Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: haqihana who wrote (49818)	5/1/2000 7:12:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

haqihana, two nuggets for your consideration. 1) Poisons have not been getting stronger since the "glory" days of Kepone in the '70s. Remember that little nasty? In fact, they have become more selective. Ag chemists as a group are keenly sensitive about the environment, and they are working hard to replace their sledgehammers with squirrel rifles. Imprudent application is for the last decade or so the glaring exception and not the rule. (A remaining frontier is use of inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus as fertilizer, and that is coming under ever stricter regulation.) The casino effect is at work here if you ask me. The misuses and disasters (and alarmist theories!) get the front page treatment. The same thing is happening with school shootings. 200 million guns in America, all legally owned. 100000 murders prevented. But what gets the front page each time is the dozen or so guns used in aberrations like Columbine. Bah, I say. (I actually say something decidedly saltier, but this is a family thread, if y'know what I mean.) 2)Since about 1930 agriculture in the USA and Europe has become "intensive farming", and this has become possible ONLY because of ag chem. The goal now is to make ag chem as effective in protecting crops, but easier for the land to bear. Consider herbicides. Turn of the century arsenicals were the poison of choice. Eeewww. Then in the '50s and '60s wonder chemicals like Agent Orange made weed killing quick work. The health consequences took decades to emerge, and - here's the tough part - depending on whom you listen to, Agent Orange is either like smoking a CARTON of Camels each day, or it is of "unproven human toxicity at all". It can be backbreaking (OK, pencil shattering) hard work to sort signal from noise in long-term epidemiological studies. That's how the tobacco companies managed to protect their turf from health lawsuits until a year ago! It's so very hard to PROVE a causal connection ... and the other side of that coin is it's really easy to convince today's eco-conscious readership that they are awash in deadly poison! Neither position is "in harmony" imo. But the bottom line is, 19th century and earlier agriculture worked only for a world population of, say, a billion. With 80% of those in India and China ... rice country. Organic gardening is a real thing, but it is practical only for niche crops, like raspberries and endive. REAL food like wheat and pork ... needs a wise hand administering ag chem. It can be done responsibly. (Btw I don't like the use of growth steroids in pork and beef. They make the meat STINK. Steroids have this penetrating funk.)