The parallels you were drawing were beyond strained.
You do not know the slopes of my range land, the plants I fight, the soil erosive index of my ground, and the wind erosive conditions common to my environment.
I do know that nowhere in Nebraska is the average topography as steep as the average topography in the Santa Cruz MOUNTAINS, where I live (which would be taller than the Himalaya if they eroded at the same rate). Nor did you know my conditions when you said,
I could almost write the exact same thing.
You should know that the erosion mechanics, weather, and soils here in Coastal California have little in common with what happens in Nebraska. These mountains are so erosive they wind up in geology textbooks as examples. To infer that average slopes and runoff problems are similar to Nebraska was laughable. To say that your soils vary as much is equally suspect. Here, topsoil varies from non-existent to at most a couple of feet simply because it is too steep and too rainy for it to stay put, even with redwood on it. The glacial uplift strata stand on edge with the soft stuff washing out between the harder plates, which eventually become unstable and crumble in earthquakes. Strata vary from as little as six feet across, to about thirty feet, at most. Their compositions on our property include shale, yellow and red clay, and at least half a dozen grades of sandstone within just several hundred feet. The resulting soils therefore often change radically within a foot. By contrast, I would guess that the degree to which your soils vary from heavy to light probably has more to do with its calcium versus magnesium availability due to relative nutrient depletion than it does the original mineral substrate.
No you totally missed what I was stating.
Let’s take a look what you wrote:
I make the wrong choice at the wrong rate and I can smoke next years crop. This say nothing about keeping the door open to a potential crop change during the current crop season if something goes horribly wrong and I must replant.
As to the first sentence, nobody puts down so much pre-emergent that they wipe out two years’ production unless they are incompetent. Such a farmer wouldn’t last long. As to the second sentence, besides the bad grammar, “keeping the door open to a potential crop change” presumes that it is possible to replant the same year.
If I plant field corn and spray pendimethalin and have an early crop failure, I cannot go in and plant to wheat or soybeans until the next cropping season. I can disk all I want, it will not change the Relative Soil Persistence of the chemical.
Well that is what happens with pre-emergence herbicides, isn’t it? Our plantings are of live plants and seed, effectively five to ten crops in any one spot, simultaneously. Application of early pre-emergent is thus not an option. Opportunities for experimental trials are very limited by the speed of maturation, any failure of which can induce a huge amount of labor that goes on for years as well as a substantial setback of re-establishment. A second planting here is irrelevant, simply because it doesn’t rain here in the summer like it does in Nebraska. Further, native seed in this area doesn’t germinate in summer at all, no matter how much water you add; they require cold stratification for at least three months, among other things. You get one shot. In addition, nobody would disk a 50% slope that gets 60” of rain in five months.
Managing habitat here is radically different here than is farming in Nebraska.
Lovely stuff, pendimethalin (PROWL); it’s used in California primarily in perennial crops, such as vineyards or orchards. With the amount of runoff we get in the winter, one would be irresponsible to use it in this part of the county because it’s too steep and too close to streams:
Its use here would likely be cited as harmful to local threatened steelhead and endangered coho (both listings were bogus) so chances are one could not get a permit for it.
Now I am not a fan of Monsanto in any means, IMHO, they are seeking monopolistic if not oligopoly power within the seed/chemical industry, however your logic reeks of a hippie crystal loving, Elvis flying UFO conspiracy theory. I had a successful career in product development. It is a customary practice in that field to plan the lifecycle of a technology, superceding your own successful products on a schedule, especially when you can renew patent protection thereby. Patent cycles and the lifecycle of chemical plants both run in decades, so it is absurd to assert that patent depreciation and obsolescence are not in Monsanto’s “view port.” Because the patent on glyphostate has run out, Monsanto has every reason to introduce their new herbicide line(s) when (not if) they either have substitutes for RoundUp, or RoundUp Ready products no longer have any usefulness, especially if they have a captive market by then. Inducing herbicide resistance in weeds, whether by active or passive means, accomplishes just that.
To actively seek resistance so they can jack up prices isn't even in their view port. Their “viewport” is measured in decades and creating captive markets is common practice in many an industry, especially energy.
Now a better plan would be to introduce another GMO crop line with herbicide tolerance to a chemical they just happen to come up with. To encourage producers to switch to this brand new crop would be the utmost of simplicity, just radically increase the tech fee on resistant crops and terminate the RR trait sharing agreements with competitor seed companies. Problem solved.
