one.
     
  2. forest

    forest Junior Member

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    frosty, the quiet revolution has already started, despite what other people might think.

    Farming naturally, using what was available on the land - blood and bone, potash etc, has been used as a viable method of producing small crops for many years. I think you have to differentiate between small cropping and huge agribusiness of the type woolworths and coles deal with. Those supermarkets are not set up to process small quantities so producers generally plant one crop and push it along with whatever will work. This is slowly changing though with woolworth saying recently they have 10% of their products that are now organic.

    BTW, did you know that the brown russet potato is now over 50% of the world's potato crop. The brown russet just happens to be the potato that McDonald's insists their french fries are made with.

    Organic producers, both in fruit and vegetables, and pork, beef, lamb and chicken, tend to allow their product to develop at the "normal" rate. This usually allows the best flavour to develop and has the added benefit of giving the animal a decent life. That's why organic produce is more expensive, it takes longer to produce.

    Farmers can manage without adding man-made fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, it's just harder to do it so they do it the easy way. They also have to battle against drought, hail, floods and non-supportive governments, so I guess they do what they can and forget the rest.
     
  3. earthbound

    earthbound Junior Member

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    Gees this topic just goes round and round in circles........

    Firstly, why is it the responsibility of a certifying organic body to advise methods of controlling problems in particular crops. This is not their job nor responsibility. A certifying body sets out the rules to be followed, and tells you what products can and can't be used, and tries to make sure that that these are adhered to. They are not an advisory service.!

    All certifying bodies work this way, when any design project is to be certified to a classification society, they tell you where your design doesn't meet their criteria, then it's up to you to fix it, you can't go running to them and say "but what do I do, how do I do it?" When applying for quality assurance certification it is the same, none of them tell you how to do it, thats up to you. In a way they ARE 'NO' people, thats their job.

    Certification is supposed to be for the benefit of the consumer at the end of the day. If your company is quality or organically assured, then your company must follow all certification rules to retain the certification, and a consumer knows that there are set processes in place to ensure the quality of the product or service they receive. If someone has organic certification, it is not up to them to decide whether or not they want to use roundup, they can not use it.......! If they do they are breaking their certification and should be struck off, (and publically humiliated in my opinion)......


    Biofarmag, I find this statement to be rather disturbing, organic certification is not a philosophy or belief-system. And advice like this sets back the organic certification societies by decades, I only hope that you don't advice any organically certified growers.

    Whether there is a residue or not, is not the point. This sort of action undermines the whole certification process, making a mockery of it.... In buying organically certified produce you should expect that it has been grown to the certification standards...
     
  4. Tezza

    Tezza Junior Member

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    Im with you joel...Will you be my P R man ..

    Tezza
     
  5. biofarmag

    biofarmag Junior Member

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    Guess what? I do! *gasp* *shock* *horror*
     
  6. earthbound

    earthbound Junior Member

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    Now who's being childish.?
     
  7. forest

    forest Junior Member

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    Now that is scary. The blind leading the blind.
     
  8. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    I guess I am astonished that on an ostensibly permaculture forum someone would suggest that RTound Up is a good thing, and that defrauding organic consumers is okay if the chemicals leave no residue. That's all.

    Why are you here?
     
  9. biofarmag

    biofarmag Junior Member

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    Because I'm very bad, Chris. I'd have to be, seeing as I think other than you, Chris.
     
  10. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    I am trying not to make this personal. Why the jibes?

    And I did call you childish names, after you ducked answering any questions, and I did call you chickenshit, and I apologized for that, with as much humility as I could muster. It was childish, and I was being silly. I am sorry. There, now I have said it again. I apologize for attacking you when you left and I could not attack your position.

    I have tried to be respectful of your decision to use chemicsals, even tho I disagree with it. However, advocating using chemicals on certified organic registered holdings is a different ball of wax.

    Respectfully, telling people to cheat on organics because you think that somehow you know better than the consumer really sucks. Its not thinking different than me, its subverting the whole organic movement. No offence, and I am not attcking you, nor am I trying to make this personal, in fact, I hope you can understand that it is what you are saying that I find objectionable, not you, personally.

    But to say that, wow, that really is surprising, especially here. Why would you suggest these things in a forum devoted to integrated cropping systems and small scale, decentralized production models?

    I am not saying there isn't a place for Round Up, there is, not on my farm, of course :lol: , nor am I saying you shoudn't have a forum to promote the use of Round Up and all of its spurious benefits. But why did you choose here?

    I really thought we had opened a dialogue and then, bang, all of this.....

    I try not to deal in moral absolutes when I can. There are multiple shades of greay, but advising farmers how to cheat organic standards is promoting fraud, and, in black and white, it is simply wrong.

    I don't know, maybe you are a plant from Monsanto, and I mean that in a non attacking way. I ruled that out yesterday, but this is seriously loopy logic.

    Again, why are you here, promoting centralized broad scale monocropping techniques in a forum about the polar opposite type of production model?

    And, lastly, Organic certification bodies do not advize. Their parent organizations, if well developed, may have such departments, but the certifiers do not. They cannot inspect against the advice they give. That is standard, worldwide.
     
  11. Guest

    Maybe what is being forgotten here is that commercial growers (including organic growers) run businesses. They are not like permaculturists who can just say Bugger! when the crows eat our corn, or we find our lettuces aren't hearting. We are growing for self sufficiency. They aren't.

    They have decided to derive their income from that form of growing and they can't just shrug when things go wrong - like we can, because we always have alternatives. If my corn fails, we eat eggs for breakfast, simple as that.

    It is not realistic to pretend that Mary and Joe on 5 acres, surrounded by commercial crops, industrialisation, and the variety of noxious plants that now exist, can produce truly organic food for market without responding to real time problems in some way.

