|
|
|
| Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Wednesday, February 20 2013 @ 02:47 PM EST |
The only sensible answer is that you think you're going to be in a better
position by agreeing than by not agreeing.
That is either you going to grow a better crop or a cheaper crop or both thereby
making more money.
Since most farmers apparently already buy specialized seed rather than making
their own it makes little practical difference to most farmers.
---
Rsteinmetz - IANAL therefore my opinions are illegal.
"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: 351-4V on Wednesday, February 20 2013 @ 02:50 PM EST |
The weeds (definition: anything we don't want) would compete for nutrients and
sunlight available for the plants we do want. The finished product would be
contaminated with the weeds and we may get "docked" on the sale price. We would
have lower yields and hence make less money.
We could use alternative methods
of eradicating weeds such as hand labor. My first for-pay job was pulling weeds
from bean rows. But that method is economically inferior to the large-scale
spraying methods used today due to labor costs. So yes, it's an economic
consideration.
In the end, farming is just a very large economic equation with
a heaping helping of Mother Nature's own brand of uncertainty thrown in just for
giggles.
On a public level, the desire for food products untainted by unnatural
compounds is off-set by the desire to adequately feed an ever increasing human
population in the face of ever decreasing available resources (land). If
current trends of population growth and the withdrawal of land from cultivation
continue, productivity in the agriculture sector will have to increase
dramatically, possibly unrealistically, to keep pace. Despite the apparent
abundance we see at our grocery stores today, the question "How will we feed
everyone in a few years?" continues to be an important concern.
Whether to
categorize large-scale herbicide application as a farmer maximizing his profit
potential or a way to feed the world's hungry is a question I leave to each to
answer as they see fit.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 20 2013 @ 05:30 PM EST |
"And why agree to Monsanto's terms?
That last is the part I really don't get."
1) You grow more crops. Without the weeds, you get bigger yields.
2) Those crops are less contaminated, so you get a higher price.
3) Without the weeds, the crops are much easier to grow.
What's there to understand. Given a choice between the conditions that Monsanto
puts on you and going back to the 70s way of growing soybeans , farmers will
invariably chose the conditions.
As I've said before the major litigations by Monsanto that I;ve seen are all
basically the same. The farmer wants the Monsanto seed but tries to find a way
of sidestepping Monsanto.
In this case Bowman not only wanted Monsanto seed,
by applying Roundup to his crops he guaranteed that his plants would be 99.99%
Monsanto. He did this by applying
Roundup to his crops killing almost all the nonMonsanto crops.
Most of the people siding with Bowman are doing so because they think Monsanto
is evil, not because of the actual ethics of the situation. Even though a woman
is a prostitute she can be raped.
Or to put it another way there are a lot of iFans who claim Apple should win
their lawsuits because Samsung is evil. They are just as wrong.
Mouse The Lucky Dog
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
|
|
|
|