Thus you have contradicted yourself by realizing how they may eventually do it.
There is ample precedent for using patent protection and favorable regulations to either protect a company from product liability or use them favor a new product when the patent runs out on an old one. Dow came out with chlorpyrifos in 1965, just before the EPA banned DDT in 1972, thus opening new markets for organophosphates that were far more toxic than the DDT they replaced. In 1988, EPA dumped chlordane and sales of chlorpyrifos took off. Zeneca just sold the dregs of the phosmet (trade name Imidan) patent to a previously unheard of PO Box company in the Arizona desert called Gowan now that the regulations are stacked against them and a link to between phosmet and BSE has been established.
Now, who do you think funds the greenie lawyers at environmental NGOs to get the government to dump an older chemical in favor of newly approved and patented substitutes? The tax-exempt, “charitable” foundations of investor funded environmental NGOs.
I have written an entire book on this topic that has been well received by people whom you likely respect. A copy was hand carried into Ann Venneman’s office by Malcolm Wallop. Here is his cover letter to his old fishing buddy, Dick Cheyney. Political corruption factors into the operations of the herbicide and seed market just as it factors into nearly everything you buy, your hippie crystal loving, Elvis flying UFO conspiracy theory protestations notwithstanding.
Me: When weeds escape containment the society just pretends that there isn't a cost.
Hardly. In this state I have to control my noxious weeds. If I don't a the Weed District will come in spray. I guarantee it isn't cheap and is shouldn't be.
LOL! Around here, the State and County are the worst offenders when it comes to spreading weeds. They banned roadside spraying because RoundUp was “too poisonous” and started using flail mowers along the roads instead. That spread poison hemlock seed and neuro-toxic starthistle into every watershed in the county, not to mention French broom which constitutes an enormous fire hazard. The State mandated straw mulching on every construction project “to protect fish” and also ended up spreading starthistle and various invasive grasses across the entire State. Now both levels of government are building weed bureaucracies that will feed off problems they have exacerbated.
You left out many other factors that would promote introgressive hybridization. Factors such as differences in flowering time, timing of the plant's reproductive structures, block inheritance, dissemination, and dormancy. Those factors weigh heavily in the prospects of gene propagation to non-target species.
Whoppee. You left out differences in maturation dates due to differences in shade, soil temperature (which can vary considerably here on the same parcel), and available water. One doesn’t need to list every factor to make a point.
Now, here is where you inadvertently prove my argument for me:
So am I to believe that your concern is only with agrostis? If so then fine, ban it case close. However your problem seems to be with RoundUp technology as a whole, not certain crop allowances.
Neither. My concern about RoundUp Ready is that it carries significant risks as a platform technology. A technological platform is one in which the producer is willing to make an enormous initial investment in order to spin off a whole range of products. The risk I perceive is not attendant to any one of those particular products. Typically, a new platform starts with the most profitable or (in the case of RR corn or soybeans) lowest risk products (IOW, the easiest to get past regulators). After that, the producers move on to products with steadily lower profit opportunities or higher risks as the technology matures. As margins drop and as they have a need to develop a new platform for some other market they put their less capable people on the “mature technology,” including managers that too often specialize in false economies. That is when they typically run into trouble.
This last comment of yours on RUR agrostis, “If so then fine, ban it case close,“ is the most damning thing you wrote. It shows that you think that what I am talking about is the decision to ban a product or not, which is not the case. It demonstrates that all you care about is whatever immediately affects you and your business. You project that I operate the same way. You couldn’t be more wrong.
I’ll make it really clear for you: I don’t think government should have power to ban any product. I do think that producers of every product should carry sufficient insurance to mitigate the damage that product might do.
Over the last seven years, I have given up a successful engineering career and significant income to, among other things, help family foresters, ranchers, and farmers throw off the yoke of regulatory government. I invented and am developing a new opportunity for landowners to market their skills and assets in the habitat management business as an overlay to resource production (seeing as corrupt and incompetent government agencies too often force them to do it for free in order to please specific political (usually moneyed) interests). It is a market model that requires too much site-specific knowledge for the corporate single-use-of-land model to exercise the advantage of economies of scale, thus providing the hands-on manager a way to stay competitive in a global market of habitat management goods and services interdigitated with food production.
