Jim Webster wrote:

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...

If the soil is too fine - a clay - then water will not drain through it.

That is why we have field drains, some of them over a thousand years old.

Goodness. Must have still been a few forests in Britain back then.

If it is too fine a clay the water will just pool on the surface.


If the soil is such that the water will drain through it, it may still be
stopped by excess water at lower levels. Tree roots go a bit deeper and
pump out the lower water, and lower nutrients.

You don't sell all the `crops' you plant. Some are like lupin to
nitrogenate the soil.

What I am talking about is `agroforestry'. On a small dairy farm you would
not have a huge tonnage of trees, they would be widely spaced, and where
they pumped out water it would make space for adjoining water to move.

Except that the trees are pretty well worthless in the UK.

Only on the economic system which subsidises cattle and requires
quick pay-back.


If you are gearing a farm up to sell having some specialist timber on it
might help to sell the farm. How about some spruce, pine or maple for
violin making? I don't know but maybe the growing rates would favour the
type of density of timber? I may be way off. But if you are far enough
from population can you burn your own timber for hot water &C?

total waste of time in UK, none of those trees will pay for the grass lost
in the area they stand.

Yes, the coniferous trees kill grass. Here we have a herbicide made
from pine oil.

I suppose the need for sun-shade is not great in Britain. But there
must be a need for wind shelter. A couple of belts of macrocarpas
spaced 100 yards or so will reduce prevaling wind velocity by a
large percentage for several hundred more yards.

Absolutely. I doubt they would grow very well given your location
anyway. If the wind didn't get them, the salt would.

In New Zealand we grow macrocarpa near the sea. That is a useful timber.
The roots can be long and not too deep. A shelter belt of a few rows
produces many single stemmed trees. If they are standing alone you might
need to prune them.

And this is relevant to lowland Cumbria exactly how? We have a crop that is
pretty well worthless in the UK and you expect me to prune it!

I think we need some evidence that macrocarpa is worthless. It is
good firewood, but also good for boat building and furniture.

Gordon Couger wrote:

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...

What are various types of trees like at extracting water from the ground?

I suppose evergreens keep the sun off the land, but they might shelter
animals from wind.

I am thinking that the surface area of roots in contact with soil is
greater than the area exposed to wind by ploughing. Then the leaves
contact the wind. Also the trees could be a crop.

You could plant several types of trees, each working better in slightly
different conditions. Diversity is much better against troubles. You can
have the diversity within each farm, or else you use the govt to buffer
against loss as with BSE, or both. I hate to think who will bear the brunt
of troubles with the huge GM reduced diversity scheme.

Trees in crop and pasture land are weeds. blocking sun and using water that
grass or crops can use.

Jim has too much water.

Yes, they will block sun, and that can be useful for animals.

Choose trees whose roots go down a bit and they will bring up water which
your `crops' cannot use, as well as trace elements. Then the sun block for
a period of the day can reduce the need of your other crop for
water. Or in Britain where there is not much sunburn of animals
eating toxic substances from umbelliferae, they will be wind
shelter.

GM crops increase the biodiversity by increasing the invertebrates,
microbes, birds and other animals that are not disturbed by repeated
tillage
and toxic sprays.

`No-till' is not only GM.


In my case they reduced my costs for cotton production as a land
lord 50% and the farmers 15%, reduced the chance of wind and water
erosion and let the soil build organic matter at the rate of 1% a
year. www.couger.com/farm

Temporarily Down (for how long?)

shows the different in notil cotton and
conventional till. In this case the notil is my neighbors and
conventional till is mine on an alfalfa hay meadow that is coming
out of hay and into cotton. the other 3/4 of the farm is no till.

What you are calling `no-till' is killing weeds with Roundup on
Roundup-Ready GM crops.