    Nor can we pretend that farms that have been in the family for generations and were worked traditionally are now organic simply because they cleared the 2 year certification period. Those long standing farms are more likely to be the most questionable, due to the fact early farms used to produce their own wood, meats, cheeses & butter. Whereever those traditional set ups are found...the increase of an EPA listing is high, due to the possibility of long standing arsenic and other residues.

    To grow crops on small plots the soil gets a major workover. There are no rest paddocks across the road. Asparagus is the roadside crop, and it goes in, comes out, goes in comes out.

    Here, across the road we have a permanent culture of ongoing produce. If I want to grow a heap of small crops (which I also do) then I have to work that into my system. I do so by scattering them among established plants and using their waste for mulch. That is not cropping.

    Lantana is currently diminishing my paddock crop (bluegrass) considerably. If I ignore it, I lose feed for my donks. The land is sufficient to feed the donks, but as the problem grows, my donks now have half a paddock of feed. That won't get them through a year. If the guy across the road DIDN'T respond to the same problem - he simply couldn't grow.

    I don't think the guy across the road seems evil or intentionally deceptive. Rather, I considered him the opposite, very honest and real. We were talking about a real problem - he understood immediately what the problem was, because he had had to deal with it. He worked from within the guidelines of certification and broke no rules.

    Maybe that is a bit of any eye opener about certification? Maybe it is not as rigid as what the righteous may like to think it actually is? Consumers may also want to reconsider the marketing propaganda they enter into. Any product has a marketing campaign.

    I think maybe people could do with actually talking with some real producers about real problems. It is ridiculous to just take things on face value and hypothesise what should be done, and can't be done, call folks names etc. when you are not actually doing it or attempting to derive a living from farming.
     
  12. biofarmag

    biofarmag Junior Member

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    Not "promoting" anything, Chris. I'm only giving an opinion. I'm not expecting, or desiring, a flood of forum members loading up drums of chemical. I just simply don't see the problem. That's all. I find the shock 'n' horror a bit baffling. And in my consultancy work, the topic of herbicide use would come up so rarely it ain't funny. And I don't think I have such powerful hypnotic powers that I could swing somebody's view one way or the other. It's actually not something I feel that strongly about either way. I'm far more interested in soil mineral and biological management. No one calls me about weeds. No one asks me to advise them about weeds. What about pesticides? What about those considerably more toxic things that people spray directly onto the edible parts of fruit, sometimes within a day of harvest? Isn't that of greater concern than something that's sprayed on the ground when the crop hasn't even been planted? No one sprays their fruit or vege crops with roundup, as they tend to die when you do! Geeees, give it a rest!
     
  13. biofarmag

    biofarmag Junior Member

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    Well said, RF. Well said!
     
  14. Tezza

    Tezza Junior Member

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    Hey Bag

    Forget it im in a happy mood today and ive promised to behave myself on this board.....

    Tezza
     
  15. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Perhaps the commercial growers and Round Up enthusiats can go have thier own site. Last I looked at the top of this page it said "permaculture discussion forum". I'm still not seeing where the chemicals and large scale monocultures qualify as "permaculture". Why discuss this stuff here? Aren't there better places to talk about it? Doesn't Monsanto have its own chat forum?

    The below sounds like cheating to me:
    And for EU and US markets its three year monitored in conversion period, not two. If he is spraying at any point between initial inspection and the end of the three year monitored in conversion period when he can obtain organic certification, or at anytime on his registered holding, he is cheating.

    And, as Frosty pointed out, there are large and successful organic farmers out there, so the argument that it can't be done is false too.

    I concede that there are probably plenty who are not doing it well, but that is their choice. And knowing the Soil Association, I have complete faith in any product they certify. If it has the Soil Association seal on it, its organic. I have been involved with a bunch of inspections, and they are quite thorough.

    What exactly is your point, and how does it relate to permauclture? I am trying to understand this, and am not making this hostile, I just am not getting it. Why here?
     
  16. biofarmag

    biofarmag Junior Member

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    Who finds my views so offensive and so mentally-corrosive that they want me to leave? Hands up?
     
  17. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    I don't find it offensive, just silly and pointless. Why?
     
  18. biofarmag

    biofarmag Junior Member

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    Other than Chris? (He's on IGNORE)
     
  19. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    I know you are ignoring me. But all I have asked is why are you posting here if you don't believe in permaculture? Round Up is not permaculture. Large scale agriculture is not permaculture. Monocrops are not permaculture. I don't want you to leave, I just want to know why you are here.

    Just yesterday I welcomed you back and encouraged you to stay. Within a short amount of time you have become very argumentative. Why are you here? What could motivate you to post here if you don't believe in permaculture or organic agriculture?

    And while I am now calling you a big fat clown on the other thread, the one with the big fat clown in a dreadlock wig, that is only in response to your racist portrayal of Afrocaribbean life. You apparently think this is funny. It really isn't. A white clown in a dread lock wig with a big spliff may seem like a hoot to you, a white man, but it would be highly offensive to people of colour and african heritage anywhere, if they didn't just laugh at the ludicrousness of it.

    I am suprised it has been tolerated here. By the standards of the Caribbean, it would be considered highly racist, like black face. That is my opinion, tho, but I do live in a country that is over %50 black. I have sent your url off to Jamaica to the Twelve Tribes. maybe thay can explain it to you since you are ignoring me.
     
  20. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    I don't necessarily think it is the role of certifying authorities to adivse on what farmers and gardeners should do to build healthy soils. There are many approaches. It is fair enough for them to operate by process of elimination.
    Jeff, have you done a PDC mate? Or read the Permaculture books? I don't mean this in an elitist way at all. YOu are welcome here without having done either, but I am curious to know where you are coming from too.
     

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