Major Report concludes: "Neonicotinoids are An Unnacceptable Danger to Bees"

[Rader Sidetrack]

i did a little reading on it since you brought it up. the folks at columbia have a different take than yours:

"had the SSTs been known in advance, it would have been possible to predict that the drought was to occur and, perhaps, the environmental and social catastrophe of the Dust Bowl could have been ameliorated."

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div...dustbowl.shtml

Thats quite an amusing conclusion you came to. The very same Columbia website also has this:

The Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s was one of the worst environmental disasters of the Twentieth Century anywhere in the world. Three million people left their farms on the Great Plains during the drought and half a million migrated to other states, almost all to the West. But the Dust Bowl drought was not meteorologically extreme by the standards of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Indeed the 1856-65 drought may have involved a more severe drop in precipitation. It was the combination of drought and poor land use practice that created the environmental disaster.

Full page here:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div...t_storms.shtml

.

[squarepeg]

>(with predictable long term results)

my take is that the authors state the associated weather pattern had not been observed in centuries, and never on this continent, and that the end result had not been predicted.

perhaps there were 'environmentalists' back then eschewing those practices, with the foresight of what might happen should this rare weather pattern emerge, predicting those long term results?

the poor land practice appears a lesson learned in hindsight, as some of the most painful lessons are.

[deknow]

the poor land practice appears a lesson learned in hindsight, as some of the most painful lessons are.

...I'm not sure what the point of this is. The paper you cited was also looking at weather patterns IN HINDSIGHT, and only suggests that perhaps IN HINDSIGHT, if we knew _more_ about weather patterns and how to predict them then than we do _now_, we could have taken some action to mitigate the impact of the drought.

Given that we _could_ have done something (in hindsight), it would have been along the lines of changing the unsustainable farming practices, not changing weather patterns.

In the long run, sustainable farming practices will fair better in cycles of drought. Also in the long run, usustainable farming practices will (eventually, by definition) prove to be unsustainable. The farming practices were going to cause a problem eventually no matter how good the weather was for a bunch of years.

deknow

[squarepeg]

yes, it was the combination of weather and poor practices.

yes, it could have been predicted if today's forecasting models had been available (the author's conclusion).

ok, you guys win, uncle.

back to the neonics. i guess the debate is whether or not the 'predictable' long term results to the environment and the bees are being borne out. i'm not sure i'm convinced that has been proven, but what do i know.

[Ian]

so do we proceed with advances

The ability of our farm to produce off an acre of land has doubled, directly related to the technologies implemented from "Big Agri".
The cost per acre to grow the crop has also doubled, directly related to the cost of oil.

Take technological advantage out and we cant afford to grow the crops at its current price levels.
Either we use the technology available or we raise the price of food to be able to grow it

[Baja]

Rachel Carson wrong in almost everything she said? Wow! What a statement. So according to you DDT was good and we should be spraying it in the street as we did when I was a kid?

[doc25]

What does "feeding the world" mean? Who do you want to feed? What resources do you want to spend feeding them? How many humans is the earth supposed to be able to support? Is it in our own best interest to use GMO technology to up the number of humans we can support? Can we expect a stable and "sustainable" result form doing so?



deknow

This is a constant statement in agriculture. Who decided we have to feed the world? I'm sure if the average farmer could earn the same amount of money without GM/spraying/fertilizer produce less and get paid more per bushel they would not be so worried about feeding the world. "Feeding the world" is propaganda and allows you to sleep well at night thinking no matter what you do to the land you're doing good feeding the world. Deep down the real motivation is $$$$$.

[Ian]

$$$$$$$

of course it is.
feeding the world comes from the fact that we trade internationally. The price of commodities are reflected as such, and the reason why we do not have massive price swings in areas of plenty of crop or no crop at all. It provides the world with a static supply of food. If the world produced 10-20% less food than it does now, the prices you and I and everyone else in the world would start paying out the ear to eat. This farmer as the one in Ukraine is feeding the world with a steady cheap supply of food.

zero propaganda in this statement

[JRG13]

Doc, prices reflect the export market... you can't produce less and get paid more, it's purely volume these days. Maybe it's not the proper way, I don't know, but ask the guy maximizing productivity on a few thousand acres and see what he says about producing less...

