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Monsanto’s new GMO soybeans are making a hot mess for farmers

by DarrylWindham92 Posted on August 15, 2016

OMG

Monsanto’s new GMO soybeans are making a hot mess for farmers

By on Aug 15, 2016Share

You can see signs of Monsanto’s latest belly flop in stricken farms: The leaves are gone from the acres of peach trees on Bill Bader’s orchard in southern Missouri, and soy fields in eastern Arkansas and western Tennessee are curling up and dying.

A lot of the blame falls on Monsanto’s new genetically engineered soybean, Xtend, which is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad roll out this year.

To explain what’s happening we have to back up. Farmers have been using crops that tolerate the herbicide glyphosate (often sold under the brand name Roundup), and for years it worked amazingly well: Farmers sprayed glyphosate and the weeds died, while the crops thrived. But then some weeds stopped dying, because nature had caught up; the weeds evolved to tolerate glyphosate.

Seed companies have now released crops that can tolerate additional weed killers, like dicamba. U.S. Monsanto’s new soybean resists both dicamba and glyphosate, which works fine for farmers with the new soybean — not so much for anyone else.

Dicamba easily turns into vapor, so it can blow onto neighbors’ crops, which is exactly what happened to Bill Bader’s peach trees.

The EPA anticipated that this would happen, so it told farmers they had to use a new mixture of dicamba on Xtend — one that wouldn’t blow on the wind. But the EPA hasn’t yet approved that safer dicamba. So when unethical farmers started seeing weeds on their Xtend fields they decided to illicitly spray the conventional dicamba and cross their fingers.

If everyone followed the rules, the new GMOs wouldn’t have caused any problems. But there have always been unethical and careless people and dicamba has been around for decades, so there is something else going on.

The new element here is Monsanto’s Xtend. If the company — or the government — had delayed the rollout until its new herbicide was ready, it would have prevented a lot of heartache.

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Monsanto’s new GMO soybeans are making a hot mess for farmers

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A Tea Party conservative just lost to a Trump supporter, because farm subsidies

by Trina69W08377 Posted on August 3, 2016

subsidie another day

A Tea Party conservative just lost to a Trump supporter, because farm subsidies

By on Aug 3, 2016Share

A Tea Party leader in the House of Representatives just lost a primary bid for reelection — a sign that Republican voters may be fed up with Tea Party obstinance and are casting about for something new. Rep. Tim Huelskamp lost his Kansas primary by a huge margin to newcomer Roger Marshall.

The outgoing Huelskamp is an ideological conservative with a PhD in agricultural policy, and so he was against subsides whether they went to the poor or industry. He repeatedly voted against the Farm Bill even though his district is packed with farms. His obstinance so infuriated former House Speaker John Boehner that he kicked Huelskamp off the agriculture committee.

Marshall, on the other hand, is a Trump supporter who backs subsidies for farming and has earned endorsements from the agriculture lobby.

This fits with one theory of Trump-ism: The new wave of populist Republicans aren’t against all government payouts; just ones that go to people of a different culture or complexion. They’re fine with handouts — like ag subsidies — that go to their people.

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A Tea Party conservative just lost to a Trump supporter, because farm subsidies

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Democrats say they want to support farmers, but what the heck does that mean?

by MarquisMuirden Posted on July 26, 2016

Hard row

Democrats say they want to support farmers, but what the heck does that mean?

By on Jul 26, 2016Share

When the Democrats were drafting their platform earlier this month, Connecticut’s Gov. Dan Malloy asked if anyone would dare to vote against a statement describing farming as a cherished way of life.

“Is there anyone who’s going to be heard to take a position against farming?” Malloy asked. That got a good laugh. “At your peril,” Malloy joshed.

No surprise, the committee members voted unanimously to include the language.

And so Democrats released a platform for their convention this week that promises to “support the next generation of farmers and ranchers, with particular attention given to promoting environmentally sustainable agricultural practices.” The platform also vows “to protect and enhance family farms.” OK, sounds great, but how?

The platform says we should give more farm subsidies and more money to boost local food markets. But that’s not likely to be enough to counteract trends squeezing out farmers. It’s easy to be sentimental about preserving farms yet devilishly hard to find a palatable solution.

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Democrats say they want to support farmers, but what the heck does that mean?

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Advertising to kids isn’t good, it’s grrreat!

by Martha8879 Posted on July 6, 2016

Advertising to kids isn’t good, it’s grrreat!