But

URL:
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/organiccrop/tools5.html
size: 142 lines

[...] Conservation Tillage & Organic Farming

Organic agriculture is often characterized as addicted to
maximum tillagewith growers using every opportunity to lay the
land bare with shovel, plow, or rototiller. This image has been
magnified through the popularity of small-scale organic systems
like the French Intensive and Biointensive Mini Farming models
that espouse double and triple-digging to create deep rooting
beds for highly intensive crop culture. While appropriate to
such intensive circumstances, this degree of cultivation is not
characteristic of organic agriculture in general. It may
surprise some to learn that a large number of organic producers
are not only interested in conservation tillage, but have
adopted it. They will be surprised because it is widely believed
that conservation tillage always requires herbicides.

The interest in conservation tillage among organic producers in
the Cornbelt was well documented in the mid-1970s by Washington
University researchers. They noted that the vast majority of
organic farmers participating in their studies had abandoned the
moldboard plow for chisel plows. Plowing with a chisel implement
is a form of mulch tillage, in which residues are mixed in the
upper layers of the soil and a significant percentage remains on
the soil surface to reduce erosion. Furthermore, a notable
number of organic farmers had gone further to adopt
ridge-tillagea system with even greater potential to reduce
erosion (3). It was especially interesting to note that the use
of these conservation technologies was almost nil among
neighboring conventional farms at this time. Organic growers
were actually pioneers of conservation tillage in their
communities.

Among the more well-known of these pioneers were Dick and Sharon
Thompson of Boone, Iowa. Their experiences with ridge-tillage
and sustainable agriculture became the focus of a series of
publications titled Nature's Ag School. These were published by
the Regenerative Agriculture Associationthe forerunner to the
Rodale Institute. They are now, unfortunately, out of print.

Research continues to open up new possibilities in conservation
tillage for organic farms. New strategies for mechanically
killing winter cover crops and planting or transplanting into
the residue without tillage are being explored by a number of
USDA, land-grant, and farmer researchers. Notable among these is
the work being done by Abdul-Baki and Teasdale at the USDA in
Beltsville, Marylandtransplanting tomato and broccoli crops into
mechanically killed hairy vetch and forage soybeans (27, 28).
There are also the well-publicized efforts of Pennsylvania
farmer Steve Groff, whose no-till system centers on the use of a
rolling stalk chopper to kill cover crops prior to planting
(29). Systems like Groff's and Abdul-Baki's are of particular
interest because close to 100% of crop residue remains on the
soil surfaceproviding all the soil conservation and cultural
benefits of a thick organic mulch.

[...]

Like most of the detractors of modern framing you have no practical
experience faming. I have been at this 46 years and watch crops lost to
blowing sand when there was noting that could be done about it,


Trees would have been an insurace policy ereducing wind velocity.

seen the ditches run a mile with and florescent yellow with
preplant herbicide that was striped from the fields along with 2
or 3 inches of soil in 6 inches of rain that came in and hour. I
have seen a rise come down Red River killing every fish in the
river from one of those same driving rains falling on freshly
sprayed irrigated cotton files and washing the insecticide into the
river and killing fish for 20 miles. I had a neighbor that was
never quite well again after spraying Toxiphene and berating too
much of it.


And insects have been increasing since GM crops have been here, I
think. Maybe the required refuges against resistance development are
producing more.

More pesticides will be required.

I know the real risks of the way you want us to farm and the much
safer and more environmentally friendly way I can farm with GM
crops. I am spending hard money and lots of on irrigation and my
part of the tech fee on the seed. It is some of the best money I
ever spent.

Your yield will be lower, except maybe for large farms growing Bt
cotton, in years when the susceptible insects are infesting.

Go make a living farming with your method and come back and I will
give your views some credit.

Very hard in North America now, since you have to pay the Monsanto
tech fee also, since their GM has polluted everything.

But all you do is spout the same
tired dogma of the ludilits that are starving people to death in
India and Africa.

GM has a lower yield for food crops. The energy of the plant goes to
producing the RR protein.

Dream about them tonight. I have done every
thing I can to provide food for the world

It only takes 1% of us to feed the world these days. That is a
problem with dumping of food into Africa, taking away the income
they used to have selling food, and causing starvation.

while ass holes like you
try to protect what every you think you are protecting and condemn
the third world to death and disease by things like not buying
produce from countries the use DDT in spite of the fact that its
use in homes will go a long way to controlling malaria out breaks.

