On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 15:39:30 +0200, Torsten Brinch
wrote:

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?

Nope. Who's he?

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?

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 14:25:11 GMT, "Moosh:]"
wrote:

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 15:39:30 +0200, Torsten Brinch
wrote:

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?

Nope. Who's he?

Never mind who he is. He used the same smiley, and knitted
like a madwoman, much like you do.

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?

On 27 Jul 2003 05:19:55 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

Jim Webster wrote:

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

"Oz" wrote in message

I suspect you may have a problem with jim's climate.

It's a rare month indeed when transpiration exceeds precipitation.

I wouldn't know what to do with that. I just want to get wells dug that
make
enough water that I don't care if it rains.

Jim just want's field drains and ditches that can take it away quickly..

--

yes, I have land that I will not take cattle on between October and March,
even though I can silage it in May.
I do find it fascinating reading when everyone is discussing the advantages
of no-till and struggling to retain soil moisture, round here ploughing is
used to dry the land out a bit. You plough and let the sun and wind take
away some of the moisture so you can get a tilth.

Funny old world

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.

The tree idea seems a good one, so long as Jim can keep his family
alive with it.

How is GM reducing biodiversity? Conventional breeding exploded
diversity early on, then refined it to those varieties that the
customer required. Where is the problem?

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 08:51:07 +0100, Oz
wrote:

Jim Webster writes

Some moron:
I am thinking that the surface area of roots in contact with soil is
greater than the area exposed to wind by ploughing.

Moron.
How do you grow a crop when the land is covered by trees?

Tree crop?

The moisture loss from green grass, trees and open water is similar.

Really? Not in Australia, but then we use trees for lowering water
table -- stopping salination.

The aim is to get a top layer dry enough to work/drill.

Well yes, on bare land, but not if you have a tree crop.

Then the leaves
contact the wind. Also the trees could be a crop.

Not in the UK. Typically the value of small (say 1000T) of standing
timber is approximately zero. Most places the highest value sale is for
firewood.

How about fruit, nuts?

You could plant several types of trees, each working better in slightly
different conditions.

Trees are not rates for moisture loss.

Best we have in Australia.

Diversity is much better against troubles.

Sometimes it is, sometimes not.

If all your crop comes in at top price, but you know about eggs in
baskets. The farmers who have survived here have been the ones who
diversify.

In jims case alternatives to grass are problematic.

Fair enough. it was just a suggestion that has probably been thought
of many times, and rejected.

You can
have the diversity within each farm, or else you use the govt to buffer
against loss as with BSE, or both.

Govt hates to pay farmers anything.
They paid for bse primarily for public health reasons.

Don't they pay you guys for NOT growing crops, like in the US and
Europe?

I hate to think who will bear the brunt
of troubles with the huge GM reduced diversity scheme.

Que?

My comment to a tee. Que? Si!

not in the UK, planting trees is a waste of time and is not economically
viable unless you have an awful lot of land.Plant trees here and you would
drive people off the land

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

Abolutely NO tree crop able to be considered?

On 27 Jul 2003 08:29:07 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

In sci.med.nutrition Oz wrote:
Jim Webster writes

Some moron:
I am thinking that the surface area of roots in contact with soil is
greater than the area exposed to wind by ploughing.

Moron.
How do you grow a crop when the land is covered by trees?
The moisture loss from green grass, trees and open water is similar.
The aim is to get a top layer dry enough to work/drill.

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

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.


Then the leaves
contact the wind. Also the trees could be a crop.

Not in the UK. Typically the value of small (say 1000T) of standing
timber is approximately zero. Most places the highest value sale is for
firewood.

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

Only if that is a cost effective way to do it. It might be better to
grow a paying crop and fertilise your soil another way.

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.

You could plant several types of trees, each working better in slightly
different conditions.

Trees are not rates for moisture loss.

Diversity is much better against troubles.

Sometimes it is, sometimes not.
In jims case alternatives to grass are problematic.

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?

You can
have the diversity within each farm, or else you use the govt to buffer
against loss as with BSE, or both.

Govt hates to pay farmers anything.
They paid for bse primarily for public health reasons.

Because the govt paid out the taxpayers should have say in how farming is
done.

I hate to think who will bear the brunt
of troubles with the huge GM reduced diversity scheme.

Que?

The GM genes are being put in a few more strains of crops, but the genetic
diversity is still low. These crops expend energy making the GM protein,
therefore have less viability.

Que?

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 14:20:22 +0000, Moosh:] wrote:

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

All sorts of cheap products have been sold in New Zealand - putting our
locals out of work.

Adapt or die.

Car plants have closed down, and now workers do not
have the money to buy houses which are getting bought by overseas people.

Cars is a big red herring. The only reason local product was cheaper was
massive taxation on imported completely built up vehicles.

It _may_ have been economic to export cars to Australia, but as soon as
this got proven the australians would have set up their own plants.

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.

This is happening everywhere, not just in NZ.


Remember the lesson of the buggy whip makers.

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 14:49:38 +0000, Moosh:] wrote:

The moisture loss from green grass, trees and open water is similar.

Really? Not in Australia, but then we use trees for lowering water table
-- stopping salination.