By on Jul 6, 2016Share

Advertising works even when we know someone is trying to manipulate us into buying commemorative coins, banana slicers, and anything ever sold in an inflight magazine. And it works even better on kids, who may not understand they’re being pitched.

In perhaps the best proof yet that advertising has frightening power over children, researchers have shown that a little marketing can convince kids to eat their vegetables. A new study, out of Cornell, found that 239 percent more students chose salad in a lunchroom when the salad bar was covered with pictures of vegetable cartoon-characters and nearby TVs played videos with those same characters — you know Brian Broccoli, Suzy Sweetpea, and the rest of the Super Sprowtz — extolling the virtues of veggies.

“The results of this study highlight how the persuasiveness of marketing media can be leveraged in a positive way by encouraging children to make more nutritious choices,” said Drew Hanks, the study’s lead author and a professor at Ohio State University, in a statement.

Yes, it’s a bit creepy that advertisements — even good ones — can hack the minds of children, but the sooner we get over the idea that we always act rationally the better. Once we accept that our environments influence our actions we can use that knowledge to encourage the good influences and shut down the bad, like marketing junk food to toddlers.

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Advertising to kids isn’t good, it’s grrreat!

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Arnold Schwarzenegger is here to terminate your hamburger addiction

by MelissaHope Posted on June 28, 2016

Conan the Vegetarian

Arnold Schwarzenegger is here to terminate your hamburger addiction

By on Jun 28, 2016Share

A sweaty Arnold Schwarzenegger wanders across a barren wasteland before turning to the camera and jawing out the line, “Less meat, less heat… more life.”

This is a scene in the latest James Cameron flick, a public service announcement for the advocacy group WildAid and the Chinese Nutrition Society, aimed at linking meat eating to climate change. It’s meant to sway people to follow the country’s new dietary guidelines and eat less meat. So far there’s just a “behind the scenes” teaser, and it’s predictably over the top. Animal agriculture isn’t as big a producer of greenhouse gases as Cameron claims. He says it’s the second biggest, but you have to include all farming (plants plus animals) and forest clearance to make ag the second biggest emitter.

Cameron and Schwarzenegger are basically claiming that meat will destroy the world. It would be more accurate to say that, while meat-eating is carbon intensive, animal agriculture is also a key step in making a better world for many poor farmers and underfed kids. But who goes to a Cameron or Schwarzenegger film for nuance? If the flexing Governator can help convince affluent Chinese and rich people around the world that they don’t need meat to be strong, so much the better.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger is here to terminate your hamburger addiction

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Here come GMO labels!

by ElmoDonohoe Posted on June 24, 2016

GMO-it-all

Here come GMO labels!

By on Jun 23, 2016Share

I’m too high-minded to say “I told you so,” but after a lot of wrangling, the Senate struck a deal on Thursday that would lead to mandatory labels for genetically engineered ingredients across the United States. Just like I said it would.

It’s a compromise between Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Agriculture Committee that would make labeling of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, mandatory. But it would allow food makers to convey the information in a barcode or QR code, which you could see on your smartphone or on an in-store computer screen. And the compromise does not require the labeling of foods produced with gene-editing techniques. See more details here.

This deal cues up a full Senate vote, likely as soon as next week. After passing through the Senate, it would then have to be reconciled with similar bill that already passed the House, and get President Obama’s signature. If this bill becomes a law it would preempt a stricter GMO-labeling law in Vermont, which is scheduled to go into effect on July 1.

The whole thing is unfolding just as I predicted. Republicans compromised by making the labels mandatory, and Democrats compromised by allowing a scannable code rather than simply printing the words “contains GMOs” on packages. Here’s why scannable codes are perhaps a better idea than you might think.

It’s the only workable bargain and a pragmatic one. It will allow people who really care about avoiding GMOs to do it, without making it seem like that’s the key concern.

But let’s not stop here. If we are going to put a label on the front of the box, let’s say something about its greenhouse gas emissions or its effect on biodiversity — stuff that matters a lot more than GMOs. Maybe one day, consumers will learn more about those things when they scan QR codes.

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Here come GMO labels!

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Plants have an immune system, too. It’s called soil.

by HayleyBuilder Posted on June 17, 2016

good dirt

Plants have an immune system, too. It’s called soil.