DDT was used so much, as we have already read on this thread. It
became non-effective. Yes it can be used for some outbreaks, but
that is all.


May the ghosts of the millions that have died and will die haunt
you for your disregard of the world situation that has cause the
break down in the fight against disease in the third world and now
you want to deny them the benefits of modern agriculture as well.


They have already been introduced to modern agriculture with the
cash crops. Then when wwe paid them too little some of them went to
producing food for their own communities. We quickly jumped on this
with dumping, They lost their farms and livelihoods and went to the
city slums to beg abd scavenge the trash heaps.

I know your lot want to buy their farms up cheap.

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
Jim Webster wrote:

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...

If the soil is too fine - a clay - then water will not drain through
it.

That is why we have field drains, some of them over a thousand years
old.

Goodness. Must have still been a few forests in Britain back then.

Not especially, remember much of Britain was cleared about 3000 years ago,
was naturally reforested, and was cleared again. You can find ard marks
under ancient forest.


If it is too fine a clay the water will just pool on the surface.

Which is one reason why we plough to dry the land out.


If the soil is such that the water will drain through it, it may still
be
stopped by excess water at lower levels. Tree roots go a bit deeper and
pump out the lower water, and lower nutrients.

You don't sell all the `crops' you plant. Some are like lupin to
nitrogenate the soil.

What I am talking about is `agroforestry'. On a small dairy farm you
would
not have a huge tonnage of trees, they would be widely spaced, and
where
they pumped out water it would make space for adjoining water to move.

Except that the trees are pretty well worthless in the UK.

Only on the economic system which subsidises cattle and requires
quick pay-back.

No, on an economic system which expects me to feed my family for the 25
years while we wait to fell the trees. If expecting to be paid in less than
a generation is wanting quick payback, then I plead guilty.



If you are gearing a farm up to sell having some specialist timber on
it
might help to sell the farm. How about some spruce, pine or maple for
violin making? I don't know but maybe the growing rates would favour
the
type of density of timber? I may be way off. But if you are far enough
from population can you burn your own timber for hot water &C?

total waste of time in UK, none of those trees will pay for the grass
lost
in the area they stand.

Yes, the coniferous trees kill grass. Here we have a herbicide made
from pine oil.

I'm talking about the area the trunk takes up, never mind any further losses


I suppose the need for sun-shade is not great in Britain. But there
must be a need for wind shelter. A couple of belts of macrocarpas
spaced 100 yards or so will reduce prevaling wind velocity by a
large percentage for several hundred more yards.

We have hedges and undulating ground. Also we have grassland. In the NW of
England most shelterbelts are planted for hill sheep to shelter in,
especially over winter.


Absolutely. I doubt they would grow very well given your location
anyway. If the wind didn't get them, the salt would.

In New Zealand we grow macrocarpa near the sea. That is a useful
timber.
The roots can be long and not too deep. A shelter belt of a few rows
produces many single stemmed trees. If they are standing alone you
might
need to prune them.

And this is relevant to lowland Cumbria exactly how? We have a crop that
is
pretty well worthless in the UK and you expect me to prune it!

I think we need some evidence that macrocarpa is worthless.

You are perhaps an expert in the UK timber market?

It is
good firewood, but also good for boat building and furniture.

Except that round here firewood is uneconomic due to a combination of
smokeless zones, and cheap waste timber from softwood plantations. Planting
for other uses is uneconomic unless you have hundreds of acres to go at and
can budget over 60 to 120 years.

Jim Webster

Jim Webster writes

Planting
for other uses is uneconomic unless you have hundreds of acres to go at and
can budget over 60 to 120 years.

I was chatting to a casual worker who worked for Blenheim Park sawmills,
yes THAT blenheim park (Churchill etc) with a thousand+ ac of woodland.

He was made redundant because they couldn't compete with imported timber
and now use imported timber for their sawmill.

Much of the woodland was beech, the rest pines.

So if they can't compete, with their own sawmill, how do you think
farmers elsewhere can compete?

