GMO'd Vegetable seeds?

Here is an interesting article-shows how GMOs are maybe not increasing crop yield

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/do-gmo-crops-have-lower-yields

Technically, Round-Up and the generic forms of Glyphosate ARE systemic. Most herbicides are. They must enter the plants' vascular system to work.

-Rich

This message was edited Feb 26, 2013 10:26 AM

The point is :NOT residual. Hay/straw mulch problems in the soil are not due to glyphosate, but to the many herbicides that are residual. Again it has nothing to do with GMO. By the way the purpose of most of GMO's on the market is not to increase yeild, but to decrease labor, fuel and machine needs. One can cultivate corn, but you can imagine the costs associated today with hoeing a field of corn. And yes we used to do it that way, mechanical cultivate between the rows and use a hoe for weeds that could be taken out by the horse drawn or tractor mounted cultivator. Since corn is a grass, broadleaf insecticide and premergent herbicides are still used to control weeds. Even so Corn Gmo's are to combat corn borers Corn ear worms and the like. These can be controlled with insecticides but it takes crop duster aircraft (remember those) or helicopters to apply the insecticide at appropriate times. Round-up ready crops are broad leaf crops which can also be cultivated. However, They cannot be weeded with broadleaf herbicides. One of our neighbors once lost his entire soybean crop to morning glories. Morning glory seeds are poisonous and could not be seperated from the threshed soybeans and were not marketable. In todays market a crop must be clean.

This message was edited Feb 26, 2013 9:06 AM

nancynursez637 said:
>> Our farmers grow wheat, and much of it has been gmo'd here.

Thank you for correcting the impression I had. It looks like several GM crops were approved, then used commercially for a while, then withdrawn. It sounds like there was research to do multiple different things to wheat, but the only one I'm sure went onto the market was "Roundup Ready" wheat and/or "Hard White Wheat".

Do you know what-all varieties were being used in Oregon?

I hadn't previously seen wheat on the list of GMO crops currently being grown commercially, but I read further and found that "Hard White Wheat" was grown commercially from 2002 to 2005 in the US.

Wikipedia cited a 2009 article in "Food Manufacturing". Foodmanufacturing.com.
http://www.foodmanufacturing.com/news/2009/09/westbred-sale-could-change-wheat-industry

Wiki's interpretation of that article was:
"Monsanto decided to no longer offer Roundup-Ready Wheat commercially until transgenic wheat is more widely accepted."
and
"Currently no transgenic wheat is used commercially in the United States."

I'd love to know if that Wiki author was wrong or out-of date.

I have been told by a very reliable source that GMO wheat is no longer on the market.

I was the one who introduced the confusion between soil contamination and GMOs. I guess I hadn't had enough coffee and confused the issues. The bottom line is the same tho a Round up ready crop is drenched with herbicides and not damaged a crop that is sprayed with a broadleaf systemic herbicide is also not damaged bc only the broadleaf weeds are damaged but the crop is still drenched in herbicide.

I personally wouldn't care if I got round up ready seeds on accident bc Im not going to drench it with herbicide, which is the main concern.

Bt is put into Corn as a pesticide that works on worms. Bt is an organic pesticide that can be used by itself. I really don't like the idea of eating corn that has that in it's genetics but if it's in animal feed and I use that manure in my garden I don't really see an issue.

I am confused. If a pesticide is put into corn, to keep insects from eating it, why would it then be safe for any one else to eat? I dont want to put round up in my body in any way, shape or form.

it isn't safe for people to eat, guess that's the whole point of educating people and fighting these companies that use gmos. I don't want me or my family to eat it

so if that corn is used to make corn flakes, corn oil, etc the poison is still spreading, right?

Different things are poisonous to different organisms, ie the Herpes virus is deadly to Apes, we just get a cold sore. I'm surprised that more people don't realize this, human beings are not the center of the universe. That's what makes the study of Toxicology so difficult, just bc it's toxic or not to lab animal doesn't mean we will react the same.

