Re: email list suggestion - organic or not .....
Charles Dills wrote:
>
> >And there's my second "rub". They know all about the 'cides and
> >how "safe" they are. But history is proving that some/much of what
> >education/research has "tested and proved safe" is not. NOT in the
> >long run. DDT. Dioxin. Dieldrin. Lindane. Etc.
>
> +++++---------------------
> Yes, I', a chemist. Safety often becomes political, not
> scientific. We tend to blame the bottles of chemicals rather than the
> ignorami that won't or can't read a label and follow instructions.
> DDT probably saved more lives than any other chemical. It
> almost eliminated malaria! I remember pictures of whole villages in
> Italy being treated with DDT in a barn. They had blowers and blew the
> stuff down their necks, up their sleeves, up their pant legs.
> Pictures showed a column of people moving through a barn between
> people with the blowers. There was such a white fog that you could
> hardly make anything out.
> Now, if you remember, DDT was banned because the brown
> pelican eggs were too fragile to survive incubation. I don't know of
> any human problem with it. The problem was that it appeared so safe
> that people grossly overused it. And the excess got washed into the
> streams and thence to the ocean.
> We thought of the ocean as an infinite dump. DDT is insoluble
> in water, but it is fat-soluble. So the particles floated around
> until they encountered a moving piece of fat we call a fish. It would
> then dissolve in the fish which in turn got eaten by the brown
> pelican.
> The knee-jerk reaction. BAN DDT! No one said , "Let's use it
> according to instructions, maybe even license people to use it
> correctly!". No, no, no, it must be banned. In my opinion,that's was
> not very clever!
> *****---------------
> >
> >What is worse, the insects are adapting - because of insect numbers
> >and anatomy and their short life spans - to the 'cides. Are humans ?
> >who knows which human survivors are surviving the "safe, tested"
> >University products being applied to our foods and adapting to them,
> >and which are still operating on inherited good genes ?
>
> +++++-------------
> I don't think the insects are "adapting" to the insecticides.
> Those that are susceptible are not reproducing, leaving the resistant
> ones to reproduce. So, yes, the gene pool does a shift, but I don't
> think they are "developing" any resistance that wasn't already there!
> I'm confident that since there is money to be made and there
> are millions of chemists, we will keep ahead of the gene pool shift.
Chas
Much of this post of yours has been ably answered by Toni.
However, I should just like to make a comment on your final paragraph.
I am quite sure there is money to be made, but I would ask you "at whose
expense?".
I would suggest that the increasingly expensive and escalating use of
chemicals in agriculture is putting a burden on farmers which is
approaching the intolerable. Inevitably some will fall by the wayside
and others only survive by steadily increasing the price of their
products.
So we could end up with almost nobody getting enough to eat except those
inventing, producing and marketing these increasingly burdensome
chemicals and others among the very rich.
The outcome as I see it could well be a grand collapse and the
inevitable return to a simpler way of doing things.
Sadly, a new start in these terms could only come with great suffering
and loss of life. How much better if alternatives could be adopted which
would cut back chemical usage and gradually let agriculture get back on
a saner and more sustainable footing and at the same time help the
world's ecosystem recover from the drubbing it has had over the last few
years.
This is no impossible dream, as is being proved by farmers who have
adopted the organic approach and are already producing quality crops on
a commercial scale without drenching them constantly in chemicals.
Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
Wainuiomata, New Zealand. (on the "Ring of Fire" in the SW Pacific).
Lat. 41:16S Long. 174:58E. Climate: Mediterranean/Temperate