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.
Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted.

Oz wrote:
Jim Webster writes

Planting
for other uses is uneconomic unless you have hundreds of acres to go at and
can budget over 60 to 120 years.

I was chatting to a casual worker who worked for Blenheim Park sawmills,
yes THAT blenheim park (Churchill etc) with a thousand+ ac of woodland.

He was made redundant because they couldn't compete with imported timber
and now use imported timber for their sawmill.

Rather like dumping food in Africa.

All sorts of cheap products have been sold in New Zealand - putting our
locals out of work. Car plants have closed down, and now workers do not
have the money to buy houses which are getting bought by overseas people.
We have some cheap imported goods, but food is dearer in the main, and now
both Mum and Dad have to work to support the family, so there is less time
for fun.

Don't suck up to that system.

Much of the woodland was beech, the rest pines.

So if they can't compete, with their own sawmill, how do you think
farmers elsewhere can compete?

Only by getting some research into what specialty timbers can be grown in
the climate, and collect a good price.

Violins need fairly slow growing timber, fine grain and I don't know what
the extra water about would do. The economics of violin making is quite
interesting. Timber had to be seasoned in a dark room for 25 years my
music teacher, who also had learnt violin making in Czeckoslovakia, told
me. So you would have to be getting enough ready for your successor. As
Jim has explained `modern' economics has trouble with such a concept.

I haven't been on a tramp in the New Zealand bush walks since the 60s. But
then you would tramp for half a day or more from one little hut to the
next. You would arrive tired and wet maybe at the unattended little hut,
and start a fire with the dry wood collected by the previous visitors.
Then before leaving you would collect wood for the next trampers. You did
not have to pay to use the huts. I don't know if people can co-operate
like that these days, but in many areas they can't can they?

Now I fear that the plant stock and agriculture we have inherited is
not being replenished by us for the next comers. They will be cursing
trying to collect the equivalent in the analogy of wet wood to light their
fire.

OK farms where Jim is have hedges. Tell me, do they soak up a bit of water
and stop the fast run-off somehwat? Lots of places in the world have
flooding problems and erosion following removal of trees higher up in the
catchment. Gordon Cougar please take note.

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 06:19:11 +0100, Oz
wrote:

Moosh:] writes
On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 16:12:10 +0100, Oz
wrote:

Moosh:] writes

How could you dry out a crop by applying an aqueous solution?
Oh, I see, they killed a crop with the herbicide making it look dry?
That's illegal, for use on a food crop.

Actually no. Dessicants are not that unusual in european agriculture
(and probably american as well). It's quite often used for EU canola,
and sometimes other crops, particularly where weed control has been, er,
less than perfect.

This has been going on for decades.

Yes, I follow, but would you use Roundup for this?

Absolutely, the product of choice due to it's safety.

What chemicals are used for dessicants? Curious.

Diquat pre roundup, and still preferred if a fast kill is required.

The approvals tend to be crop specific.

Thanks. I was expecting "dessicants" rather than herbicides, but I see
what is meant.

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:48:48 -0600, "Dean Ronn" @home wrote:


"Moosh:]" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 16:12:10 +0100, Oz
wrote:

Moosh:] writes

How could you dry out a crop by applying an aqueous solution?
Oh, I see, they killed a crop with the herbicide making it look dry?
That's illegal, for use on a food crop.

Actually no. Dessicants are not that unusual in european agriculture
(and probably american as well). It's quite often used for EU canola,
and sometimes other crops, particularly where weed control has been, er,
less than perfect.

This has been going on for decades.

Yes, I follow, but would you use Roundup for this?
What chemicals are used for dessicants? Curious.


Reglone, for one. Round-Up has a duel use here in the fall. It can be used
as a slower acting dessicant, but usually is used in a pre-harvest treatment
to control such weeds as Canada thistle and dandelion.
By the way, where did you get the information that this practice was
illegal???????????

I just assumed that there was a witholding period for food crops. I
know glyphosate is next to harmless, but guessed the regulator would
have erred on the side of caution, and disallowed appliction just
before harvest. Apparently I was wrong, sorry.