Eucalypts?

NZ has a tree called (IIRC) kahikatea. Juveniles only grow in swamps.

Adults are only found in dried out areas which were formerly swamps. This is not coincidence.

The only problem is they take several hundred years to do the job.

"Moosh:]" wrote in message
Not in the UK. Typically the value of small (say 1000T) of standing
timber is approximately zero. Most places the highest value sale is for
firewood.

How about fruit, nuts?

Barely viable for specialist producers, you have to have the right climate
(which we don't except for damsons) and cheap labour for picking


You could plant several types of trees, each working better in
slightly
different conditions.

Trees are not rates for moisture loss.

Best we have in Australia.

Diversity is much better against troubles.

Sometimes it is, sometimes not.

If all your crop comes in at top price, but you know about eggs in
baskets. The farmers who have survived here have been the ones who
diversify.

In jims case alternatives to grass are problematic.

Fair enough. it was just a suggestion that has probably been thought
of many times, and rejected.

You can
have the diversity within each farm, or else you use the govt to
buffer
against loss as with BSE, or both.

Govt hates to pay farmers anything.
They paid for bse primarily for public health reasons.

Don't they pay you guys for NOT growing crops, like in the US and
Europe?

I hate to think who will bear the brunt
of troubles with the huge GM reduced diversity scheme.

Que?

My comment to a tee. Que? Si!

not in the UK, planting trees is a waste of time and is not economically
viable unless you have an awful lot of land.Plant trees here and you
would
drive people off the land

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

Abolutely NO tree crop able to be considered?

not really,

firstly we haven't the room, only 150 acres
secondly the margin is too small on all of them, I cannot afford to sit and
wait 15- 20 years before I see any income at all.
thirdly the timber market in the UK is on the floor, fruit is imported from
countries with better weather and cheap labour

Jim Webster

"Uncle StoatWarbler" wrote in message
news
On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 14:20:22 +0000, Moosh:] wrote:

Remember the lesson of the buggy whip makers.

we cannot all diversify into sex toys :-)

Jim Webster

"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.

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.

The name is CougEr. Where I come from trees are an introduced weed. One
hundred fifty years ago when my great grandmother came to this country only
place there were trees was along creeks and rivers. The periodic grass fires
and tall grasses kept then shaded out and burned out.

Stopping erosion on conventional farm land relies on structures that keep
the water from falling over 2 feet in 100 feet. Maintaining a unbroken
network of roots and the shielding action of stubble and trash on the
surface greatly reduces the erodabilty of the soil. In place like the UK and
much of the rest of the high rainfall areas of the world were 2 inches of
rain an hour is a heavy rain erosion it not he concern that it is in the
arid and simi arid areas of the world where rain fall can reach 20 inches
per hour in short bursts.

Trees only protect the spot they are in. In one case I saw a fence row that
normally slows down water dig a hole 8 feet deep in a field when it created
a hydraulic jump one night it rained 7 inches in an hour. In that same rain
trees start gullies by channeling more water to the end of the tree row. We
did plant trees in the 30's to prevent wind erosion but a better mix of
crops and bigger machinery made those obsolete in the 60's when we stopped
having dust storms because we used better practices and could get across
land faster.

The tree rows have almost all be taken out because the sap water for 30 yard
out in the field.

As for trees preventing erosion when high creek banks are eroding in sandy
soil one of the things you do to stop it is cut down the trees that act a
levers to break away the saturated banks.

What works in your part of the world does not work every where and you don't
understand what works in your part of the world very well.

Gordon

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
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.

It works only in corn with out it and requires some a lot of persistent
herbicides.


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 tillage with 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.

That's the system we are replacing only we use more rotatotatins with
alfalfa than most organic farmers and modern chemicals.

[...]

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.

For about 75 yard and the sap the moisture for 30 yards. Strip tillage is
much
more effective. Trees are weeds on a farm in simi arid country.

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.

Just the opposite. There are many more beneficial insets since you don't
have to spray for worms. Try reading something besides green propaganda.

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.

Six out of ten of the top yielding cottons at the Rolling Plains Experiment
Station were GM cotton.

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.

I don't look at yield I look at profit. But in cotton BT increases yield.
Conventional herbicides also damage roots and set crops back.

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.

DDT is a mosquito replete as well and toxic to them. Houses only need to be
treated twice a year. It is still effective on mosquitoes. Until South
Africa went back to DDT they could not get a handle on their Malaria
problems
and in one year it was back under control.

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.

The green revolution worked in India and China but the do gooders got it
stopped before it could make it to Africa. Both India and China can feed
themselves. China managed to do it with out creating slums and at double the
yields of India. Even India produces more than its needs most years. If you
and your kind have their way Africa will continue to face famine the civil
strive caused by it.

Using western methods Rhodesia was a very productive agricultural country.
Going
back to the old ways they can't feed them selves.

I have no interest in their farms. If I was buying farm land I would look to
South America where the governments are pro agriculture. There is no way I
would go into Africa, India, Australia or New Zeeland and try to farm with
the
attitude the governments have there.

