Rodale Institute has been running a side-by-side comparison of organic
and chemical agriculture since 1981.
They
report:
After an initial decline in yields during the first few years of
transition, the organic system soon rebounded to match or surpass the
conventional system. Over time, FST became a comparison between the long
term potential of the two systems.
And now comes evidence from the very heart of Big Ag: rural Iowa, where
Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture runs
the Long-Term Agroecological Research Experiment (LTAR), which began in
1998, which has just released its latest results.
At the LTAR fields in Adair County, the (LTAR) runs four fields: one
managed with the Midwest-standard two-year corn-soy rotation featuring
the full range of agrochemicals; and the other ones organically managed
with three different crop-rotation systems. The chart below records the
yield averages of all the systems, comparing them to the average yields
achieved by actual conventional growers in Adair County:
Norman Borlaug, instigator of the "green revolution"
of no-till and pesticides, when asked in 2000
whether organic agriculture could feed the world, said:
India's struggling farmers are starting to profit from a budding interest
in organic living. Not only are the incomes of organic farmers soaring
– by 30% to 200%, according to organic experts – but their yields
are rising as the pesticide-poisoned land is repaired through natural
farming methods.
How did this happen?
Organic farming only took off in the country about seven years
ago. Farmers are turning back to traditional farming methods for a number
of reasons.
Some people didn't like the source of a recent post about
the toxic effects of agrochemicals and GM plants on the environment,
plants, animals, and people.
There are plenty of other sources, including:
Especially
vote at the checkout counter.
If you don't know it's local and non-GMO, don't buy it.
There may be no labelling laws, but local supermarkets know what's local.
There are only two applications that have been commercialized
in these twenty years of genetic engineering.
One is to make seeds more resilient to herbicides,
which means you get to spread more Roundup,
you get to spread more Glysophate,
and you get to spread more poison.
Not a very desirable trait in farming systems.
Especially since what Monsanto will call weeds
are ultimately sources of food.
It gets even better from there.
These are illusions that are being marketed
in order for people to hand over the power to decide what we eat
to a handful of corporations.
Jill Richardson
publishes a letter
from Col. (Ret.) Don M. Huber,
Emeritus Professor, Purdue University,
who is
APS Coordinator, USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System (NPDRS).
It begins:
Dear Secretary Vilsack:
A team of senior plant and animal scientists have recently brought to
my attention the discovery of an electron microscopic pathogen that
appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and
probably human beings. Based on a review of the data, it is widespread,
very serious, and is in much higher concentrations in Roundup Ready (RR)
soybeans and corn-suggesting a link with the RR gene or more likely the
presence of Roundup. This organism appears NEW to science!
Dr. Stanley Culpepper of UGA Tifton says 52 counties have the mutant pigweed.
He says they're looking at cover crops and deep turning.
(You may know that as plowing.)
He hastily adds that they're looking at other herbicides.
But he wraps up by saying we have to look at other methods
than herbicides: tillage and cover crops.
He frames it as diversity and integration.
What it really means is spraying poisons eventually
breeds weeds that refuse to be poisoned.
People, of course,
are not so lucky.
The documentary points out many products in German stores that
include GM soy.
In Argentina, it's even worse, with increasing numbers of birth defects.
They interview
Prof. Andrés Carrasco about his research on amphibians:
"The hemispheres do not separate, like you can see here.
If you look closely you can see one brain.
Glyphosate can cause this kind of mechanisms, for it is an enzymatic toxin."
"To human cells glyphosate is already toxic in a very low dose.
A farmer uses a much higher dose on the field.
Roundup is even more toxic than glysophate,
for that is only one of the ingredients in Roundup."
Roundup says none of this applies to humans and Roundup is safe.
Seralini
says:
Who should you believe?
A corporation repeatedly convicted of deception,
or scientists who say that GM crops
cause liver and kidney damage in animals,
according to research using Monsanto's own data.
Monsanto’s Roundup, the agro-toxic companion herbicide for millions of
acres of GM soybeans, corn, cotton, alfalfa, canola, and sugar beets,
is losing market share. Its overuse has spawned a new generation of
superweeds that can only be killed with super-toxic herbicides such as
2,4, D and paraquat. Moreover, patented “Roundup Ready” crops require
massive amounts of climate destabilizing nitrate fertilizer. Compounding
Monsanto’s damage to the environment and climate, rampant Roundup use
is literally killing the soil, destroying essential soil microorganisms,
degrading the living soil’s ability to capture and sequester CO2,
and spreading deadly plant diseases.
In just one year, Monsanto has moved from being Forbes’ “Company
of the Year” to the
Worst Stock of the Year. The Biotech Bully of
St. Louis has become one of the most hated corporations on Earth.
The article mentions scientific studies about bad health effects
of genetically modified foods,
and goes on to warn of Monsanto maneuverings through the EPA
and the Gates Foundation.
Then he points to the European Union as leading the way:
...Monsanto has been forced into the unenviable position of having to
pay farmers to spray the herbicides of rival companies.
If you tend large plantings of Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" soy or cotton,
genetically engineered to withstand application of the company's Roundup
herbicide (which will kill the weeds -- supposedly -- but not the crops),
Monsanto will cut you a $6 check for every acre on which you apply at
least two other herbicides. One imagines farmers counting their cash as
literally millions of acres across the South and Midwest get doused with
Monsanto-subsidized poison cocktails.
The move is the latest step in the abject reversal of Monsanto's longtime
claim: that Roundup Ready technology solved the age-old problem of weeds
in an ecologically benign way.
Roundup, trade name for glysophate, doesn't work anymore because
the weeds mutated:
Deep tilling of crop land pocked and rutted by heavy equipment used on rain and snow soaked, often frozen farm land may not only clean up the land, but may have a significant positive effect on managing herbicide resistant weeds, especially
Palmer pigweed.
Back to the future!
"Deep tilling" is the current buzzword for plowing.
That's how my father farmed, with a bottom plow, a subsoiler, a harrow,
and a
cultivator.
The same article continues to defend no-till:
There is no doubt about the many benefits of minimum or no-till cropping systems. Reduced-tillage saves farmers money in equipment, improves soil quality, improves the environment by making the soil more porous and produces better drainage. The list of benefits goes on and on.
Promotes more erosion, is my observation.
And how does no-till save farmers money if they have to pay for increasing
amounts of pesticides to try to deal with mutant weeds like pigweed?
And now comes evidence from the very heart of Big Ag: rural Iowa, where Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture runs the Long-Term Agroecological Research Experiment (LTAR), which began in 1998, which has just released its latest results.
Some people didn't like the source of a recent post about
the toxic effects of agrochemicals and GM plants on the environment,
plants, animals, and people.
There are plenty of other sources, including:
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