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 11:06:02 +0200, Torsten Brinch
wrote:

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 04:02:44 GMT, "Moosh:]"
wrote:
On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:06:14 +0200, Torsten Brinch
wrote:
On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 14:51:19 GMT, "Moosh:]"
wrote:
.. I've looked up the reference given and stand by my claim.
"Rapidly" is perhaps a misleading word.

Point is, you claim it breaks down rapidly in plants,
while referencing that information to a source which
says in some plants it remains bloody intact.

"Bloodywell intact", Torsten, try to be grammatical

Hello? There is inconsistency between your claim and
the source to which you reference it. Deal with it.

See below. Oh, and see the smiley. Are you a Fin?

It is not regarded as
persistent in significant plants. From memory, corn was
amongst these.

Well, what can one say.

That it doesn't hang about long in significant food plants. IIRC.
Even if it does, so what? Over the years I've ferretted out scores of
references and always come to a dead end as far as any harm goes.
Can you mention any harm from glyphosate?

Brian Sandle wrote:
Gordon Couger wrote:

In my case they reduced my costs for cotton production as a land
lord 50% and the farmers 15%, reduced the chance of wind and water
erosion and let the soil build organic matter at the rate of 1% a
year. www.couger.com/farm

Temporarily Down (for how long?)

Oh sorry, I did wrong spelling.


shows the different in notil cotton and
conventional till. In this case the notil is my neighbors


What are the other plants in the no-till? Roundup-resistant?

And the plants look a bit more curly than yours, though it's hard to
see.

and
conventional till is mine on an alfalfa hay meadow that is coming
out of hay and into cotton.


What sort of cotton? GM?


Goodness, tremendous expanse with no wind break. Sun nearly directly
overhead.

the other 3/4 of the farm is no till.

What you are calling `no-till' is killing weeds with Roundup on
Roundup-Ready GM crops.

On 25 Jul 2003 11:48:19 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

In sci.med.nutrition Moosh:] wrote:
On 24 Jul 2003 22:54:10 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:
I don't think randomity explains what goes on.

Well it can, so why look for fairies at the bottom of the garden?
Think of Ockham's razor.

You are behind, as I explained last article.

No, I'm not behind the fairy stories

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 12:59:36 GMT, "Moosh:]"
wrote:

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 11:06:02 +0200, Torsten Brinch
wrote:

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 04:02:44 GMT, "Moosh:]"
wrote:
On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:06:14 +0200, Torsten Brinch
wrote:
On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 14:51:19 GMT, "Moosh:]"
wrote:
.. I've looked up the reference given and stand by my claim.
"Rapidly" is perhaps a misleading word.

Point is, you claim it breaks down rapidly in plants,
while referencing that information to a source which
says in some plants it remains bloody intact.

"Bloodywell intact", Torsten, try to be grammatical

Hello? There is inconsistency between your claim and
the source to which you reference it. Deal with it.

See below. Oh, and see the smiley. Are you a Fin?

John Riley, is that you?

It is not regarded as
persistent in significant plants. From memory, corn was
amongst these.

Well, what can one say.

That it doesn't hang about long in significant food plants. IIRC.
Even if it does, so what? Over the years I've ferretted out scores of
references and always come to a dead end as far as any harm goes.
Can you mention any harm from glyphosate?

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
Oz wrote:
Jim Webster writes

Planting
for other uses is uneconomic unless you have hundreds of acres to go at
and
can budget over 60 to 120 years.

I was chatting to a casual worker who worked for Blenheim Park sawmills,
yes THAT blenheim park (Churchill etc) with a thousand+ ac of woodland.

He was made redundant because they couldn't compete with imported timber
and now use imported timber for their sawmill.

Rather like dumping food in Africa.

No, not at all like dumping food on agriculture. It is just cheaper to
produce timber in certain places.


All sorts of cheap products have been sold in New Zealand - putting our
locals out of work. Car plants have closed down, and now workers do not
have the money to buy houses which are getting bought by overseas people.
We have some cheap imported goods, but food is dearer in the main, and now
both Mum and Dad have to work to support the family, so there is less time
for fun.