Actually I am better off if they stay the way they are. India in particular
is my biggest customer for cotton and BT cotton has the potential to double
their cotton production to 25,000,000 US bales making our 12,000,000 bales
even more of a drag on the market.

You knowledge of agriculture is underwhelming.

Gordon

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
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.
============
Those are weeds the cotton is real 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?

No it is conventional with resistatce to another heribcide that can be use
all season long.


Goodness, tremendous expanse with no wind break. Sun nearly directly
overhead.
=============
If it doesn't rain soon it the sun will cook it. It hasn't raned in 5 weeks
and it 110f every day.

That's nothing you shoud see the stuff in west Texas. Wind breaks use
moisture and with mositure the limiting factor you can't have trees close
enough togeter to do any good. The only place any one put them was where a
neighbor let their land blow on them.

We lost all the cotton there to a thunder sorm that beat 2 week old cotton
in the ground. We have poverty peas (soybeans) on it now.

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.

Half will go in to alfalfa in the fall and the weeds will be controlled with
round up and other chemical all summer. I don't know what he plans to do
with the other half.

Gordon

"Moosh:]" wrote in message
...
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.

The USDA does a very good job with food safety. Not as good as the guys in
OZ they seem to have it down right. The FDA has a good record as well. Many
think that they are too careful.

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!

To do that job they must provide safe product. A recall cuts deeply into
those profits and the loss of pubilc turst puts them out of business. I know
a substantial number of people in the food producion and seed prodution
business and every one is trying to make money by making the products that
the market wants. They don't risk their business by tying to make a few
cents intentionaly adultring their products. If they get caugt intentionaly
endangering the public the inspection system does not deal with them very
kindly.

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.

What about chages that improve the crops impact on the envionement. Less
erosion and less pesticide aren't those good for society as a whole. Cotton
account for 25% of the insecticde used it the the world. BT cotton can cut
that by 50 to 100% will the world not be a better place if we use 12 to 20%
less insceicide? Humans don't eat any protien from the cotton plant that
hasn't be run throug a cow first becuse it is natuarly toxic to simple
stomaced animal from cotton's own built in insecticide.

Gordon

Gordon

"Moosh:]" wrote in message
...
On 27 Jul 2003 05:19:55 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

Jim Webster wrote:

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

"Oz" wrote in message

I suspect you may have a problem with jim's climate.

It's a rare month indeed when transpiration exceeds precipitation.

I wouldn't know what to do with that. I just want to get wells dug
that
make
enough water that I don't care if it rains.

Jim just want's field drains and ditches that can take it away
quickly..

--

yes, I have land that I will not take cattle on between October and
March,
even though I can silage it in May.
I do find it fascinating reading when everyone is discussing the
advantages
of no-till and struggling to retain soil moisture, round here ploughing
is
used to dry the land out a bit. You plough and let the sun and wind
take
away some of the moisture so you can get a tilth.

Funny old world

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.

The tree idea seems a good one, so long as Jim can keep his family
alive with it.

How is GM reducing biodiversity? Conventional breeding exploded
diversity early on, then refined it to those varieties that the
customer required. Where is the problem?

If anything it increases biodiversity by being able to put the desirable
traits into more crops instead of switching to the one crop that has that
trait. For example the potato that was just found with resistant to the
blight that depopulated Ireland and still costs millions today can be put in
every cultivars instead of developing one resistant strain by conventional
methods.

Gordon

Gordon Couger wrote:

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...

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.
============
Those are weeds the cotton is real hard to see.

Are they Roundup-resistant?

The cotton is in rows, regularly spaced.

One or two plants are only half as high as the others, but I think that
that is happening on your `conventional' field, too.

As well as looking a bit less curly your non-GM plants are a darker green,
less yellow than the GM ones. How much of that is due to moisture storage
by the mulch, as opposed to some sort of residual effect of the Roundup
on the RR plants, or differences in film? I presume the film was the same.

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


What sort of cotton? GM?

No it is conventional with resistatce to another heribcide that can be use
all season long.

Interesting. Can it be no-till, then?



Goodness, tremendous expanse with no wind break. Sun nearly directly
overhead.
=============
If it doesn't rain soon it the sun will cook it. It hasn't raned in 5 weeks
and it 110f every day.

That's nothing you shoud see the stuff in west Texas. Wind breaks use
moisture and with mositure the limiting factor you can't have trees close
enough togeter to do any good.

That depends on any hot wind. A shelter belt or two can reduce wind
velocity right down for hundreds of meters, and so stop drying. Also their
roots go deeper and they bring up lower water which the cotton can't, and
they add it to the wind.

Besides some of the substances trees give out help moisture to condense
form the air, maybe even rain.

The only place any one put them was where a
neighbor let their land blow on them.

We lost all the cotton there to a thunder sorm that beat 2 week old cotton
in the ground. We have poverty peas (soybeans) on it now.

Then some trees, even if they stopped cotton growing in their immediate
vicinity, could still have been a productive crop, some insurance.


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.

Half will go in to alfalfa in the fall and the weeds will be controlled with
round up and other chemical all summer. I don't know what he plans to do
with the other half.

Is the alfalfa RR, or just naturally resistanct to Roundup?