On Friday, February 13, 2015 at 12:49:05 PM UTC-5, songbird wrote:
trader_4 wrote:
...
As usual, just hyperbole, totally devoid of any fact.
Speaking of fact, where's the cite I've asked for 10 times
now to backup your claim that Monsanto "forced" farmers to use
their product?

last year a farmer lost a claim that he wanted to be
compensated for a loss on his property due to GMO
contamination (he was an organic farmer using non M
seeds, a neighbor planted GMO seed and infected his
crop and he lost his organic certification).

the decision is being appealed:

http://www.theland.com.au/news/agric...px?storypage=0

That's an interesting case, but it has nothing to do with Monsanto
"forcing" anyone to use their seed, which is what was claimed.

What I didn't see in that article was any reference to exactly
what the level of contamination was. I did see the defendent state
this:

"He said Mr Marsh only found nine plants growing on his property 12 months after the GM swaths blew over from his farm. "

The court ruling said:

"The judgement was also highly critical of processes used by Mr Marsh's organic certifier, the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture Australia, and its zero tolerance for GM crops. "


Which doesn't surprise me, because in almost every case I've seen,
the environmental, hippie nuts are totally unreasonable. So, I wouldn't
be surprised that they had some extreme, zero tolerance standard
because they have an irrational fear of GMO and many other things.





in my own area there are GMO beets, corn and
soybeans grown (and probably others) these are forced
upon me in that i have no way to isolate my crops from
the surrounding fields. my only recourse is to not
grow them.

Why is that the only recourse? From what I understand, your
whole crop won't become contaminated. There is the probability
that some small contamination through pollination will occur.
Given that rat droppings and worse are tolerated in crops for human consumption, it seems like an overreaction to me.



i already have a non-GMO alfalfa patch growing that
has taken me several years to get going. if it becomes
infected with GMO alfalfa i will not know it, there is
no testing place i can send samples to that will verify
it as non-GMO without some expense to me. this is an
additional expense that was not there before. the same
goes for every other non-GMO crop that i grow that might
become infected from the surrounding fields.

That would seem to be a legitimate problem. The question
is, if there is a GMO crop nearby, what exactly is the range
of innocent contamination that's possible? If 90% of your
crop can get contaminated, then I would agree it's a problem.
If .01% typically can get contaminated, then it's a different
story and gets back to the zero tolerance issue.




the low cost approach for annuals used to be that you
could save your seeds from year to year and know that
there was no problem. now for annuals to ensure non-GMO
seeds i'd have to source and buy them each time i plant
or risk contamination (and that forces you to trust the
seed growers to test and properly get things right).


The same question would apply. How likely is it that some
innocent contamination would then contaminate next year's
crop to the point that it doesn't meet non-GMO standards?
If it's easy to get it contaminated in just one or a few growing
cycles to the point that it's not certifiable as non-GMO,
then I agree that's a problem. It would force you to do
some testing and then start over with new seed when needed,
which would increase your costs.




for the biannuals or perennials it's worse because to
get an alfalfa field established takes several years or
to harvest a beet seed crop takes a few years.

the GMO folks don't care and have the courts and laws
stacked against the small gardener or the organic farmer.


How exactly did the GMO folks allegedly stack the courts?
Sounds like hyperbole to me.



instead of requiring GMO contamination to be remediated
by the GMO companies they just certify it all as ok and
then those of us who don't want it are forced to work
around their BS. and it is BS. whoever thinks that GMO
alfalfa was a good idea is a complete idiot, but they
fit right into the poisoner and big ag mentality which
has destroyed the land and poisoned the water and air.


Here comes the extremism. The big ag mentality feeds the
world. Won't someone please think of the starving children?



most of the people who think this isn't a problem are
old and almost dead.

More hyperbole.


poisoners who spray large areas of
land. the problem is that to protect your own lands from
poisoners you have to have enough money to buy a large
enough space. poor folks and small growers aren't going
to be able to afford that much space.


songbird

One approach would seem to be to coordinate with your neighbors
so that you plant different crops, if you have the same crops,
they plant their GMO crop as far as possible from yours and
vice-versa.