Don't suck up to that system.

Much of the woodland was beech, the rest pines.

So if they can't compete, with their own sawmill, how do you think
farmers elsewhere can compete?

Only by getting some research into what specialty timbers can be grown in
the climate, and collect a good price.

Oh goodie, let us wait 300 years for oak to mature


Violins need fairly slow growing timber, fine grain and I don't know what
the extra water about would do. The economics of violin making is quite
interesting. Timber had to be seasoned in a dark room for 25 years my
music teacher, who also had learnt violin making in Czeckoslovakia, told
me. So you would have to be getting enough ready for your successor.

Great, and what do I eat today?

As
Jim has explained `modern' economics has trouble with such a concept.

All economics has a problem with buy now, pay in 150 years time.

OK farms where Jim is have hedges. Tell me, do they soak up a bit of water
and stop the fast run-off somehwat?

Not especially, but in the UK we have few problems with soil erosion
compared to other parts of the world. Main use of hedges is barriers for
livestock


Lots of places in the world have
flooding problems and erosion following removal of trees higher up in the
catchment. Gordon Cougar please take note.

I hardly think this is a problem in the Mid west. I suggest you stop using
pat answers which might be relevant in the Himalayas in plains areas

Jim Webster

On 25 Jul 2003 15:01:43 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

In sci.med.nutrition Moosh:] wrote:
On 22 Jul 2003 07:08:06 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:
[...]
It always amazes me how Organic folk can accept a GE "chemical" as OK
for their needs.

Bt is a natural soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, which happens to
be toxic to butterfly and moth larvae. It is not a GE "chemical", though
the genes producing the Bt toxins have been engineered into GE crops.

I suggest you bring yourself up to date. BT is the freeze dried
protein (chemical) that is produced by the bacterium you mentioned. It
is a stomach poison to caterpillars and some other insects. Some
strains of it are produced by genetic engineering.

Yes, I suppose it would be extracted from GM crops.

No, GM bacteria, I believe.

Or is it produced by
some GM bacterium?

Yes.

The Organic folk would not accept it if it were
properly labelled as GM.

I suspect they are so desperate for permitted pesticides, that they
don't want to know

They would use the non-GM sort.

Then they may be restricted from the various BTs that target different
insects. Not sure which are GM, but there are BT chemicals for
mosquitoes and so on.

All you have to
be amazed about is the labelling issue.

No, the hypocrisy of Organic growers trying to bend their rather silly
rules to accept what they need. Ferinstance, there are many safe
fungicides, but organic folk only permit the toxic and very persistant
heavy metal, mined, copper salts. Go figure.

Desperation? Anyways, Bt has been so overused that it
only has a limited useful life.

Now that it is present perpetually, whether really needed or not, you are
right.

Well it is that by use of the protein powder by agriculture and the
home gardener.

No, because when GE'd into a crop it is present all the time, though
gradually fading in strenght as the crop matures.

But it is present whenever the caterpillars are present in the garden
or crop. When there is no plant predatiojn, there is no resistance
occurring.

When home gardners use it, or non-GM soy farmers &c, it is only present as
needed, then disappears.

And why does it matter if it's there or not, if the pests aren't
predating the crop?

New specific pesticides will be
developed.

Which we do not know the problems with.

Same problems as with BT. Have you heard of testing?
Happens all the time.

So the Bt crop suppliers, who are ruining it, should be paying for the
research for something new organic.

They are, all the time. They developed BT, so why shouldn't they use
it, and develop further selective pesticides. BTW, who says they are
ruining anything?

And the produce will probably not
sell as well as when the organic Bt stuff was used occasionally.

Only because the public has been hoodwinked into believing that
Organic is somehow better.

It is.

No evidence that it is.

Why buy corn with Bt protein in it?

To get a pest free crop, without having to spray, thus saving much
fossil fuel needed in applying the sprays a number of times.

Why buy paste made from tomato which keeps longer, but with no guarantee
about the nutritional qualities lasting in proportion?