Although both environmental problems and solutions can be incredibly complex, the principles of the management system are beautifully simple. Unfortunately, in order to show how simple principles possess unique abilities to map onto complexity, one must show how the system would work in application to demonstrate its capability, which is hideously complex, just as is making a modern automobile or computer. This is also where those being introduced to the idea either go to sleep or try to pigeon-hole the concept (or me) into some existing interest group (as you did).
Accordingly, I am now doing just that on my own. I have committed my land, my retirement, and my kids’ education money in the cause of economic liberty. I may never see a dime from it and could lose everything.
So you see, banning RoundUp Ready agrostis is not in my mind at all. I am motivated by two things: the desire to fix the regulatory mess, and my interest in restoring my land with minimal interference by my negligent neighbors who dump weed seed all over my property every year. One of them has even admitted, in writing, that he uses weeds “to control erosion,” and then he rototills his 10% slopes, every year, expecting his soil to stay there when it rains (one storm last October dropped four inches in an hour).
The reason such irresponsible landowners get away with their negligence is that it is virtually impossible to find them accountable in court for the damage that they may inadvertently do. As things are now, I am making slow progress against the onslaught.
Here is an example of a spraying operation. As you can see, it has very little in common with the way you use herbicides.
The work is so detailed and weeds mature so fast that herbicide resistant weeds would make any restoration effort nigh to impossible.
Given that RoundUp Ready agrostis pollen DID escape the test area (contrary to your assertions) what will happen when it’s RoundUp Ready oats? Are you looking forward to glyphostate resistant Avena fatua? Would that affect you?
I give you herbicide resistance in pest grasses in Australia:
In recognition of their importance, a national workshop on annual grass weeds in winter crops was initiated by the Australian Weeds Committee in 1986. It is interesting to note that herbicide resistance in annual grasses was at that time a novelty, with only two cases known. Moreover, at that time the indications were that resistant biotypes were less competitive, leading to the recommendation that only minor resources should be allocated to researching the problem. Clearly the workshop failed to predict the storm that was brewing, and is indicative that a review of priorities was long overdue.
Interestingly, besides the Lolium you cited, their three big herbicide-resistant grass weeds are nearly the same as my problem grass weeds: oat, rye, and vulpia (to which I would add Bromus hordeaceous, Briza minor, Cynosurus echinatus, and Festuca megulura (ripgut, cheat, and foxtail barley are easy by comparison)).
Thus, my first concern with RUR is that, eventually, Monsanto will blow it because it is a platform technology with inherent catastrophic risks for which Monsanto won’t have to answer. It won’t matter if it is corn, soybeans, agrostis, or (as of March 4, 2005) sugar beets (EPA [Docket No. 04-075-2] Monsanto Co. and KWS SAAT AG), all it would take is one resistant species for the consequences to be catastrophic.
It is plain wrong period. You cannot honestly draw a link between agrostis and for example RoundUp corn.
I wasn’t trying to do that.
The first link is the fact that effective and non-toxic substitutes for glyphostate do not exist. Until comparable substitutes are available, losing efficacy in that product that, (along with DDT) should be respected as one of the great inventions of 20th Century chemistry, is a serious risk. Just as one should respect the threat of anti-biotic resistant bacteria and not over-use the few safe and effective anti-biotics or disinfectants on the market, speaking of which…
As you recognized in the case of Lolium multiflorum, cross fertilization is not the only mechanism by which herbicide resistance has developed in grasses, nor, as you should now know, is Lolium the only genus that has developed genetic resistance to herbicides. Thus, the second link is that RoundUp Ready seed has enormously increased the use of and reliance upon glyphostate, virtually guaranteeing that second means by which “superweeds” might occur has been markedly increased in probability by the development of the RUR platform technology.
There are relatively few species that corn is sexually compatible let alone be able to form a fertile hybrid. Teosinte is one of the few (not surprisingly since it is an ancestor), and it is located in Guatemala. By my calculations Guatemala is much further than the recommended seed isolation distance of 660 feet.
