Wow… considering this is Europe we’re talking about, that was fast.
I wonder if this issue is even on Taiwan’s radar? I can walk into any farm supply store and buy chemicals that are illegal in most countries, restricted in others, no questions asked. Not that I’d want to, of course - but A-Fu who doesn’t know any better is happily spraying the shit out of everything, because he was told it was a good idea back in 1958.
[quote=“finley”]Wow… considering this is Europe we’re talking about, that was fast.
I wonder if this issue is even on Taiwan’s radar? I can walk into any farm supply store and buy chemicals that are illegal in most countries, restricted in others, no questions asked. Not that I’d want to, of course - but A-Fu who doesn’t know any better is happily spraying the shit out of everything, because he was told it was a good idea back in 1958.[/quote]
That is so true… I’m always shocked to see people spraying their crops here: a) next to road, where I drive my scooter, and generally am in the zone of their spraying (!) b) without mask and protective clothes…
Pesticides and other chemicals are generally risky idea, because the results of their use shows years later, when ppl figure something totally died off because of it.
Seeing the news about bees… it’s actually kind of scary, and makes me thing I should learn farming and food growing ASAP so I can eat when the rest of the world will be starving 
Right. What really gets me steamed up about this issue is that people talk about “science”, or “scientific farming”. There is often very little real science behind these “innovations”. In reality, the specific purpose of industrial farming is to allow people to grow food (or raise animals) without needing to think, to care, or to analyze; to ignore the way nature works and bludgeon it into submission. Put seeds in ground. Add this chemical. Spray this one. Now add this one. Ta-da! Tasteless crops that might give you cancer. Or might not. We don’t know, because we didn’t actually do any science to find out what these chemicals and methods do. Not just the intended result, but all the other results. This is about as unscientific as it gets.
It is very, very scary. They ain’t dead yet - I have a lot of bee plants growing and it’s great to see the bees being busy and enjoying themselves. I wonder how long it’ll be before TPTB stop fiddling around - you can’t use that chemical, but you can use this other one whose noxious results haven’t come to light yet - and just say “enough”? Or will it be the public and the farmers who take the initiative? It has to happen one way or another.
The rapid response from the EU makes me really concerned, because the published evidence at the moment is fairly circumstantial. Nevertheless they’ve introduced legislation already. They rarely do that (the last time was probably over CFCs - even lead was phased out over decades, not months, despite well-known dangers). It suggests things are far worse than anyone is letting on.
There actually are people who are researching stuff, but agriculture scientist are often not counted as real scientist since they’re don’t have cool labs and so on. I’ve graduated from agriculture university and actually studied both about pesticides and other chemicals, as well as ecological options and organic farming. Like always in the world - it’s hard to find balance between quick developments and feeding 7 billion mouths and being healthy and eco at the same time. I’m not totally against using artificial substances for farming, however I would be very very careful about introducing them to market, and try to do tests (I mean, 20 years controlled testing is not too much to ask in my opinion).
For me the scary thing is that more and more people (including me) doesn’t know how to grow their food or how to find it in natural environment. There are countries (Japan) that cannot feed themselves！ That’s quite crazy.
I think the bees should be more “loud” news, but most people don’t care. I’m sure some people don’t even see connection between food and bees. 
Well … any technology has its uses, certainly. I agree that there are times and places when artificial substances or methods are useful. However, “all the time” is not the right time and place, which is where we’re at right now. One application that springs to mind is where you have compacted, depleted soil and you need to repair the damage. A good first move is to use a deep ripper and judicious application of appropriate amendments (eg., lime, phosphates, or micronutrients). Once. Then plant some pioneers. That will bootstrap the process very quickly with no apparent side effects. I also agree that testing is completely inadequate (my point in the previous post, really). For example, glyphosate is promoted as relatively benign, so it’s been used with abandon. It’s only now emerging, decades later, that it does actually have a detrimental effect on soil ecology.
What’s happening today is that people are applying technology simply because it’s there - not because they need it. This is quite generally true, not just in agriculture. Why do I need a quad-core, gigahertz-clocked CPU in my phone? It’s a f-ing phone. Why does a car have to consume 3000kilojoules per mile in fuel when a human on a bicycle uses 150kilojoules? Why do I have to plough a field if there are burrowers to do it for me? Why do I have to spray pesticides if there animals that will eat the pests? Why do I have to add artificial fertilizers when there are bacteria and fungi that will produce them naturally? Excessive technology is invariably a substitute for thinking, or a band-aid for bad design.
This one gets wheeled out a lot, and I contend that it’s complete and utter nonsense. If we destroy our environment by thoughtless use of technology, isn’t that going to put a bit of a dampener on our ability to grow food? There are farmers all over the world growing food without chemicals, often on so called “marginal” land, many of them making a good profit by supplying niche markets with high-quality products. You only have to go and look at the amount of biomass growing in the average forest or meadow to observe that artificial “assistance” is completely unnecessary. In Taiwan, there are lots of little hillside farmers (these guys love their chemicals, usually) and the difference is stark: a little grey scar, with a few pitiful vegetables on it, surrounded by lush growth. And these idiots think they’re “successful” and “modern”.