Many organic gardeners use bt and consider it safe bc it's organic. It's applied and can be washed off, but when it's injected its in the whole plant. We are also a lot bigger then pests. That's why the Dose Makes the Poison (great book). There is a lot of difference in acute and chronic toxicity, also.

Round up ready seed doesn't have round up in it. It means that if the plant is sprayed with round up it won't be harmed. If you don't spray it, then there is no round up. Clearly, there is much to be learned, before one should jump to conclusions. Rat poison is actually a blood thinner used in humans for medicinal reasons. I do recommend the above mention book, but it's not an easy read.

Here is what a friend told me about the Round up ready plants he said that you plant x number of corn and while it is young you apply a lite spraying of round up Just enough to maybe just hurt it a bit .. let it mature ,,harvest it and save the seeds repeat the process for three years increasing the strenght each year after three years you have a crop that is Round up resistant ..This was of course a simplified version told so an amatuer could understand He farms 2500 acres divided between cornsugar cane and cotton always varying the acreage trying to out guess the market He said the problem lies with insects if you were do do the same with pesticides the insects can produce 40 generations in the same span of time so when you spray insects you better kill them outright

copied from above post dont know how to make that box thing:
[That's what makes the study of Toxicology so difficult, just bc it's toxic or not to lab animal doesn't mean we will react the same.]


so why animal testing at all if this is true?

There has to be a reason why GMOs are being banned in country after country, yet here we praise them. maybe it has to be because Monsanto cant buy these other countries like it has the US. If there is no harm in them, why are millions upon millions being spent to prevent labeling them in food?
I think people would be appalled at just how widespread the use of GMOs is, how many everyday foodstuffs contain it to some degree. You cannot keep putting pesticides in your body without some reaction. So they may not affect a human the way it does an insect. maybe it kills the insect but just gives a human some kind of cancer or other debilitating disease.

That's the problem, Rising Creek. Humans live a long time and no longitudinal, mulit-generational studies have been conducted. And once the GMOs are out there, contaminating regular seeds and crops, there's no going back, so even if we discover down the line that there are serious consequences, there won't be much we can do about it.

I know they were finding early problems though(study not needed) when they started crossing soy/wheat or corn with nut genes and people with nut allergies are having reactions to foods that don't show nuts in the ingredients but because they were genetically modified they do not have to list nuts as an ingredient, because another problem here in the US is that there are no truth in labeling laws....ugh don't get me started!!


So even though those foods are processed they were still have allergic reactions, so even though it's a minute amount it was effecting them. I'm glad I made changes in what food I buy(I wish I knew sooner) and what made my decision to start growing as much of my own veggies and fruits that I can

The dairy industry wants to put aspartame in milk and other dairy products WITHOUT THIS BEING PUT ON THE LABEL!

http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/02/21/55075.htm

I think it's only in flavored milk, although the article doesn't actually say so. It seems aimed mostly at children's school milk.

Some people are allergic to aspartame!

Here's what Doctor Mercola says about aspartame:

http://www.mercola.com/article/aspartame/not_natural.htm

Why do they have to keep messing with our food?

Because there is nothing that says they can't/shouldn't.

There was a line the in the movie "Jurassic Park" - I don't remember it exactly, but it said something like: The scientists were so eager to see if they COULD, they didn't stop long enough to think whether they SHOULD.

Similar questions should, in my opinion, have been asked by current scientists before they started messing with the DNA of our food supply!

Artificial sweeteners have been semi- controversial for years. They are a big part of the on-going fight against natural sugars. Nothing to do with GMO's but goverment and lobby groups are always trying to protect us from ourselves. Fluorides and chlorine in our drinking water for example. We are a pill popping society, who now looks to cure every malady from insomnia to arthritus to depression as well as cancer with introduced chemicals. Often they have side effects which enrich trial lawyers. And that is not even considering the recreational drugs so prevalent in our society. We load many poisons into our bodies, many of which are beneficial in moderation. Whether it is good or bad we are living longer than parents and grandparents and multiplying like crazy. With population doubling almost every generation, we will at some time hit the limit of our food supply.

>> With population doubling almost every generation, we will at some time hit the limit of our food supply.