Subsequent to your assertion that there was no such data, I cited an EPA study that collected RUR pollen that had traveled thirteen miles. Thirteen miles is a fair sight farther than 660 feet, a difference that strongly suggests the influence of marketing upon perceived risk. So, what should the “real” number be? The answer is likely to be site specific. Once adequately dispersed, even if there was cross-fertilization, if there was no advantage to glyphostate resistance in that area, the trait would likely disappear over time. Sufficient dilution might preclude most potential RUR individuals from breeding. How many standard deviations really are necessary? What would the management methods in that buffer have to be? What are the mitigating factors that may allow site-specific deviations at what level of risk?
It’s too complex a problem for a bureaucratic regulatory system to handle because the probabilities are sufficiently remote in any individual case as to be totally intangible, thus it is silly to talk in terms of “banning.” There is also too much money involved for bureaucrats to resist enormous political pressure. That is why a market driven site-specific risk management architecture is needed. You have railed against what I have said as if I was proposing some kind of outright ban of RoundUp Ready products. Such is not the case and never has been; all I said is that they carry a horrible risk. By your comment on banning Agrostis you have shown that you hadn’t a clue what I meant, much less what I propose to do about it.
The other reason that was a damning comment is that it demonstrated that you don’t care about the risk associated with RUR Agrostis because you think it’s not YOUR risk as a user of RUR corn and soybeans. If, however a glyphostate resistant Avena fatua does infest the wild, you can bet that it would make your existence miserable, even if your precious RUR corn or soybeans didn’t cause the problem. Surrounding habitat that keeps local species from going endangered would be ruined. Monsanto would say that it isn’t their fault because the USDA and EPA approved the product. Monsanto would still be sued and may not have the wealth to pay for such an enormous problem. If you think the productive advantages of RoundUp Ready can support all that, I have my doubts. Taxpayers won’t be too happy bailing out your already heavily subsidized grain industry, much less paying for the damage done to millions of acres in the wild.
This is exactly the same pattern as happened with the addition of MTBE in gasoline, the adoption of which was absolutely fraudulent on the part all the players involved: the EPA, environmental NGOs sponsored by oil money, and the oil companies themselves. Now taxpayers and consumers are paying through the nose to fix it while Lyondell (formerly ARCO Chemical) gets off scott free, indeed they are SUING the US for its “premature” discontinuation of MTBE in reformulated gasoline!
The reason the pattern is the same is that they share the same cause: socializing risk by regulatory means.
Now, as to the size of the restoration market, which as you correctly noted, while currently nowhere near as big as ag market, it does have perhaps larger market potential, especially if we are successful at breaking the government monopoly in the habitat management business.
The profit making enterprise in the business of growing food, having converted its land out of habitat and into food production, relies upon lands elsewhere that support habitat that keeps the planet going, maintains popular parks, etc., without which not a few would be locally endangered, especially plants and the insect life that depends upon it. Providing that habitat does not come free, especially if most of the land thereabout is already converted to other use or has been abandoned as higher production rates (or depleted soils) drive farms out of production. Besides building new housing, what is to be done with abandoned ag land? Converting it into habitat can be extremely difficult and hideously expensive. Costs for State-run projects restoring native meadow have run from $90,000 to TWO MILLION dollars per acre. Hence, I think therein lies an opportunity for those willing to develop and improve the technologies necessary to make such projects cost effective.
Those who own habitat land also effectively provide an uncompensated service and suffer a disproportionate regulatory burden compared to those who have already converted their property. Further, such landowners have not the option of converting their property to other use because to do so would remove the last remaining unconverted habitat. Thus owners of natural habitat suffer a severe cost of lost opportunity in addition to high operating costs without compensation from anyone.
As an owner of such, one of my costs of operations is the purchase and use of herbicides. Almost one third of the species on my property are exotics. After fifteen years (much of it in fuel reduction), only a fifth of its area is heavily infested (at least for now, it was once nearly totally covered with weeds). If those who use RUR products cause me to either purchase vastly more expensive herbicides OR employ hand labor where herbicides were theretofore all that was required, their failure to contain the externalities of their production has harmed me economically far more than my food bill was reduced by RUR products, I promise you. Lawyers call that a disproportionate burden.
Like it or not, those are facts of economics and law, your protestations notwithstanding.
There is an incredibly remote chance that teosinte would be pollinated by a GMO corn plant, produce a viable seed that expresses the GA21 or NK603 trait, have that seed to go on and successfully produce future generations... and the resultant species becomes invasive enough to be classified a weed.
