This blog is another tributary to the swelling river of information that makes evident the great advancements in crop production and environmental stewardship that have developed over the last 50 years. I believe the future is bright for agriculture and food production if we can get all hands on-deck to
tackle the problems of world hunger and responsible environmental stewardship. There is a great story to tell...
Here's another refreshing Voice in the Food Wilderness. Dr. Doug Powell, Professor of Food Safety from Kansas State University and publisher of barfblog If you are bored with all the tired, predictable GMO food hysteria look into this blog for a refreshingly humorous, but on target source of reliable information on that topic, and all orbits of the food safety universe for that matter. Their rallying cry seems to be " We have a right to know if food will make us barf".
I think I like this bunch.
Combing through some of their "Genetic Engineering" posts came up with a few choice tidbits:
Here Dr. Powell relates an interview, kind of, with Macleans.ca in which Health Canada makes this statement:
“To date, Health Canada has not identified health risks associated with GM foods that have been approved for sale in Canada.”
Oh...really...
Neither has the WHO, the FAO, the FDA, the USDA or any other credible organization that makes evidence based conclusions concerning the safety of food based on hundreds, nay, thousands of peer reviewed studies.
And then, Dr. Powell, who sat on the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee in the early 2000's, said,
.."reviewed everything that was out there and there was nothing to show GMOs present a risk to health." In fact, Dr. Powell has since moved away from researching the subject because, he says, “I got tired of talking about hypothetical risks.”
Then Dr. Powell adds "With at least 48 million suffering from foodborne illness each year in the U.S., I got plenty of work."
Boy, this GMO food and human health stuff is riveting, no?
Dr. Powell is tired of chasing GMO Phantoms, are you?
Speaking of Phantoms Have you seen "Grocery Store Wars?"
Dr. Powell wrote this one while working on a book chapter about genetically engineered foods in the shadow of a Roman coliseum in France. He lets go with this zinger:
"In reviewing the past decade of apocalyptic predictions related to all foods genetically engineered, I can only conclude, what a massive waste of well-meaning time, energy and money that could have been instead devoted to fewer people sick from microbial foodborne illness."
And then this...
"Whatever kinds of food production, processing and distribution system we humans come up with, what matters is not the technology, but whether the results make people sick. There's lots of food-related things that sicken 30 per cent of all citizens in developed countries each and every year -- genetically engineered food isn't one of them."
Is there any future in Genetically Modified Food and Human Health Hysteria. Doesn't look too promising. Looks so...boring...not a whole lot of meat to chew on there.
So you think farming is "Natural"? That was your first mistake. There is nothing "Natural" about farming except in the overactive dreams of some armchair utopian "Naturalists". You know the ones who proclaim, usually from the refuge of carpeted, air-conditioned comfort, that Big Farm is trying to poison us all and render the planet uninhabitable and, all the while, may never have successfully tended a flower pot themselves. The first act of pulling out a weed by hand was the beginning of the long dark "Un-Natural"ascent of mankind out of the desperation of hunting and gathering and into the light of civilization.
That's right, and tillage, which includes pulling or removing weeds, is a very unnatural activity especially when it comes to enjoying butterflies and daisies. Then again if we follow that thought to it's logical conclusion, so are avalanches and earthquakes, but that's for another post.
I got my dander up the other day when a fellow blogger, GMOPundit, forwarded me a letter written by a Real Farmer, you know, one of the 2% that actually makes their primary living toiling by the sweat of their brow against the thorns and thistles. It resounded like a Voice in the Wilderness, which it actually was, rural Texas to be exact.
The post was dated Oct. 7, 2011 in Southwest Farm Press by R. N. Hopper and Chase Carr entitled; "GMOs, Biotechnology Offer Agricultural Blessings".
They article begins with the premise:
"The fundamental misunderstanding of the plight of agricultural producers stems from the idea that farming is, or should be, natural. Farming is not natural. It is, in fact, a struggle against nature."
To say that there is a "fundamental misunderstanding of the plight of agricultural producers" in the minds of the other non-agricultural 98% is to understate in the extreme. It seems the world of agricultural producers and the world of agricultural consumers are two different worlds. At times the disconnect between these two worlds is as far as Narnia is from 1940's World War II England, but that Wardrobe must be here somewhere....
