Does it make anyone else kind of sad?

[Dixana]

Lordy, Charlie, MG is Miracle Gro! No relation, not kin that I know of, and like most of the kin I do know of, I wouldn't claim it with a prize attached.

Yours faithfully,
Marlingardener

This made me literally LOL right in the Dr's office waiting room!

[GardenNut101]

When I was young, my mum was delighted with the incoming use of chemical pesticides. She reckoned that she could buy a load of brussel sprouts and not be able to use one of them due to greyfly infestation. Same with cabbages.

So there is a place for chemicals.

I just think that many of the illnesses we suffer now could be due to the cocktail of chemicals we get on our food - while its still growing.

Very little research has been done on the chemicals used in combination with each other. I do think that we need our governments to be more safety minded before they approve chemicals that are to be used for food.

[Dixana]

This may be overstepping our non political guidelines, as if so mods feel free to edit and/or delete as needed....

The change in what is used where and how needs to come from the people not the government. If we wait for the government here in the US to step in half the animal population will be exstinct and cancer and other sickness will be more rampant than it is now The government is concerned with money and jobs before anything else. Shutting down and/or forcing change on a huge corporation like Scotts/Monsanto would be immensely costly in several ways.
The only reason the government got all crazy with BPA in plastic (just one example) is because of the sheer volume of revenue produced when Americans panicked and went rushing out to buy new tupperware, baby bottles, drinking bottles, etc etc.
Organic is cheap, can be done 100% at home with proper preparation and is not what the government wants. The people to be self sufficient? Good grief the world would come to an end!
Same reason the German version of the FDA monitors herbal products while ours does not. Natural remedies are cheap, prescription drugs are wallet draining.
But off my soapbox before someone hits me with a rolled up newspaper.....

[Hitched_Gibson]

Sounds completely logical to me. But then again when an argument sounds logical, the other person doesn't usually pick up on it.

[farmerlon]

... I will not get in a pissing match with someone who is a much more eloquent writer than me. Your teaching skills show load and clear. If you are retired, you shouldn't be. It's obvious you need the mental challenge.

Maybe farmerlon will take your challenge. ...

Nah, not me.
I've got no time for arguments or bickering.

I welcome a good discussion, and I've got no problem with well-spirited disagreements. But, when folks start to take things personal and feelings get hurt, I don't want any part in that.

Thankfully, I find a lot more valuable and positive offerings than negativity here at HG!

[stella1751]

The change in what is used where and how needs to come from the people not the government. If we wait for the government here in the US to step in half the animal population will be exstinct and cancer and other sickness will be more rampant than it is now The government is concerned with money and jobs before anything else. Shutting down and/or forcing change on a huge corporation like Scotts/Monsanto would be immensely costly in several ways.

It needs media attention. How about a million gardener march on Washington DC?

The only reason the government got all crazy with BPA in plastic (just one example) is because of the sheer volume of revenue produced when Americans panicked and went rushing out to buy new tupperware, baby bottles, drinking bottles, etc etc.

I haven't heard about this. What happened?

[tomc]

If organic gardening is a goal, some use of pesticides, or, herbicides is to be expected. IMO its not time to beat the new gardener up for their choice.

I did have on another gardening forum a proponent of chem-spraying (and hybrid seed) become upset with me, when I told him why people would take the steps to de-hybrized known F1 cultivars. A-n-d while he might not want to do that, he might want to keep tabs on who was doing dehybridizatiion of cultivars he felt he needed to grow.

He felt that was at least disloyal if not un-american. I'm as sorry for his ill placed beleif as I am for that new growers.

Big agri-biz' job is to sell us ever more stuff. Not to supply us with what we need.

I'm going to posit, its up to us to not use what we don't need.

Will glycophosphate make me sterile? I dunno if it really matters at my age. it does stay my hand near to my grandchildren.

[Handsomeryan]

Organic is cheap, can be done 100% at home with proper preparation and is not what the government wants. The people to be self sufficient?

You have to remember that not everyone wants to be a gardener. The lawyers, firefighters, school teachers, plumbers, and other non-agrarians out there may not want to grow their own food. No one is stopping you from having an organic garden in your back yard but to feed the world population organic gardening is not efficient. It is more expensive and labor intensive and still has lower yields. The low cost of conventionally farmed foods is what has allowed us as Americans to enjoy such a high quality of living.