There’s a local farmer who walks past my plot most days and offers a few pearls of wisdom. Pretty much every single time, she shakes her head, tuts, and says “ai-yo, you’ll never grow anything there without water” (everyone else is tapping groundwater or the river - I rely almost entirely on rain). And there I am, standing in the middle of waist-high green vegetation. Humans have an amazing ability to not see what’s right in front of their eyes.
I think this is the crux of the matter. People have become so disconnected from their food source that they neither know nor care where it comes from. Personally, I think this situation has been deliberately engineered. A customer who is dependent on you to stay alive is going to be a very good customer.
I think a lot of it is to do with the move to cities. At least farmers know more about where their food comes from, for the most part.
Agriculture and food science and health gets a very low priority in school given their importance.
At the same time, there’s a lot of fear mongering and targeting of the wrong things, IMHO.
Sure - the funny part is that the local farmers tell me, “You don’t want to buy that stuff in the market, it’s been sprayed to fuck. Just eat what you grow!” So there they are, with one plot growing commercial vegetables drenched in chemicals, and another plot (for their own consumption) that isn’t. Obviously, they get plenty of output from their personal plot; the reason they douse the other plot is not to improve productivity (it doesn’t) but to deliver reliability. They’ll have some buyer demanding that they deliver Xkg on date Y, and they have to make sure it happens or there will be a price penalty. Ag sci is nothing to do with feeding the world - it’s about maintaining a fundamentally screwed-up supply chain.
Yup. Depressing, isn’t it.
I agree, but I think this is a direct result of widespread ignorance - about technology in general, and farming technology specifically. If people learned more about this kind of thing as a matter of routine, perhaps they would be able to think more clearly about the issues and make the right decisions.
well, many good points here, but what I meant by saying we wouldn’t be able to feed on only eco farming, is that the expected supply (for stores, that is not really a volume necessary to feed everyone, because as we know a lot of food is wasted) wouldn’t be met. The problem is too that we’re all too busy with our city lives, and a) don’t know how to grow stuff (tho this is “learnable”) b) have no time for it… and yeah, someone can probably argue I could find the 30 min or so per day to start a garden, but sorry… I am already trying to fit it 30 min to play with my cat, 60 minutes to exercise, to do this and that. Not to mention, I have no place in the city. And that is somehow my choice of life (city life) and I do feel ashamed sometimes for being such a leech that can’t produce anything 
I am usually not eating organic food because as mentioned above - can’t grow it, and also because buying it it’s too expensive for me.
But we’re off-topicing. Bottom line - bees are good for us!
Here’s an update on this one:
Scientists discover what’s killing the bees and it’s worse than you thought
Seems the title is a little bold for what the content states, but still, it’s an interesting read.
Turns out these insects are being killed by insecticides. Who’da thunk it.
I know! Like, amazing, innit? I wonder how much “research” was needed to come to that conclusion.
The fungicide finding is new as far as I know, and depressing.
This sentence made me wonder about the motivations here; " “It’s a lot more complicated than just one product, which means of course the solution does not lie in just banning one class of product."
But the lead researcher seems very earnest.
On Bees
They are kind of cute, right? Plus they’ve worked a lot of shit out community wise. You ever met a bee you didn’t respect? Sure it’s the sting in their tail, but the giving of their own life, too. It certainly adds to the mystique—leastwise for me. Though I recently learned in bee-to-bee combat they don’t leave the sting and half their guts behind. They do have moments of victory that they can live to savor. I was kind of pleased to hear that ‘cause their general contribution with the honey they make from the sweet nectar they collect from the prettiest things on the planet is delicious- a faultless connection to the earth. Sadly, the dirt hornet hunts them for that honey—sweet as it is. It invades their communities with a toxic sting that can kill a buffalo laying waste of their perfect little honeycombed palaces. Nasty creature the hornet. Never a kind word said about one. For good reason. Leave the bees alone you bastards.
We used to have a hive of bees next to our out-door toilet. They’d made a giant hive in a 44-gallon drum that had perhaps one time been a small water tank, but the bees owned it for as long as I can remember. They never really bothered us and we not them. Weirdly, or perhaps properly, we never invaded their digs for our pleasure. That was mostly out of fear and respect. They have a kind of Machiavellian thing going with the rest of the world. But we’d encounter them mostly in paddocks covered in dandelion and daisies doing their bee thing. Occasionally that bee thing and a cricket match would share the same billing in that paddock with a player or two eventually paying their dues, but I could never begrudge them—not once they’d given their lives, not really. I could curse them to fucking hell from the pain though. Fuck it. But they’d give fair warning with the yellow stripes and all. I don’t have them in my life any more and I wonder why not. I think it would be kind of cool. Cities are supercilious places where bees could certainly find a few conceited types to sting. Giving it all for the good life.