Because of this yawning chasm of ignorance on the part of the 98%, the populace is subject to the wily snake oil salesmen, yes they are still around although dressed up in 21st century cyberware. You know the drill, sharply appointed and exuding authority they ride into town and exploiting ignorance, the handmaiden of fear, whip the populace into a drooling frenzy. And then, of course , they just happen to have a few bottles left of the pricey remedy in the pretty wagon. No economic interest here just "humanitarian aid". It brings to mind an episode of "The Andy Griffith Show" from my bleary-eyed 1960's childhood television viewing, where Aunt Bea and the ladies auxiliary are seduced by the charms of a mustachioed snake oil salesman and end up giving the neighbors a drunken serenade after finishing off a bottle of the rejuvenating IndianTonic.
In case you haven't caught my drift, the anti-biotech terrorists are selling snake oil, their product the illusory "Natural"remedy which makes us all feel better. Until we get hungry. Back to the article, Hopper and Carr continue by recounting their rude awakening to the negative impact of social media upon their livelihood brought to the fore by some negative comments about biotechnology and agriculture that they had read online and then goes on to explain enduring the worst drought in 100 years in Texas, not exactly something a cyber ag critic could really relate to.
They include a Biblical reference to the farmer enduring adversity:
"Adversity is nothing new for a farm family. This struggle against nature has been our story since the fall of man, recorded in Genesis: “cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. – Gen 3:17-19."
I love their comparison of the management of the unnaturally high population of a corn field to the unnaturally high population of a city:
"It may surprise you that I say farming is unnatural, but I assure you that you will never see a population of 32,000 corn plants per acre in nature. When you attempt such trying to attain a high yield, many problems arise. These “unnatural” populations open the door to attacks from insects and disease, problems that must be managed......
Management required for successful agriculture is no less necessary than the management required to sustain the 8.3 million people in the city of New York. Such a population on such a small area opens the door to many problems. A lot of food and other resources must be brought in, and a lot of waste must be carried out. An army of public servants must serve the needs of sanitation, law enforcement, and maintenance."
Take that you urban cowboys.
Then the appeal to using technology at all i.e.; computers and social media, is OK for the anti biotech crowd to use in their assaults on farmers but farmers shouldn't be allowed to use genetic technology to improve their crops and livelihood:
"Yet you choose to cry against my family and me because we are a smaller and less powerful target. You use the technology of social media to have a voice against farmers, but would deny us the technology to safely and afford-ably feed you. I have read your claims against biotechnology and find them to be full of falsehoods and half-truths perpetuated by uninformed fear mongers....
The food supply provided to you, by American farmers and ranchers, is the safest and most affordable in the world. The World Health Organization states on their website: “The GM products that are currently on the international market have all passed risk assessments conducted by national authorities. These different assessments in general follow the same basic principles, including an assessment of environmental and human health risk. These assessments are thorough, they have not indicated ANY risk to human health.”
They give a discussion of the Starlink corn fiasco and the Alar fraud perpetrated by the NRDC . But you gotta love the killer example of the arrogant ignorance that these anti biotech folks are capable of with the often quoted story they use as an example of the dangers of GMO crops, remember the one about the buffalo being sterilized by foraging on Bt cotton, they slice and dice here:
"The Mercola website that reported the story of the 1,000 acres of corn being destroyed is among the worst inaccuracies. On that site I read a story about buffalo eating GMO cottonseed and becoming sterile. This might be funny if it were not so tragic in its ignorance. It is not the transgenes that cause the buffalo’s sterility, but rather the gossypol, a toxic pigment found in all cotton seed—which can only be detoxified by heating during processing—that causes temporary sterility in adult bulls and permanent sterility in adolescent males. In fact, the Chinese male birth control pill, also used in Brazil, is based on gossypol.
The closing appeal for sanity:
"The primary goal in my life and the purpose of my existence is to provide as much food for as many people for as little expense as my talents and resources will allow. You want nothing different from what I want - safe food and a productive future for my children.
Randy invited one of you to visit his farm. His invitation was thrown back in his face and that person also attacked him and insulted his intelligence. I will once again extend the same invitation. I plead with each of you to re-examine your beliefs about biotechnology. It is humanity’s single greatest hope for the future. In years to come, I believe that this will be borne out by history.
In any event, I shall continue to strive to be the best steward of the great blessings my Creator has given me charge over as long as I live. I have only one request: Please stop hurting my family. It seems too simple a request, but regretfully, I don’t know how else to ask. May God bless you. May he bless us all."
