Worth a quick read

[Steve]

"So what struck me as I wandered around my local grocer yesterday was: if this is the wave of the future, why are governments still subsidizing big agribusiness? The same industry that discharges millions of tons of pesticides into our air and water, advocates genetically modified food, wastes vast amounts of energy and hauls our food an average of 1,500 to 2,500 miles before it reaches our plates?"

[Charlie]

"We must regulate and significantly reduce the U.S. farm use of fuels, pesticides, and fertilizer. These are not choices! These are necessities! If we are going to seriously tackle climate change and fix our health system, we have to change our form of agriculture."

Thanks for the cite and subsequent links, Steve.

One of the most obvious ways to change the form of agriculture is for people to become intimately involved in producing their own healthful food, free from pesticides, chem-ferts, and antibiotics. And to start refusing to use the products (food) produced by and advocated by big agribusiness. Michael Pollan's, and related, work should be required study through all levels of public schools. Yeah, what are the chances of that? Many in these gardening groups think such things are nonsense.

Charlie

[Billy]

It is amazing that next to hard facts, opinions can come off sounding equal. People, will say that the product does just what they wanted, and that they didn't have any physical reaction to it.

But then it turns out that they didn't look at the consequences of using biocides: dead soil, polluted water, dying birds and fish, increased risk of birth defects, or damage to your nervous system. If it doesn't strike them down dead like a bolt of lightening, it seems OK. What we got is citations vs. opinion here, and the opinion is in the same black and white as the cite. Doo wants Photoshop ready apples and they aren't clean unless he puts poison on them. War is Peace. Poison is Clean?

We should be afraid. We should be very afraid.

[Billy]

Problem is that "they" (see: filthy rich) keep intruding into what was supposed to be a done deal. Once there was common land where you could support yourself by gardening and hunting. Then they needed workers in the factories, so they enclosed the common lands, so that we couldn't farm them, in order to drive us into the cities. The commons was history. You could still hunt but they cut the forests, most American forests are history. Used to be able to fish but 90% of the fish in the sea are history. Top soil is soon to be history (then even petroleum fertilizers won't work). Soon, fresh water will be history (not even allowed to catch rain). What, or who will be history next? What was the man thinking, who cut down the last tree on Easter Island?

The filthy rich are only interested in next quarters profits.

[Steve]

Doo, or any of his colleagues or supporters, can see this aerial view of the Gulf and still say the cursed stuff is safe and "effective" is beyond me.

[Steve]

I agree that's one of the most obvious ways, and bless Michelle's heart for taking a public stand on this. I wish her role as First Lady would be to take that first step and expand it into a mission. I don't find that likely.

I may be the only American who cheered $5.00 a gallon gas and hoped for $20.00 a gallon gas. That's the only viable way I see to break the unholy trinity of sprawl, chemical farming, and frequent flyer veggies.

[Charlie]

No, there are at least two of us.

[Billy]

I found it strange that a major consumer of biocides (United States Golf Association) could write a thoughtful article on the subject.

"Pesticide users make a precarious decision every time they apply a chemical: Will residues of the chemical contaminate the groundwater or not? To complicate the situation, there is little information available to make such a decision and to guarantee its accuracy. Manufacturers are reluctant to elaborate on this. Scientists use predictive models to make educated guesses about potential residue movement. Though models are based on defined environmental factors rarely found in the same combination in the field, they remain the best available tool to assess the potential of a chemical for contamination of groundwater. (cut) Despite considerable amounts of available information, the simple question, "Will compound X, when I use it, contaminate groundwater?" is difficult to answer. To illustrate the point, a sophisticated model was chosen to suggest which of the compounds that had been used in the past on several golf courses on Cape Cod might have contaminated groundwater. The computer selected dicamba and suggested that chlordane would remain in the topsoil. Ironically, chlordane was found in water samples (GC/MS analysis), and dicamba was not. This is an extreme example and is not intended to discredit the use of models."

[Aluckyguess]

I hate to say it but youre right about the gas thing. The key is they need to teach organic gardening in school and make it like math or english, a required class. They really dont teach many classes in high school that will help you survive in a self suffient way. Most woodshops and autoshops are gone.

[Charlie]

What you have said is more important than many may realize. The current generation of youngsters, for the most part will have *no* instruction in gardening. Or construction or repair, etc....

The local State U. dropped it's mechanical arts degree in, I believe,

1992. So much for that.

Woodshop was a class that many didn't like in particular, but by god, most everyone absorbed the basics and what tools do what and usually learned how to keep all their fingers and not raise a knot between their eyes.

Today? We've failed a whole, if not several, generation and left them as easy prey for the machine.

It's very important that those of us that have these skills and knowledge try to awaken an interest in kids and pass on the knowledge we have, knowledge that is independent of, and counterproductive to, the status quo.

Care Charlie

[Aluckyguess]

Most will never use anything they learn in school past the 6th grade. If the schools were geared towards trades this country would be way better off. Schools now are geared to do good on tests. They dont really learn anything.

[Billy]

You mean that schools like politics only require that you pass for bright? There was a time when this country thought that education was our only defense, but that was before so many god awful presidents. Don't you agree?

[Steve]

That's probably not an accident.