"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
Gordon Couger wrote:

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...

SNIP
Before we could control the sand it was fairly common practice to plant
66
foot wide strips of cotton, wheat, milo and alfalfa with the rows
perpendicular to the wind and work our rotations off that.

How well did that work? I suppose agriculture was work for a few
more people in those days.

A lot more. It worked very well.

By the time every one had 50 hp tractors the annual sand storms that turned
the sky black once or twice each spring had stopped by the late 50's or
early 60's. A sand storm in the early 80's was unique enough to make the
national geographic. I don't rember the year but I remember the day very
well. The winds were beteen 50 and 60 mph most of the day and the cotton and
corn land up and down the Great Plains and rolling plains that adjoin that
run north and south throung the US on the west side of the Rocky Mountians
were being worked up smooth incroating preplant heribcide.

Noraml methods of stopping sand from blowing wouldn't work that day. The
soil was too dry to turn up moist soil to stop it from blowing and much of
the soil was worked up too fine for that wind.

Post emegengence hericides let you have a much shorter window with the soil
in condition to blow and wash if you farm conventinaly. You can combine a
disk and planter and make a seed bed and plant in one operation. Corn has
Artazene that can be used post plant but the post plant and post emergence
cotton herbicides have uncretian results in dry conditions of Oklahoma and
Texas.

We progressed
beyond that in the 60's when 100 hp tractors came out.

The farming approach has been designed around the machinery with
some compromises made?

No till give use many of the things organic supporters claim such as
less
pesticide and it really does increase the organic matter in the soil.

When you say less pesticide you are going for more than no till. Or
did you mean less herbicide?

If you are going to the less pesticide option, then you pay the
extra cost you gave, in terms of lint and dollars. And it only works
for the intended boll worm. There are other pests still possible
which may cost. And you do not know which ones at the time you buy
the seed. Then the question to research is does the Bt gene
insertion silence any useful pest resistance or agronomic traits?
Your adviser will tell you to select seed with proven good
performance also. It is not just a matter of taking what is on
offer.

The boll worm or corn ear worm (same worm) is the limiting factor in
spraying cotton for any pest. Once you knock out your beificical insesects
you have to spray for bollworms every 4 to 7 days for the rest of the
season. With BT cotton we can control the other pest such as the boll weevil
that has shut down cotton growning in my area twice. We now have a spray
program that everyone prticaptes in except orgaic groweres that is sprayed
in the fall to kill the weevel befor they can over winter and once in the
spring to get the ones that did. Then we have traps out that are check
periodicly and any infestions sprayed with chemicals that hopefully don't
kill the benificicals or plowed up. The organic farmer has the choice of
spraying or plow under and reciveing a payment equal to the crop insurance
payment the convental famer does not have this payment.

If you are going just for the Roundup Ready then how will it do
under stress?

We can see no differnce under stress from drought. No till RR cotton
general does better in dry weather than conventional non RR cotton. We have
had only one good year of moisture since RR cotton came out. So the mosture
stress deal is crock.

Here are some things about how the resulting feed affects beasts so
it must be likely to have other differences:

Comparison of broiler performance when fed diets containing
grain from roundup ready (NK603), YieldGard x roundup ready
(MON810 x NK603), non-transgenic control, or commercial corn
Taylor ML, Hartnell GF, Riordan SG, Nemeth MA, Karunanandaa K,
George B, Astwood JD
POULTRY SCIENCE

82 (3): 443-453 MAR 2003

[...] Differences (P 0.05) were noted for
breast meat and fat pad weights across treatments.[...]



Soybean meal from Roundup Ready or conventional soybeans in
diets for growing-finishing swine
Cromwell GL, Lindemann MD, Randolph JH, Parker GR, Coffey RD,
Laurent KM, Armstrong CL, Mikel WB, Stanisiewski EP, Hartnell GF
JOURNAL OF ANIMAL SCIENCE

80 (3): 708-715 MAR 2002
[...] Longissimus muscle samples from barrows
fed conventional soybean meal tended (P = 0.06) to have less fat
than those fed Roundup Ready soybean meal, but water, protein,
and ash were similar.[...]


P=0.05 means there is 5% chance the result might be spurious given
the amount of data available.

Those are intersting studies but many more show no differces so they may be
that 1 in 20 that are invalid or there may be other things in the experment
to account for it like the lack of calcium in the diet of the bird used in
the DDT study to show that DDT caused thinning of egg shells. I am leary of
experments that suddenly show differnt results than experments just like
them done in the past.

Who knows if it is the extra Roundup or something else? Will it show
up in agronomic traits of cotton?


Hitler and Geobles would be proud of the why the people that have taken
over
the greens have used their methods to sway public opinion to support
practices that 180 degrees opposed to the claimed goals of the
organizations. The greens and others of their kind are responsible for
far
more deaths that Hitler and Stalin combined by derailing public health
efforts in the world. Malaria program are almost at a stand still.

Malaria mosquito resistance to DDT was what ceased its use. It may
be used for outbreaks if the resistance has faded.

The replent effect of DDT never failed and there is no inseticed you can use
in house that will last 6 to 8 months. The EU not buying products from
countries that use DDT is reaching way beyond thier bounds in interfering
with other countries public healt for populist reasons. DDT has never been
proved to be any harm to humans.

In the
first world as many as 50% of the children in some areas are not getting
their childhood vaccines all becuse so people with more time than good
sense

It is being found that too many vaccines given at the wrong time
increase diabetes. That is more of a problem than the diseases
intended to be resisted. vaccines.net.

have take up the cause of a bunch of archest that have hijacked a once
respectable movement and use it to promote their own ends.

Their imagined dangers that have no basis in science make as much sense
and
not having your kids vaccinated for tetanus, whooping cough, and measles

May be too much assault on the immune system all at once.

Bull shit.

when we have real dangers of insecticides, persistent herbicides and
water
erosion not only destroying our land but clogging our water ways with
silt
and nutrients that are killing our estuaries.

Farmers may still be using some organophosphates on Bt cotton.

In the mean time we have a ever-increasing number of hungry people to
feed
unless you would have use starvation as a population control measure.

There is plenty of food available, it is distribution that is a
problem - people cannot get work to pay for it.

And what about Africa?
snip
For almost every one in the business from the farmer to the boards of
the
multinational ag companies have farm roots. It's not a deal like Enron.
These people eat the food they sell and can only stay in business by
providing a product that their customer finds profitable. No farmer will
give all the profit to the seed company and the bank they will take the
what
that makes them the most money.

Yes, and it may be a loss leader they are sold for a few years. And
it may not be possible for the seed companies to keep bringing out
new lines as resistance develops. Resistance to Bt showed before GM
was very prevalent from trad farming. Now if several strains of Bt
resistance go into crops then Bt could be lost. There have not been
many generations to test it.

Why test it different than any other pesticide? Monsanto is bringing out the
second generation of RR and BT cotton next year. There are a lot of natural
BT proteins to work with and no one has tried adding man made stuff to them
yet. We have been able to stay ahead of most resistance problems in
agriculture if you deal with them in rotation instead of using all one
method. The refuge method seems to work very well both in theory and
practice.

You assume that farmers can't learn from past mistakes and have a model of
agribusiness as a greedy rapist. They are all in it for profit but not short
term profits. To make a profit every one has to make money on the deal and
it has to preserve the environment so it well still be there to make money
one a hundred years from now. Go try to buy stocks in Delta Pine, Pioneer,
or Dunavant cotton company and see what happens. I think that they are all
privately held companies. Most agri business is because it doesn't work very
well with the corporate model. The profits are too small and the time frame
to long to work that way.

Gordon