I read an interesting argument that used that fact as an argument against more efficient crops. He pointed out that any increase in food supply promptly results in an increase in human population, resulting in the same amount of famine and malnutrition, just for more people and consuming m ore agricultural chemicals and energy.

For example, the second Green Revolution stopped some famines for a few decades, but now population is catching back up and we'll be back to wide-spread scarcity soon. I think Malthus said much the same thing about the Industrial Revolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_trap

P.S. The above author counts the 1940s-1970s as the "second" Green Revolution. I would say that heavy use of pesticides, chemical fertilizer, gasoline energy for tillage, irrigation and transport, and very intensive cropping in general, can be counted as part of that era.

In that system, the Neolithic discovery of agriculture was the "first" Green Revolution.
The current genetic engineering explosion is the "third" Green Revolution.

Maybe there will be a "fourth" Green Revolution where the GM tools are used to make more-sustainable crop varieties - for example, tolerant of heat, dryness and lower fertility, but "designed" to grow at sustainable levels of intensity. Unfortunately, agribusiness will always maximize short-term profit over sustainability, risk/fear of genetic Armageddon, or anything else.

So first we need to genetically engineer some kind of mind-control drug to suck excess greed or short-sightedness out of decision-makers who currently consider quarterly profits much more important than survival over the next few hundred years. Or would that be more like campaign reform laws?

Rick, the ultimate truth was spoken in the old Pogo cartoon, "we have met the enemy and he is us". The major greed is in us as a people. We want what we want and we want it now. In most open societies demand drives the market. Even the countries of the old Soviet Union and China have come around to that truth. There are still a few that control everything from the top example North Korea. It is a fact that every biological organism expands to the limit of its food supply but other than lemmings few decide to go off the cliff. We the people demand that population collapse be postponed as long as possible. Just going back to WWI farming methods would bring on mass starvation.

I wish I could disagree with any part of that, but I can't.

I often buy whatever is cheapest, and that kind of pressure is what drives companies into a race for the bottom.

>> Just going back to WWI farming methods would bring on mass starvation.

I usually just think "food prices would go up", but you may be closer to the truth.

http://oregonstate.edu/dept/coarc/

looks like we grow a couple kinds of wheat seed here.

All I know about GMO and wheat straw, is my supplier asks me every year, if this is for the garden or for livestock bedding, because of the damage potential to gardens.

What Farmerdill said makes sense to me. Any problem with using hay or straw (or anything else) as mulch or compost would come from residual persistent herbicides, not from the crop being a GMO variety.

Roundup Ready GM crops tend to have more Roundup (glycophoshphate) used on them, but from what I read, Roundup isn't persistent in the plant, and/or isn't taken up from the soil after the plant decomposes (you have to spray it on foliage).

One argument FOR Roundup Ready GM crops for people who accept chemical weed control is that Roundup can be used instead of other, environmentally worse herbicides some of which are more persistent than Roundup.

http://www.btny.purdue.edu/weedscience/2006/broadleafWheat06.pdf
http://www.caes.uga.edu/commodities/fieldcrops/forages/pests/WeedAlf.pdf

2,4-D
Bromoxynil, "Buctril", "Moxy"
Bromoxynil + MCPA
Carfentrazone
Clopyalid
Clopyralid + fluroxypyr, "WideMatch"
Dicamba,
Banvel
Prosulfuron, "Peak"
Thfensulfuron, "Harmony GT"
tribenuron, "Express"

Of course, the motivation for choosing Roundup over phenoxy herbicides m ay not be an expression of Green sentiment. It's more likely economic , due to issues like:

"These herbicides can cause substantial crop injury and yield loss in small grains if applied before tillering begins or after development of the grain heads have been initiated."

Convenience and economics. I'm more sympathetic to a farmer trying to break even or make a profit from his land, than I am to Monsanto backing everyone in to a corner where they have no options other than Monsanto seeds. And I feel some mean-spirited satisfaction at Monsanto's expense that (of course) weeds are evolving to be resistant to glycophosphate, as it becomes more and more widely used.