How about RR soybeans and the pollen connection. There are no relatives of soybeans in the continental US, there are some wild subgenus Glycine that may be in the Pacific. Unfortunately hybrids from these crosses have been sterile. Strike one.
Lets look at crosses between G. max and G. soja in subgenus Soja, which as found in China, Korea, and Japan. Even if we pretend both species are found growing together in the US, cultivated soybeans unfortunately leads to a high percentage of self-fertilization. Strike two.
Since soybeans are self pollinated, not wind pollinated any sexually compatible plant is highly unlikely to cross. It is so unlikely that Certified Seed growers are permitted to grow soybeans zero distance from the nearest contaminating source. Strike three.
Soybean plants will not transfer the genetic RR trait. Case closed.
Wrong case. Before fantasizing that you’ve won a debate, I suggest you get clear on what your opponent’s position is first.
I suppose one could delve into the other RR crops and their traits and completely expose the issue, however the evidence is devastating enough.
To you maybe.
These two crop compromise the majority of bio-tech acres.
Just these few paragraphs themselves, just a few minutes work, hopefully will make others look into the issue. They will come to the same conclusion. Instead of focusing upon pollen gene transfer mechanism, the customary and correct concerns of over reliance upon one chemical mode of action should be the main focus.
Wrong again. If it was that easy, Bayer, Dow Elanco, or another competitor would have invented a half dozen equivalents to glyphostate ten years ago. They didn’t. Glyphostate is, so far, uniquely safe and effective. It may take decades before a substitute is available and it won’t be cheap. The risk exists and it is significant.
Unfortunately the anti GMO, frankenfruiters dump good science for bad logic. Assuming that every acre of agricultural ground is going to be planted to one chemical resistant hybrid only exists in sci-fi. In reality it is rotated to different crops and different herbicides.
Not for long, and don’t toss me in with the anti-GMO crowd, because I am not such an opponent.
With millions of acres planted to GMO crops such as RR soybeans and RR corn, there has been little if any significant weed resistance issues.
It’s still early in the platform lifecycle.
Of those merely have come from an inherent natural tolerance and passed on simply due to natural selection. In 20+ years of widespread use, only one instance of development resistance has occurred (annual ryegrass). No mythical cross pollination from corn to marestail, no transference from soybeans to bindweed. None. Now with the possibility of an expanded line of RR resistant crops maybe the Monsanto/EPA/APHIS conspiracy could mess up and eventually allow an outbreak. Maybe Monsanto can eventually prove you correct, goodness knows you can't even come close.
Next time you get in a debate over the wrong contention, you might try being a little less condescending.
Again, re Lolium multiflorum, you are wrong. Developmental resistance in wild oats to Group A herbicides has been reported throughout southern Australia. ‘Wild Oats in World Agriculture’, Adelaide, Volume 2, pp. 82-7. Australia. Journal of Applied Ecology 13, 257-64. Vulpia has a similar tolerance to the selective grass herbicides which belong to the aryloxyphenoxypropionate and cyclohexanedione families as well as paraquat, chlorsulfuron, and, to a moderate degree, trifluralin. When one is attempting control of vulpia among perennial grasses, such is concerning.
RUR has not been around for twenty years, so to infer its safety because it took Lolium twenty years to develop resistance to various pre-emergent herbicides is a false analogy. Take the hint: RUR resistance in weeds is a matter of time, simply because the number of individual plant opportunities for RUR resistance to develop is sufficient to virtually guarantee it will happen eventually. It would probably have happened anyway, but the current mechanics assure the event will happen far sooner when we have fewer technical options. It is a risk, not initially very likely but with horrible consequences if it goes wrong. You have, over the course of this discussion, effectively admitted what I am telling you in several instances, but need to more habitually open your horizon.
When explaining how market systems work to timber landowners, farmers, and ranchers, all too often, I find them similarly self-absorbed, inflexible, and risk-averse to the point of cowardice. Paradoxically, even with the handwriting on the wall predicting corporate-government collusion “consolidating” production abroad forcing their eventual demise, they sign right up for a diminishing marginal rate of return chasing “economies of scale” (until the corporatists have an oligopoly overseas, have regulated their domestic competition to death, and can then fix prices, screwing the consumers who didn’t care whence their food came, much less from whom). The little guys just keep wailing about their burdens and waiting for somebody to ride in on a white horse and fix it for them so that they can go back to when life was simpler.
It ain’t gonna happen.