Huh? Tomato past is hardly a staple. It's a flavouring or a spice IME.
Does it matter if a bit of any nutrient in it disappears?

On 25 Jul 2003 09:48:22 -0700, (Hua Kul) wrote:

"Gordon Couger" wrote in message ...
"Oz" wrote in message
...
Hua Kul writes

Another naif who seems to believe that governments and their
regulations will save us. It was a British government regulation
requiring cattle to be heavily dosed with organophosphate pesticides
which may have triggered the BSE outbreak. See Mark Purdy's research.

Had organophosphates caused it or fairies dancing ainti clockwise on the
dark of a blue moon BSE is still no more than a fart in a hurricane in the
problems of world health.

Gordon

You missed my point, which was that government actions (regarding
*anything*, and no matter how well intentioned) can't be relied upon
to protect us from much of anything, as you seemed to imply by your
vague "testing" post.

Elect a proper government, and it is the only thing that will protect
you. The public are incapable of knowing the full story, the
corporations are doing their job making money for their shareholders.
An elected, effective regulator is the only thing left.

You still haven't addressed my larger point, posted in response to
your challenge, that the pharmaceutical industries are intent upon
using elements of our food production systems not to improve the food
but to contaminate it for the purpose of increasing their profits,

Their sole job in life!

and
the demonstrated danger in that being the total contamination of an
entire crop globally, as is happening with Monsanto's Starlink GM
corn.

If you don't like what they do, get your regulator to change its
legislation. QED.

To me that one example is enough to totally prohibit any GM
changes, with the possibe exception of those changes that actually
improve the nutrition, safety, or yield of the crop.

Then get all your like-minded citizens together and approach your
legislators.

On 27 Jul 2003 12:32:49 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

Oz wrote:
Jim Webster writes

Planting
for other uses is uneconomic unless you have hundreds of acres to go at and
can budget over 60 to 120 years.

I was chatting to a casual worker who worked for Blenheim Park sawmills,
yes THAT blenheim park (Churchill etc) with a thousand+ ac of woodland.

He was made redundant because they couldn't compete with imported timber
and now use imported timber for their sawmill.

Rather like dumping food in Africa.

All sorts of cheap products have been sold in New Zealand - putting our
locals out of work. Car plants have closed down, and now workers do not
have the money to buy houses which are getting bought by overseas people.
We have some cheap imported goods, but food is dearer in the main, and now
both Mum and Dad have to work to support the family, so there is less time
for fun.

Don't suck up to that system.

Much of the woodland was beech, the rest pines.

So if they can't compete, with their own sawmill, how do you think
farmers elsewhere can compete?

Only by getting some research into what specialty timbers can be grown in
the climate, and collect a good price.

Violins need fairly slow growing timber, fine grain and I don't know what
the extra water about would do. The economics of violin making is quite
interesting. Timber had to be seasoned in a dark room for 25 years my
music teacher, who also had learnt violin making in Czeckoslovakia, told
me. So you would have to be getting enough ready for your successor. As
Jim has explained `modern' economics has trouble with such a concept.

I haven't been on a tramp in the New Zealand bush walks since the 60s. But
then you would tramp for half a day or more from one little hut to the
next. You would arrive tired and wet maybe at the unattended little hut,
and start a fire with the dry wood collected by the previous visitors.
Then before leaving you would collect wood for the next trampers. You did
not have to pay to use the huts. I don't know if people can co-operate
like that these days, but in many areas they can't can they?

Now I fear that the plant stock and agriculture we have inherited is
not being replenished by us for the next comers. They will be cursing
trying to collect the equivalent in the analogy of wet wood to light their
fire.

OK farms where Jim is have hedges. Tell me, do they soak up a bit of water
and stop the fast run-off somehwat? Lots of places in the world have
flooding problems and erosion following removal of trees higher up in the
catchment. Gordon Cougar please take note.

One of the problems is that trees (hedges) don't suck up much water
when the Sun doesn't shine for weeks, it is cold as charity, and the
humidity is 99%.