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Saturday, November 2, 2013

I finish planting and listen to talk radio

It is very possible that I am completely finished with planting for the year. I kind of depend on doing about 500 acres for other people every fall. This buys fertilizer and fuel for the next season.
I planted right around 100 acres for other people.
Hope the USDA is giving away free cheese this winter...
I planted 45 acres yesterday 10 acres at home and 35 acres a half hour away.
I worked long enough to run through my mp3 playlist one too many times and I resorted to talk radio out of boredom.
I do not understand how Lars Larsen can be a top conservative talk show host. He is such a maroon.
It was Friday and people could call in and talk about anything.
People were calling in about a local campaign to require labeling on products which contain GMO products.
It is probably a poorly written measure which will have insane unintended consequences-as is the case with most legislation we see.
However, that was not the point.
An old guy called into complain that GMO Round-Up resistance round result in more chemicals, specifically round-up, in our food.
Lars started explaining DNA to him. I mean he starts naming all the parts and names of a DNA molecule.
Finally it becomes apparent that Lars thinks the old dude is trying to say that Round-Up is part of a GMO plant.
Um, really?
The old dude was trying to say that engineered glyphosate resistance in a plant leads to increased use of glyphosate which would get into our diet due to residue or uptake into the soil or plants.
So we have the internet at our fingertips.
Lars has access to a huge knowledge base of online info from his studio.
You can find out how glyphosate works from HowStuffworks.com.
There are concerns that disrupting the enzyme uptake stuff can cause long range problem with soils. However, I'm not really smart enough to argue one way or another on that one.
There are many arguments about glyphosate which are interesting debates and there are good arguments about Monsanto, but we don't get into those on the Lars Larsen show.
No we debate the obvious in the usual Lars style. He tries to define terms everyone knows. He puts forth ineffective arguments phrased in a pseudo argumentative style.
As in the discussion with the anti-roundup Alfalfa guy some years ago.
So this Alfalfa is not affected by Round-up.
Round-up Kills weeds.
Is Alfalfa a weed?
Ergo, Round-up resistance is a good thing!
At that point Mr. Geertson's head seemed to explode from the banality of the argument and Lars decided he had won the argument!
I went back to my mp3 player until Michael Savage came on the AM 1430 and the spaceship guy replaced Lars at 7 p.m.
Note: I'm not really against the use of Glyphosate, but I do understand the concern. I don't really care about the GMO label one way or another.

3 comments:

  1. I don't know, Budd, those pig-gut comparisons a while back looked kinda scary, but then pig-guts were never my thing anyway.

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  2. Glyphosate has been a real benefit to my farming. Used to burn up a lot of diesel fuel and wear out cultivator shovels trying to kill twitch grass. Now one pass with the sprayer and the grass is dead. Effective and reasonably priced. Unfortunately people over do it and roundup resistant weeds begin to appear.

    ReplyDelete
  3. But we could argue about it without being idiots. Could get past the basic stuff that we already know and discuss the newest arguments.

    ReplyDelete

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