trader_4 wrote:
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. "

if i don't want GMO crops, i have zero tolerance for
them, i don't see that as a problem, i do not want
GMO anything on my land. i am being forced to accept
contamination constantly.

this is not an issue of a radical liberal, it's the
opinion of someone understands that if someone damages
me or my land it is a crime. personal property is
the issue and personal values. i don't want poison on
my land. i don't spray it any longer and i don't want
it in the air or in the water or in the dust or in
the pollen. what is hard to understand about that?


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.

it isn't irrational to want to keep our plants
uncontaminated by GMO technologies no matter if
those technolgies are found to be harmful later on
or not. i already think they have been shown to
be harmful so i do not want any of them around.


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.

how can i determine from looking at a soybean if it
is contaminated or not? i can't. same for corn, beets,
etc. the technology is invisible to the unaided eye
or easy other means of testing.


Given that rat droppings and worse are tolerated in crops for human consumption, it seems like an overreaction to me.

you complain about hyperbole and hysteria and the use of
negative phrasing, but you engage in it just as well.


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.

no, the issue originally in question was whether i'm
being forced to use M technology. i am. i have no way
to avoid it now that GMO alfalfa is out. it will only
be a matter of time before my previously uncontaminated
alfalfa patch will contain GMO alfalfa plants.


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 there is one plant with a GMO residue of any kind
in it then it's one plant too many. this is my standard.
you may not agree with that standard and that's fine with
me, but i seem to recall some provision of the Constitution
i live under giving me rights to personal property and that
it cannot be taken away without due process or compensation.


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.

yep, exactly. a cost i previously did not have
unless i wanted different seeds, but those used to
all be non-GMO by definition, they were all produced
by natural cross-pollenation or hybridization techniques
which do not operate in the same manner as what has
been done to derive many GMO crops.


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.

no, read up on any case related to GMO contamination
these days.

i just found out about GMO apples. cripes, there goes
another crop the government is going to screw up. i've
just been forced out of the apple business.


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?

no, it really doesn't, the mythology of big ag is
false, in time it has shown repeatedly to degrade the
lands, to poison animals and to kill workers exposed
repeatedly to toxins, to pollute the ground water,
streams and rivers, to kill off large areas of what
used to be productive oceans, kill corals, etc.

it is a horrible and destructive scam.

the starving children is the usual response, but any
educated person who's actually studied the issue finds
that starvation is not an issue of production it is a
problem of social instabilities, poor distribution,
corruption and get this often it relates to degraded
environments brought on by, you can guess it, big ag.

i can point you to many cases of productive systems
which can feed people that do not need big ag in any
manner. actual working results, not scams, not made
up, documented, solid.

this also includes my own experiences here in food
production. i can outproduce in variety of foods and
quality any of the farms around me and i don't need
*cides of any kind to do it.


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

More hyperbole.

look up the age of the farmer and the trends...


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.

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.

they won't change a thing, i've asked repeatedly.

i can only avoid contamination by not planting related
crops. as you can see above, i'm losing crop choices by
continued GMO developments. as it is i'm repeatedly
sprayed and polluted.

people who are doing this are not really understanding
what they are doing. any person with open eyes who
watches the natural world and the processes sees the
damage done to various organisms, the soil, the water
the air...

you may say that i no longer have any right to keep
GMO organisms from my lands, but i don't agree with you.
that is a moral argument as much as a scientific one,
right down to the root of it, the right of a person
to have an individual belief or a religion, the right of
the person to have property and to control the results
of their labor. if i'm growing any one GMO plant it is
not by choice. that to me is the definition of force,
but our society is moving beyond personal freedoms so
this is yet another version of that happening too. i
don't like it and i don't accept it and will work to
prevent it.


songbird