By on Jun 17, 2016 3:54 pmShare

Organic agriculture has long focused on fortifying soils to provide a sort of immune system for crops. Rather than fighting diseases after they arrive, the thinking goes, make crops sturdy enough so they don’t get sick in the first place.

And it works: There’s evidence that the right soil makes for healthier plants — but we’ve never understood exactly how it works. Without some rudimentary understanding of the process, it’s impossible to separate useful techniques from mysticism and snake oil.

Science writer Carl Zimmer recently summed up in the New York Times what scientists have learned about soils that act like immune systems. It turns out that healthy plants love company. Soils swarming with microbes protect against disease because there’s just no room for pathogens to get a foothold. It’s called competitive inhibition.

Plants can also summon helpful soil microbes to launch counterattacks against specific pathogens. “Recent experiments have shown that when pathogens attack a plant, it responds by releasing chemicals into the soil that attract a number of microbial species,” Zimmer writes. “As those microbes gather around the plant, they release compounds that can kill the pathogen.”

These new insights are far from complete. What happens underground is fantastically complex. But scientists have already used their findings to test some practical means of encouraging good microbes on farms. The more researchers are able to show how this soil immune system works, the more farmers will embrace the idea.

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China just said what the U.S. never has: Eat less meat

by korystell193663 Posted on May 25, 2016

China just said what the U.S. never has: Eat less meat

By on May 25, 2016Share

Nobody in the United States paid much attention when the Chinese government released new dietary guidelines earlier this month. But hidden within them is a provision that could slash carbon emissions from livestock, according to the group Climate Nexus citing a forthcoming report from WildAid.

China is saying something simple and straightforward, something that the U.S. government has never been able to bring itself to say: Eat less meat.

If 1.3 billion Chinese people follow the guidelines and eat just 200 grams of meat and eggs a day — instead of increasing their meat consumption as expected — it would prevent a lot of greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere. And when we say “a lot” we mean on the order of 1.5 percent of global emissions. That’s like zeroing out Mexico’s carbon emissions every year.

The Chinese dietary guidelines don’t say anything about greenhouse gasses, only about health. The government issued them as part of a campaign against obesity. Even so, in a statement responding to the news, food and climate expert Jonathan Foley underlined the importance of dietary changes.

“Reducing our meat consumption — especially red meat — even a little bit can have profound impacts on the future of the planet,” Foley said.

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China just said what the U.S. never has: Eat less meat

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A bill to block GMO labeling fails key Senate vote

by TodWarfield Posted on March 16, 2016

A bill to block GMO labeling fails key Senate vote

By on 16 Mar 2016commentsShare

A bill that would have stopped states from mandating labels for genetically engineered food failed a key vote on Wednesday morning. The measure would have quashed local laws, including one about to take effect in Vermont, that require food companies to label packages with genetically modified ingredients.

The Senate’s rejection of the current bill doesn’t mean its dead. Senators are likely to resume negotiations on the bill after they return from a two-week break and vote on it again. A similar bill has already passed in the House, so the Senate’s approval would put it a short step away from becoming law.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) sponsored the bill and got broad support from his party. But Republicans needed the help of farm-state Democrats who wound up voting against it. Earlier this month I predicted that Roberts would need to compromise with Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) to get this passed. Her vote is particularly important, because she has been able to pull in reluctant Democrats to vote on bipartisan agriculture bills. But Roberts never compromised: The bill sailed through committee and straight to a Senate vote without any horse trading. And on Tuesday, after meeting with organic industry leaders, Sen. Stabenow said she was against the bill as it stood. She wants something that will provide eaters with more information than they currently get, but that wouldn’t stigmatize GMOs.

Another bill championed by Oregon farmer Jeff Merkley calls for mandatory labeling. These two bills represent the initial offer and counter offer in the Senate. Now the bargaining will begin in earnest. Before the vote, Roberts sounded like someone playing the long game. “We are working both sides of the aisle very hard and, if we are not successful in getting 60 [votes] … we will have to come back after the [Easter] break and get something done,” Roberts said on Tuesday, according to Politico.

Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) proposed an amendment that could serve as a compromise and draw in those 60 votes. His amendment would give food manufacturers a chance to propose their own method of labeling. If companies failed to come up with a transparent method in three years, then labeling would become mandatory. That kind of middle ground might sway farm-state Democrats to vote for the bill without alienating Republicans who seem dead set against a mandatory-labeling law.

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A bill to block GMO labeling fails key Senate vote

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