Another weapon out of the arsenol

Vilsack announced that China has dropped their ban on the Syngenta MIR162 trait. That means that they will accept all GMO corn now. They've had no opposition to GMO beans all along. I guess the anti GMO crowd will have to stop making that "China won't buy GMO corn" argument.

I planted 10 bags of Viptera this year(MIR162). Seed salesman/son of elevator owner assured me it was the latest and greatest. I planted a whole farm with that, and a GT version of the same variety. Even though I knew exactly where I had planted it, I didn't risk trying to split the farm.

When harvest started getting close, I dropped in to have a chat, and was informed that it would be an problem/inconvenience for them to take it. I ended up selling it to a local feed mill who was grinding it themselves. Needless to say, I won't inconvenience that elevator/broker with any of my corn this year.

As an ultimate result my new bin is only 3/4 full... but at least it is full of a product everyone will buy(except the hippies).

They are probably making it into some product to be shipped back over here.

China wouldn't accept our GMO grain but their spies were caught stealing seeds out of our production fields to smuggle our technology out of the country. Go figure.

Well, of course they are. That is what I hear everyone wants. No manufacturing, no farming, no production of any kind whatsoever. Let all those other countries get their hands dirty! We will provide them with "services". Still trying to figure out how that works.

I saw an ad in the Flint Journal (MI) last night. It was a law office that said any farmer who feels they lost money because of China's refusal to buy our GMO corn to contact them.

I hope they send it back in the form of cheaper seed corn. Maybe some foreign competition is what some of these companies need.

We can all deliver pizzas with drones. Plane loads of pizza delivered to China.

They eat a lot of snakes over there, but I don't believe that I would like "Snake Pizza"!

They eat rats in restaurants in China too,fresh sewer rat goes right along with the GMO cornbread.(LOL)

Somewhere over there, my mom's cousin brought back a collie from a breeding shop. They breed the collie to eat the puppies. They also bury fertilized chicken eggs in the sand and then after a while, they hard boil them, peep in a shell.

They won't eat GMO corn? must be really bad then! LOL

(quoted from post at 06:11:55 12/18/14) Vilsack announced that China has dropped their ban on the Syngenta MIR162 trait. That means that they will accept all GMO corn now. They've had no opposition to GMO beans all along. I guess the anti GMO crowd will have to stop making that "China won't buy GMO corn" argument.

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No, they can't but they can point out just how loving and caring they are of their people!

The Chinese only banned it to get back at us in the first place. Now that their economy is going down they need cheap food to keep the masses happy. They could care less if a few die as long as they don't fight the government.

The funny thing here is that you have changed no ones mind about this stuff.

I don't care one way or the other. I don't have a dog in this fight. My only problem with it is all the chemicals that can and are running off from this. We have a field near us with home on the west side of it, maybe 100 yds. The county tested their wells. They have been told not to drink their well water because the safe level of certain chemicals associated with herbicides and pesticides are over the safe levels for human consumption.

It's not the GMO's I don't trust. It's all the chemicals that are applied with those GMO crops. You can call names, rather childish, but you can do it. You can trust the chemicals and the FOR PROFIT companies selling them. With the past history of chemical companies, well I don't trust em at all.

I don't know one farmer using those chemicals and claiming they are safe who is A. a chemical engineer B. a doctor or C. a researcher. I know a bunch who are just that. Farmers looking to make a profit. That means they are greed driven too running for profit operation where the biggest profit is best.

As far as consuming GMO's I would like to see labeling because I'd like the be able to decide for myself what I'm eating. I'm not saying I wouldn't eat GMO products. I just think I have the RIGHT to know what I'm putting in my mouth.

Rick

Free range rats?
Cage free rats?

Before GMO crops, I had to put 3 times the amount of spray onto the fields. I had to handle the insecticide into the planter that I know is extremely dangerous.

What the GMO did, was eliminate the need for insecticide boxes all together, and limit my spray trips to once a year. I use about 1 quart of material, where I normally used a cocktail of pre, post, and post again. The post cocktail contained one chemical, which I will not name, that was applied at 6 ounces per acre.

6 ounces covered 43,560 square feet. What if I dropped 2 ounces of that stuff on the ground near a well? That is crazy concentrations!

I'm not happy about it. I liked doing full tillage and cultivating. But then, I was harming the environment by putting a lot of sediment in the creeks, and loosing organic matter along with nitrogen and phosphorus that flowed down the missippissi into the gulf of mexico. They claim a hug dead zone in that river delta and gulf. Ask any scientist and they will tell you that the dead zone in that area has not gotten any worse lately.

It is no-till practices/conservation practices that have kept that the same. Without the chemicals, you can't do no-till. I don't know how to win, because I believe you can't. A farmer needs to do something to grow profitable crops. I don't know how it is ok to spray BT onto corn(legally through organic standards, BT is completely OK) but if you incorporate the gene into the plant, it is now controversial. If there is no way to make money, we have less farmers, farming on bigger acreages. That makes things worse in the long run.