Don't get me wrong, I think some of the things Monsanto does are terrible but they have also contribute a lot to modern agriculture and keeping food cheap. Imagine if your food cost 2-3 [maybe more] times what it does now, what would you have to give up in order to feed yourself?

As for organic methods, I think it's a shame that people won't try a little harder to educate themselves about GMO's before dismissing them. I manage a research greenhouse and one of the things we are working on is tomatoes that are modified to be resistant to powdery mildew. The scientists have successfully transformed arabidopsis to be almost completely resistant but before they go any further they are spending years (and a LOT of money) studying exactly what genes they changed, why it works, how it works, and what other effect the modification of those genes have. If the goal is to stop spraying chemicals then we should embrace plants that do not need to be sprayed.

[stella1751]

Don't get me wrong, I think some of the things Monsanto does are terrible but they have also contribute a lot to modern agriculture and keeping food cheap. Imagine if your food cost 2-3 [maybe more] times what it does now, what would you have to give up in order to feed yourself?

As for organic methods, I think it's a shame that people won't try a little harder to educate themselves about GMO's before dismissing them. I manage a research greenhouse and one of the things we are working on is tomatoes that are modified to be resistant to powdery mildew. The scientists have successfully transformed arabidopsis to be almost completely resistant but before they go any further they are spending years (and a LOT of money) studying exactly what genes they changed, why it works, how it works, and what other effect the modification of those genes have. If the goal is to stop spraying chemicals then we should embrace plants that do not need to be sprayed.

I need to be educated to what Monsanto has done. I've never studied its methods. Although I feel guilty buying my bag of MG each year (I'll be purchasing the 2011 bag on Monday), I'm not sure why I feel guilty.

I do wonder on occasion where all the bagged top soil comes from. I would imagine a small city like Casper goes through a gazillion pallets of the stuff each year. Do the manufacturers of top soil strip it from somewhere? If so, where and how to they replinish it?

As for GMO's, one or two students a semester writes an argument about GMO's. Because it is simple to argue for them (i.e, supply must meet demand, and agrarian lands are diminishing), I make them argue against them. This last semester, one student made an argument connecting the increase in food allergies to GMO's. I guess many more people are developing allergies to corn-based products, ostensibly the most altered of all the vegetables, than in the past. I didn't check the student's sources, but they appeared to be reliable.

My vet told me once that he is seeing increased food allergies in cats and dogs, too. GMO's fascinate me. I worry they will sneak up on us, that one day we will have an unhappy awakening.

As a farmer's daughter with dozens of farmer relatives and friends, I really don't think the world can be fed without chemicals and GMO's. I can't condemn them. In fact, I applaud them because not a one of 'em is a corporate farmer, and in many cases, the farm has been family owned since the sod was first broken.

[applestar]

Well, there ya go, Stella. have your students do papers on Monsanto and save yourself the trouble.

I came across their condemnable practices in college when I did a paper on how corporate giants affect 3rd World countries for a class. Have your heard it mentioned that some people feel USA is fast becoming a "3rd World Country"?

...and that's as close to politics as I'm going to get. It's easy to do with this topic, so watch your comments everyone.

[Dixana]

Do I ever expect to see 100% organic food on the shelves in the stores? No way, at least not in my lifetime.
Can I/should I expect to see people at least TRYING to be more "green" and go for safer more natural ways of lawn and garden care? Yes. I feel like I have an obligation to my children and their children to try and do everything I can to make their world better. I recycle and reuse everything I can, try to reduce my carbon footprint, and avoid -if at all possible- the use of harmful chemicals that can hurt and/or kill plants and animals, both short and long term. So it does ruffle my feathers when I see or hear people abusing the chemicals.
Do I think products like Sevin need to be taken off the shelves? YES. But it won't happen if people keep buying it. At the local wally world the other day I overheard an older women telling another women that coating her whole yard in sevin would kill fleas better than the flea product she was currently looking at in the pet aisle AND that it was safe for her pets and kids once it rained. I almost fainted. This lady had a little girl riding in her cart. I waited for the older women to walk away and put my two cents in about msds sheets being available online and that you can get a pill at the vets office to keep fleas and ticks off your pets better than frontline. After some time chatting I come to find out this child has severe skin reactions to everything from lotion to laundry soap. What might have happened of she covered her yard in poison and let her kid play out there? I'm not sure I want to know.
And that's the big problem with the chemicals is that people abuse them. I have to confess, after fighting this HORRIBLE vine all last year I brought a chunk of it to the county extension office. Guess what? The only way to get rid of it is poison. I explained my POV on the use of them and this awesome guy spent a good 20 minutes telling me how to cut the tips off every vine I could find and dipping the frshly cut tips in a product like Round Up until they were saturated. It kills the plant without having to soak the ground in poison. Does it take longer? Yep, it could take 2-3 years of this process to kill it off completely. Does it work with less damage to my soil? It does. And it's using the toxic chemical in the safest manner.
The one under my porch does not seem to be coming back.

