Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Guido....not sure where you got this info; "Among crops used for human consumption, only fruit trees require insect pollinators"....see list within this article.
Simply go to farm supply store and buy granulated salt for water purifiers. here's 50lb is $5.20. Spread granules where you want NOTHING to grow. Give it about a week. You good for a year, unless it rains a lot and washes it down into soil.
You can also mix saturated solution of same salt, add bottle of some cheap detergent to a bucket of it, mix and spray. 2 days for result. Done.
They used that salt on the ground before they laid asphalt in our property. As growth prevention.
Simply go to farm supply store and buy granulated salt for water purifiers. here's 50lb is $5.20. Spread granules where you want NOTHING to grow. Give it about a week. You good for a year, unless it rains a lot and washes it down into soil.
You can also mix saturated solution of same salt, add bottle of some cheap detergent to a bucket of it, mix and spray. 2 days for result. Done.
They used that salt on the ground before they laid asphalt in our property. As growth prevention.
This is a great way to wreck the soil. How long does it take for the micro-fauna to recolonize? Maybe never...
Guido....not sure where you got this info; "Among crops used for human consumption, only fruit trees require insect pollinators"....see list within this article.
Regards
Gemstone1
From the article: "• Of the world’s 115 most important food crops, 87 require pollination to produce fruits, nuts and seeds. They account for a third of the $3 trillion worth of agricultural produce sold each year."
Now a little arithmetic 87 /115 is 75%, yet they only account for 33% of food costs ...WUWT?
Most human nutrition consists of grains (grasses). Wind pollinated. or meat-->most food animals are grazers, ie- they eat grass- wind pollinated... or roots like potatoes, cassava, etc. Pollination not a factor. Beans also do quite well without pollinators.
Like I said, fruits & nuts require pollinators but those foods are not a major source of nutrition to most people- more like deserts & treats.
Grains and meats do play a huge part in the human diet, no doubt...the statement of "only fruit trees require bees for pollination" is what I took issue with.....it is an incorrect statement. Honey (and other) bees pollinate many more crops that we consume, too many to list here....but the links below list all of the crops
. Wikipedia list.
Gem: I'll stand by my last explanation: the foods that provide the bulk of human nutrition don't need pollinators. In the lists you provide, the crops that do need them are almost all specialty crops that provide little "real" nutrition.
Try looking up the nutritional data for some of those "good for you" veggies like broccoli or Brussel sprouts: you may as well chew on the leg of a chair for all the nutrition they provide.
Commercial use of honey bees for food production is kinda like using herbicides, pesticides, irrigation, etc: you could do without these things, but production is better with them. Honey bees are used for three main reasons: they can be used (herding up and keeping enough bumble bees, mud wasps and butterflies would be problematic) and they have the added benefit of producing honey which can be sold.
The third reason, then, is that, because they are relatively easy to keep and move around from farm to farm, they give some sort of guarantee that the crop will have its pollinators in adequate numbers. If we had to rely on Nature, there would be variation from yr to yr as population numbers fluctuated naturally.
You're right about glyphosate and loss of food sources for pollinators. My only defense is that it's used mainly on row crops that aren't visited regularly by the pollinators anyways. It's the transition from natural prairie to crop land that has really diminished the habitat for the pollinators, not the chemical itself.
"A study published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Sciences Europe reveals that Americans have applied 1.8 million tons of glyphosate since its introduction in 1974. Worldwide, 9.4 million tons of the chemical have been sprayed onto fields. For comparison, that’s equivalent to the weight of water in more than 2,300 Olympic-size swimming pools. It’s also enough to spray nearly half a pound of Roundup on every cultivated acre of land in the world".
Let's do the math, even if you believe such sensational analysis. 0.5 pounds = 227 grams. Divide that by 40 years, you get 5.67 grams per year - not much. Now consider how much is used on non-cultivated land (landscaping or homeowners, for example) and the number gets smaller still.
Interesting how you can distort with data. Make a number big, just total 40 years of use. Makes me think environmentalists are not the most honest folks - use a lot of scare tactics.
Can't rep you again just yet, BBear, but very good analysis.
Big numbers are very scary to the naive. They blurt out how many tons are used, but offer no evidence that any harm comes from it.
BTW-- 2300 Olympic sized pools covers about 1/10th of a sq mile. If they're 10ft deep, then the liquid in them could be spread 1 in deep over about 12 sq miles. The US covers a little less than 4 million sq miles.
not surprisingly, the case against roundup is rapidly collapsing.
In writing a report about the cancer risk of glyphosate, a key ingredient in Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup, the World Health Organization (WHO) edited out references to evidence that the pesticide does not cause cancer in animals, Reuters reports in a story published yesterday (October 19). WHO Cherry-Picked Data on Pesticide, Investigation Finds | The Scientist
Last week, The Times reported how the scientist who advised the IARC to classify glyphosate as carcinogenic received dollars 160,000 from law firms suing Monsanto on behalf of cancer victims. War against chemicals is a shame on science | The Australian
It turns out that it was Portier himself, who as chair of an IARC committee in 2014 had proposed that the agency undertake a review of glyphosate in the first place. https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffre.../#19984a1d18eb
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
