Many people think it takes fire to make longleaf produce seeds. These pictured seedlings came from a tree that hasn’t had fire near it for more than ten years. So why so many seedlings this year? Continue reading
Low commodity soybean prices, attractive premiums, and rising prices for genetically modified soybean seed are leading American farmers to plant more acres of non-GMO soybeans this year.It seems Monsanto may be pricing itself out of its own market:Representatives with soybean associations, universities, and grain buyers all say that demand for non-GMO soybeans is growing, leading to more non-GMO acres.
Besides the higher non-GMO premiums, there are other reasons for the increasing acreage of non-GMO this year. One is lower cost. “The Roundup Ready system is not as cheap as it used to be,” Shannon says.And organic demand is having an effect:The cost for Monsanto’s Roundup Ready GM soybean seeds has increased from $35 to $50 per bag while the cost for Roundup herbicide has increased from $15 to $50 per gallon. “A lot of farmers are upset with Monsanto,” Shannon says.
The organic food industry is also spurring demand for non-GMO soybeans, says Craig Tomera, production agronomist/crop production manager at Northland Organic Foods. “Organic food companies are switching to non-GMO soybeans until prices for organics drop and the economy improves.”All that and mutant pigweed that Roundup doesn’t kill. So without even considering externalities (such as mutated frogs and human birth defects), it may be becoming less cost-effective for farmers to buy Monsanto. So sad.
This one has a branch already.
Picture by Gretchen Quarterman, 7 Feb 2010, Lowndes County, Georgia.
It’s best to watch this as a slideshow.
Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman’s wildlife camera, 22 Feb 2008, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Picture by Gretchen Quarterman, 8 Feb 2010, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman, 27 Jan 2010, Lowndes County, Georgia.
The hardest part of what Jamie Oliver wants to
do to fix how we eat is to reform school food.
Fortunately, there’s somebody already doing it:
Ann Cooper already showed us how she does that three years ago:
Well, the CDC has gone further to say that those children born in the year 2000 could be the first generation in our country’s history to die at a younger age than their parents, and it’s because of what we feed them.And who teaches us to feed them that?
Big companies spent twenty billion dollars a year marketing non-nutrient foods to kids…. They spent 500 dollars marketing foods kids shouldn’t eat for every one dollar marketing healthy nutritious food.She feeds school children in Berkeley. You might think that would be easy, but when she started, it was just as bad as anywhere else:
…extremo burritos, corn dogs, pizza pockets, grilled cheese sandwiches, everything came in plastic, in cardboard, the only kitchen tools my staff had was a box cutter; the only working piece of equipment a can crusher.So she set out to fix it, and did. And if she can, we can.
Jamie Oliver is a cook from England.
He’s trying to organize an intervention into the food system that’s killing us.
We spend our lives being paranoid about death, murder, homicide, you name it, it’s on the front page of every paper, CNN…. Look at homicide at the bottom, for God’s sake!The top three are heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Number 6 is diabetes. Those are the ones in red on Jamie Oliver’s graph. Homicide is number 15. See CDC for numbers. ( In 2006 72,449 people died of diabetes and 18,573 of homicide. You’re almost 4 times as likely to die of diabetes. And about 40 times more likely to die of heart disease.)Every single one of those ones in the red is a diet-related disease. Any doctor, any specialist, will tell you that.
I want to show a picture of my friend Brittney. She’s sixteen years old. She’s got six years to live. Because of the food that she’s eaten. She’s the third generation of Americans that hasn’t grown up within a food environment where they’ve been taught to cook at home or in school. Or her mum. Or her mum’s mum. She has six years to live!More pictures of people with very round faces and rounder bodies:
This is a normal family, guys!.We need to change normal. That’s what Jamie Oliver wants to do.
Obesity leads to diabetes and heart disease. And what leads to obesity? Lack of exercise combined with food stuffed with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), salt, and fat in massive portions.
Fast food has taken over the whole country, we know that.Time to take it back.
I wish I could come up here today and hang up a cure for AIDS or cancer, you’d be fighting and scrambling to get to me. This, all this bad news, is preventable. That’s the good news. It’s very preventable.How? Vote with your food purchases. Demand a food ambassador in every supermarket. Demand big food businesses back food education. Get the government to work with the fast food purveyors to wean us off the fat, sugar, and salt. Schools, ages 4-whenever: proper fresh food cooked from local sources on site. Every child should leave school knowing how to cook ten recipes that will save their life. Corporate American should feed their staff properly. You can care and be commercial.
That’s his prescription. Doesn’t sound so hard, does it?
India has deferred the commercial cultivation of what would have been its first genetically modified (GM) vegetable crop due to safety concerns.I hope those opposed to Bt brinjal don’t think that’s the end of the story; it will be back. But at least for now they’ve won.Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said more studies were needed to ensure genetically modified aubergines were safe for consumers and the environment.
Hm, I wonder if their approach would work for something else, such as bioengineered eucalyptus in the U.S. southeast? There are parallels: lack of serious studies of health effects and lack of demonstration of containment. Can Americans do what Indians just did?
It’s a funny thing about monocultures. They’re highly vulnerable to anything
that affects that particular variety.
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho writes:
The scene is set at harvest time in Arkansas October 2009. Grim-faced farmers and scientists speak from fields infested with giant pigweed plants that can withstand as much glyphosate herbicide as you can afford to douse on them. One farmer spent US$0.5 million in three months trying to clear the monster weeds in vain; they stop combine harvesters and break hand tools. Already, an estimated one million acres of soybean and cotton crops in Arkansas have become infested.The palmer amaranth or palmer pigweed is the most dreaded weed. It can grow 7-8 feet tall, withstand withering heat and prolonged droughts, produce thousands of seeds and has a root system that drains nutrients away from crops. If left unchecked, it would take over a field in a year.
Meanwhile in North Carolina Perquimans County, farmer and extension worker Paul Smith has just found the offending weed in his field [3], and he too, will have to hire a migrant crew to remove the weed by hand.
Here’s the good news: Continue reading