Simple eloquence from honest, authentic stewards of the earth. Go away you anti-biotech terrorists. Boo!! Go away and find something real to anti-blog about like, say pathogenic microbes contaminating your food. You know, Listeria, Salmonella, E. coli, ring a bell? You'll find some real body counts there.
Beeologics, an Israeli company, that has developed RNAi based commercial products aimed at stemming the tide of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in honeybees has recently been bought by the Monsanto company. This is an exciting development in moving this new RNA interference genetic technology to the forefront of agricultural applications in pest management.
RNAi technology is, in a nutshell, the very specific silencing of gene protein expression and looks like it will be a good fit in medical and agricultural pest management applications. In CCD, the Beeologics product Remembee is used to shut down virus replication of the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, which is thought to be one of the major components of CCD.
RNAi has very specific activity on the target disease or insect, non-target organisms are unaffected and can rest easy. RNAi probably has the potential for a more taylored, prescriptive activity than any other pest management technology available right now. Check out the cartoon video that gives a good elementary understanding of RNAi, entertaining too. Excellent illustration.
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RNAi technology, another installment in the ongoing development of a high yield, biologically sound agriculture. The potential is great for providing the needed increases in food production while preserving wildlife habitat and environmental integrity for future generations to enjoy.
A new insect control alternative for growers, Azera, was registered with the EPA in September 2011. It also has approval with the National Organic Program and OMRI for use in organic systems. Azera, a product of MGK, is a blend of two botanically derived active ingredients; azadirachtin and pyrethrin. Both of these natural chemicals on their own have proven track records of efficacy against a host of insect pests and together in a formulated pre-mix they compliment each other in a broader spectrum of insect control scenarios.
Pyrethrins are extracted from a flower that is a member of the chrysanthemum family, Chrysanthemum cinerariaefolium, sometimes called the "Power Daisy". The flowers have been traditionally harvested from temperate regions that have well-drained volcanic soils in East Africa, China, Australia and Tasmania.
Pyrethrins affect nerve transmission and provide a quick knockdown kill of a wide range of insects including aphids, caterpillars, beetles, flies, leafhoppers and others. (See Azera Label). Other desireable characteristics of pyrethrins include low mammalian toxicity and relatively rapid breakdown in the environment.
Azadirachtin, the other component of Azera, also has a long history of use in insect management. The active ingredient is found in the seeds and fruit of the neem tree, native to India and grown in other tropical areas of the world. The oil is pressed from neem fruit and seeds and azadirachtin is then extracted from the oil.
Azadirachtin is slower in taking down insect pests, acting as a growth regulator inhibiting the molting process for immature insect stages and also as a feeding deterrent for some adult insects. The spectrum of insect control is similar to that of the pyrethrins. Non-target impacts are also minimal with azadirachtin and the residual activity is short.
According to the label, Azera contains 1.4% pyrethrins and 1.2% azadirachtin and should prove to be an excellent addition to any organic pest control program.
One caution with it's use is to avoid spraying when bees are a concern, the pyrethrin component is especially problematic in that case as it is also toxic to pollinators. In fact,The Rachel Carson Council, Inc. listed Azera as one of it's "Products of Recent Concern" due to the bee hazard. Can't escape the bee consideration even with organic products sometimes.
All-in-all with the combination of two different modes of action, enhanced efficacy, short residual, and low non-target impact, Azera should provide a solid one-two punch that will be a very useful tool for organic insect pest management.
We've got an existential environmental problem. There is a disconnect between the perceived prosecution of the new "Green Movement" and reality.
Let me tell you what I mean...
This post is from the department of " Beyond My Universe". Until today the prospect of flying foxes or fruit bats devouring orchard fruit had never entered into my consciousness. Ground hogs, voles and deer were the only furry pests that I had ever encountered in an orchard in the northeastern U. S. An occasional land fox could be seen darting through the rows but they are always on my side, being excellent rodent predators.
Will someone please view these video clips and remind me why Bt cotton is such a wicked, evil, deception. Why it is such an egregious, unconscionable exploitation of resource-poor farmers in India. Oh, and also why it is that resource-poor farmers in India are adopting Bt cotton at a record clip, well over 80%. Can't seem to reconcile these things. Thanks.
Clip 1 - Before Bt cotton - If this doesn't make you cringe....