But Farmerdill's other comment has me thinking: what if it is not just desire for more profit, but aversion to wide-spread starvation, that drives modern intensive or hyper-intensive agricultural practices? The distinction between "food prices would go up" and "some people would starve" isn't a real distinction in a world where poverty is widespread.

P.S.
Am I right that Roundup can't be used on wheat or alfalfa UNLESS they have Roundup Ready genes, because wheat and alfalfa are not broadleaved?

Nancy the reason your hay supplier asks that may have nothing to do with GMOs. It probably has to do with the fact that they use a systemic broadleaf herbicide, that kills the weeds in hay but will also kill the plants in your garden,

I wish I had never mentioned GMOs and hay, it was a mistake . But I do think it's important that people realize the damage that contaminate hay can do but it's NOT bc of GMOs

Alfalfa as are clovers and lespidezas is broadleaved. Wheat, rye, barley and corn are grasses so any broadleaf herbicide can be used on them. Not much advantage to making them roundup-ready.

Thanks!

I use Coastal (grass) and alfalfa hay to feed my lawn ornaments. Either one could be a problem in manure, compost or mulch, either bc the coastal hay has had a systemic broadleaf herbicide used on it repeatedly or bc the Alfalfa has Round up ready gene in it (GMO) and has been drenched with herbicide. The result is still the same.

OK, I'm confused (and no comments about shooting fish in a barrel, please). Roundup was not a broadleaf herbicide when I was in school. It kills everything, even (or especially) grasses. In fact, Roundup was specifically used to control grasses; we already had effective (and much cheaper) herbicides for broadleaf weeds.

-Rich

Not everything, but it is broad based. Most of the problems in grass crops are broadleaf weeds. Crabgrass and nutsedge being exceptions, but these are handled with premergence and special nutsedge herbicides respectively. Nutsedge being one thing glyphosate won't kill, but It will burn the tops down. Nutsedge is not really a grass but it looks like one. Image and Sedgehammer are popular herbicides. 2-4d-amine, Buctril or Banvel are popular for crops like winter wheat. Bayer has a product called Huskie which is more broad spectrum for cereal crops. There are a lot of herbicides awaiting registration.

Roundup is used to tackle phragmites on the marshes here. And phrags are a grass, with very persistent rhizome roots.

We produce a lot of alfalfa in Oregon, and its getting testy here

http://www.oregonbusiness.com/the-latest/4837-group-sues-over-monsanto-alfalfa-crop

The last rodent "poison" I bought is actually high-dose vitamin D in a food bait. It worked very well. The key is the dose.

Lots of things have been banned in "country after country". India banned Coca Cola for years because the company refused to release the secret "10x" formula. Countries frequently ban products that are patented in order to encourage their own scientists to come up with a substitute. We've done it here "to protect domestic industries".

And of course, MANY countries ban free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the rights of women to vote, etc.

You often have to dig a little to find the real reasons governments do things.

Maybe you should check your sources. There was ONE attempt to incorporate a Brazil nut gene into soy. The resulting beans were quickly discovered to contain nut allergens. It was NEVER MARKETED. So naturally there was no need to label them as nuts...

There are those who do not worry about their food being GE'd and there are those who wish to avoid food that has been GE'd. In either case, it is my opinion that, food should be labeled with it's contents, or, as in the case of fresh produce, have a statement saying that it has been genetically altered.

Then everyone would be happy.

In recent weeks I have read that aspartame or sucralose might be added to dairy products WITHOUT the addition being stated on the label!

I have checked my sources, thank you

My hubby suggested that maybe they are adding aspartame to milk for the reason they added fluoride to the water.

flowAjen - I assume your hubby means they have "no GOOD reason" LOL

From what I have read, the excuse is so children will like dairy more because it will taste sweeter.

LOL, he saw a news story about fluoride, after the cold war they had an over abundance of it because they didn't need it anymore(was used in making bombs) so he's thinking because people are learning how bad aspartame is for you the companies probably have too much of it and they need to sell it to someone

They are already flavoring the kids regular milk at school and label it vanilla, don't know why they need to make it any sweeter... of course the chocolate milk is already too sweet