Obviously there is a place in society for these things, but when you get people who don't know or care how to use them and people like my stepdad who abuse them horribly, something needs to be done.

[applestar]

Heh. I think in that situation, I would've done the same and talked to the woman with the child....

The reason I usually walk away is because I'm tired of the "who is this and why is she talking to me" looks as well as being mistaken for an employee when All I'm doing is walking down the aisles (I,ve decided this might be either the way I dress -- though some of these places have uniforms and I'm not wearing anything like that) or I'm scrutinizing individual plants too much -- I tend to turn them to see what they look like or shuffle them around looking for the "best one"

[webmaster]

As for organic methods, I think it's a shame that people won't try a little harder to educate themselves about GMO's before dismissing them.

I agree, educating oneself on both sides of an issue is important- but I also think it's a shame to assume someone has not tried to inform themself.

The GMO business model has (fairly or unfairly) created a reputation management problem for the industry. That may be contributing to knee-jerk reactions to it.

Should Seeds Be Patented and their Usage Strictly Limited?
A complaint about GMOs that has been made is that the seeds are patented and farmers are legally bound to strict rules on how those seeds are used. On the one hand there are benefits to the farmer and consumers, including increased yields and less chemicals used (although Roundup Ready crops are crops that are resistant to herbicides).

On the other hand it has been said there are increased costs to farmers using those seeds plus some litigation against farmers that has been claimed is unfair. One thing that is clear is that many documentaries and countless negative news stories have caused a reputation management burden. Which leads to the next issue.

Scientists and Big Business Have Lost Goodwill and Trust
Perhaps another reason why people have a knee jerk reaction to GMOs are the daily studies about OTHER supposedly safe compounds and products that are now deemed to be unsafe. These are things GMO companies and scientists have nothing to do with, but it's impacting how they are viewed.

Nuclear energy, artificial turf (lead), BPAs, cigarettes, artificial colors, preservatives, hydrogenated fats, antibiotic resistant bacteria in meats, etc., etc., ad infinitum. Heck, wild fish on the east coast have PCB contamination and on the west coast some of the wild fish have mercury contamination. Rightly or wrongly companies not associated with GMOs have created an atmosphere of wariness in consumers. This is nothing new, but it has been growing and reaching a tipping point where it's becoming part of our popular culture. Nowadays it's not just hippies reading an ingredient list and wondering about the safety. It's everyday moms and dads.

Scientists, big corporations, and the government have lost some of the trust and goodwill previously extended to them by our parents and grandparents. People don't believe scientists when told the climate is changing and they don't believe scientists when they say the climate is not changing. Rightly or wrongly, people are wary when told that certain products are safe. This wariness manifests itself in misinformed decisions such as mothers not inoculating their children against diseases because of unfounded fears that vaccines cause autism.

Scientists and corporations will have to earn consumers trust back only this time it's possible that there is so much information and misinformation out there that it might take more than trying to influence public opinion.

[Handsomeryan]

there is so much information and misinformation out there that it might take more than trying to influence public opinion.

This goes for both sides. I'm new here but I've come across many posts here bashing traditional agriculture when it's brought up and using phrases like "toxic cancer causing poisons" to describe any non-organic agro-chemical. I find it hard to believe that everyone who posts to this website has an in depth understanding of organic chemistry and cellular biology to make such claims. Yes, its cool that people have access to the MSDS sheets for chemicals but there is more to it than just a page or two of basic data.

The average homeowner may be able to spray indiscriminately with whatever they can get their hands on at whatever dilusion rate they feel like mixing but I speak for all Ag professionals when I say that we take chemical application very seriously and many precautions are taken to ensure that what we spray is doing as little harm as is possible to the environment and to the people who will come in contact with our crops. I spend 40+ hours a week in my greenhouse breathing the air and touching the foliage, do you think I want to wallow in poisons or carcinogens?!

[Dixana]

Very well stated Mr. Webmaster