[deknow]

A lot of talk about supply...but that's only half of an equation. What is a reasonable population for the planet to support? If demand (number of mouths to feed) is always pressing up against supply (ie, family size is determined in part by what it costs to feed each mouth), then we will always be trying to "feed the world" and never actually doing it.

But also relevant is "what are you willing to give up" in order t OK feed the world?

Deknow

[squarepeg]

A lot of talk about supply...but that's only half of an equation. What is a reasonable population for the planet to support? If demand (number of mouths to feed) is always pressing up against supply (ie, family size is determined in part by what it costs to feed each mouth), then we will always be trying to "feed the world" and never actually doing it.

But also relevant is "what are you willing to give up" in order t OK feed the world?

Deknow

those are some thought provoking questions in your post dean. how would you answer them?

[deknow]

those are some thought provoking questions in your post dean. how would you answer them?

Well, Malthus wasn't right about everything, but he was correct in observing that, absent other pressures, any population will grow to not only utilize all of its food supply, but will grow enough to destroy it.

I would start by not assuming that it is necessary to always be trying to feed the world...doing so leads to more mouths to feed, and there still isn't enough to go around. I'm not advocating making lists of people to eliminate or any kind of eugenics program...but it isn't really any different than anything else.

Q:"How much do you want?"

A:"More than I have."

Q:"What do you want to pay for what you want...what are you willing to give up?"

A:"Less than I'm paying/giving up for what I have now...which is less than what I want."

We do this....and all of nature does this.

In our own lives, most of us figure out how to regulate this kind of loop from taking over. In the quest to "feed the world" by using more productive technologies _because_ they are going to finally make it possible to feed the world doesn't really consider the bigger question...."What are you willing to give up." The easy way out is to simply assume that you aren't giving anything up....but I don't know of anything, on any level that works that way.

I think a better approach is to figure out what kind of planet we want to live on and figure that out....I can't believe the answer is "the kind of planet where we can stuff the most number of humans, regardless of what it looks like."

...can't help but think of "Bordered in Black" by Larry Niven (a good short story...free online):
http://www.scribd.com/doc/100964572/...dered-in-Black

deknow

[deknow]

...there is a page missing in that copy of the story....try here:
http://bookre.org/reader?file=263759&pg=1

deknow

[deknow]

feed yourself and family, then feed your community
for me its feed my family, then myself and then communtiy

...and when you community is a global population, and you realize that no matter how much you feed it it gets too big to be fed, you keep going until something breaks down?

One of the commercial beekeepers in Queen of the Sun remarked, "We are in business to stay in business"...the above seems the opposite.

deknow

[squarepeg]

intriguing, thanks dean. i hope we get a chance someday to meet in person.

mike bush discusses on his website and here on beesource how one's world view has a tendency to shape one's approach to beekeeping.

i pray i am not reading too much between the lines, and i hope you don't take this in any other way than in the spirit in which it is intended,

but i am curious. your approach to beekeeping is nothing artificial, no meds, no outside foodsource (with rare exceptions), no intervening to alter the course of a colony dying a natural but certain death.

would you prefer to live in a world in which homo sapiens operated under those same conditions?

[jim lyon]

More food is better than less food. Increasing productivity is better than decreasing productivity of these things I am certain.

[Barry]

This thread has wondered off topic and into TG material.

[Ian]

time to lay it to rest then

[Gypsi]

Well give me a choice between neonic seed and organic seed, I'm buying organic. And I buy very little food these days.

[deknow]

would you prefer to live in a world in which homo sapiens operated under those same conditions?

No. I don't live in a world where bees are (or should be) treated like humans. I also don't live in a world where humans are treated like bees. Neither is appropriate.

deknow