Which way should we go? I am not an engineer, a scientist, or whatever else you said. I am a farmer, farming on the same ground my family has farmed since May 10th 1775. I want to continue. My greatx6 grandfather grew the first crop of corn in the western frontier, yielding 50 bushels per acre, which was remarkable for the time. (when the western frontier was the land just east of the Ohio river) That is something I would like to continue. Every year, I invest a lot into learning and doing the right thing to maintain my farming heritage. What I do know is that I drink spring water from the farm. I have had to get water tests every year as per the gas wells regulations. They have not found anything extraordinary to alert me. They did find excess sediment the past 2 years, but the past 2 years have been exceptionally wet. I blame minimum tillage practices. I would like to eliminate that. What should I do? If you were me, what would you do? I can go 100% no-till and use more chemicals. I can continue with min-till, or go back to conventional tillage. I could also just stop farming and let it grow into forest. I would cry every night. I am not kidding.

So what would you do?

I just want to hear what you think the right thing to do would be. I really do. Give me an answer I can use, and I will, I promise you.






I appreciate all opinions, but, I can do a lifetime of research and still come to the conclusion that it will always be the lesser of all the evils. I do apologize if I sound obtuse. I just want to hear what the answer is. Someday, if we all take time to think, the answer might come.

John
If you want reduce your run off sediment. Try sod water ways. You don't plow your ravines where your water runs across the field. Yes you loose some yield from lost production but you still have your soil. My grandfather plowed all the field at first. It got so you couldn't cross them with a D-4 cat. So dad tells. He had to put chicken wire and stakes with straw in them . They filled in from there. This must have been in the 30's or 40's. I am seeing where some of them have caught so much sediment the bottom is now to one side or the other of the grass. I now have to leave patches alternately to make sure I don't get the same previous problem beside there. With 30 years of dairy cows we applied alot of manure too. This was plowed down years ago.
We have gone to some Nothrill. I do some beans, and no corn with it. Corn must be tilled ground to get a yield. I can throw a cat through the field and not hit anything in Nothrill corn. My brother nothrilled all his corn this year. The stalks were spindly and the wet spots drowned out bad. I do believe there are soils that Nothrill works on better. Lighter ground will work better than heavier ground will. I have had some of my best beans on Nothrill also. The best are usually on the ground we tilled though. When we leave the water ways we just lift the tillage equipment up and drop it again. Just enough for the water to run on the sod. We plant through them if it grows fine if not then so be it. Yes it is not a nice pretty field with them in the field. The dirt is still in the field though.
The waterways do really help with your run off though. I give the neighbors place for the example the BTO that works that will have 50acres into 3 pieces in another year or 2 from the erosion. The washes are already to the point he has to work around them. This place did not have any of that when we worked it 25-30 yearsago.

(quoted from post at 07:28:42 12/19/14) John
If you want reduce your run off sediment. Try sod water ways. You don't plow your ravines where your water runs across the field. Yes you loose some yield from lost production but you still have your soil. My grandfather plowed all the field at first. It got so you couldn't cross them with a D-4 cat. So dad tells. He had to put chicken wire and stakes with straw in them . They filled in from there. This must have been in the 30's or 40's. I am seeing where some of them have caught so much sediment the bottom is now to one side or the other of the grass. I now have to leave patches alternately to make sure I don't get the same previous problem beside there. With 30 years of dairy cows we applied alot of manure too. This was plowed down years ago.
We have gone to some Nothrill. I do some beans, and no corn with it. Corn must be tilled ground to get a yield. I can throw a cat through the field and not hit anything in Nothrill corn. My brother nothrilled all his corn this year. The stalks were spindly and the wet spots drowned out bad. I do believe there are soils that Nothrill works on better. Lighter ground will work better than heavier ground will. I have had some of my best beans on Nothrill also. The best are usually on the ground we tilled though. When we leave the water ways we just lift the tillage equipment up and drop it again. Just enough for the water to run on the sod. We plant through them if it grows fine if not then so be it. Yes it is not a nice pretty field with them in the field. The dirt is still in the field though.
The waterways do really help with your run off though. I give the neighbors place for the example the BTO that works that will have 50acres into 3 pieces in another year or 2 from the erosion. The washes are already to the point he has to work around them. This place did not have any of that when we worked it 25-30 yearsago.

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That sounds reasonable except the guys around here won't do that unless they are paid to do it by the government.

Rick

You defeat your own arguement....There are LESS chemicals used on GMO crops than with comparable NON-GMO crops. Then again, most of your arguements are simple mis-truths, rumor and innuendo straight from Mother Earth News and the rest of the sadly misguided, misinformed left wing tree huggers, so why should this time be any different.