Roundup to be banned in the UK, ?

[SteveA]

Sorry if I got the wrong end of the stick.

As a society we are addicted to cheap food. Veg in the shops at less than I can grow it for and milk cheaper than water. We then get the farming methods required to deliver that. Can't see the politicians increasing the price of food anytime soon though. Also can't see any reason to ban roundup when like most herbicides, it's pretty harmless. But pesticides can be a different matter.

 

Ref: "it's pretty harmless" ....yes, according to the label.

[oldwoodcutter]

I dont know much about chemicals,but i do know that a good friend of mine who,as a farmer,has been spraying roundup and the like for years like its going out of fashion,and now,in old age,has the terrible shakes of parkinsons,a decease often linked to exposure to r/u.

And secondly a yard ive had for years is surrounded by big arable fields being sprayed with something every other week,and year on year the birdsong has decreased in line with the reduction of aphids weedseeds and insects,until now,the whole area for miles around is as quiet as a grave.

What price progress?

[skyhuck]

I heard on the radio the other day that world wide wild life has decreased by 50% in recent years, its pretty scary.

[Mark Bolam]

The link between Parkinson's and certain agro-chemicals is becoming harder to ignore.

 

A lot of my mates down here are farmers. They don't chuck stuff down because they feel like spending some cash because they have too much, or because 'Grandad did it'.

 

The pressure to squeeze the max out of every m2 is to blame.

 

 

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[agg221]

We bought the 2 ha field next to our house last year. It's arable, contract farmed. This puts us in the category of small farm, so small in fact that we now fall off the bottom of the list (5ha minimum under CAP reform). Last year's figures are, I think, relevant.

 

Because of delays in the purchase, we got access so late that there was no opportunity to do anything more than get a crop straight in, so no herbicides, pesticides or fungicides used early in the season. We got yellow rust - it took three sprays to get it back under control and if we hadn't, there would have been zero crop. We had a very bad flush of wild oats - eventually got so bad that we had to use a specific herbicide, and they still came back. I then spent over 100hrs hand pulling them (ie 50hrs/hectare) and still didn't get them all, so we had to delay harvest to let them ripen up, adding risk of total crop loss, but fortunately the harvest was early and the weather held. We had some black grass and a lot of broome (which I hand pulled as much of as I could).

After all this, we got a total harvest of 9.5 tons. At current wheat prices this is £950 gross, minus haulage. I owe our contractor for seed, spray and labour at agricultural rates. We will be in the black, but it will be marginal - maybe £100 if we're lucky, due to the good grace of our contractors not charging us for storage and being our next door neighbours so not charging travel time.

 

This year, we have killed off all the residual grass growing under the wheat, which took two applications of glyphosate despite letting as much as possible germinate and then giving it a tilling. We shouldn't need to repeat this now it's back under control. We have used a pre-emergent weedkiller, some slug bait (pasta-based to reduce the rate of dissolution) and will need to apply whatever our agronomist says we should next year. The consequence - assuming we have a similar year to this year (just for comparison) we should get about 20 tons yield and, being a high grade milling wheat, we should be able to sell it for the equivalent of £2,800 at today's prices. It is likely to net around £1,200.

 

Relevance? Well, without using the full range of sprays, we would have had a total crop failure. Eliminating herbicides and using hand weeding would, if you apply minimum wage, have cost around £1,400 cf. spraying glyphosate at around £25 per application. Doing nothing would have dramatically reduced yield, but not had much impact on cost.

 

We talked to the tenant at College Farm, Duxford at Open Farm Sunday this year. He has a small area of organic wheat which he grows for Waitrose. He reckons he gets 1/3 the yield and sells at double the price, compared with conventional agriculture. This stacks up with our findings.

 

Does it make any global difference if we don't farm our field? Obviously no. However if you run the figures, removing the sprays would drop yield to a point where either prices would have to increase by an order of magnitude, or you would have to farm on an enormous scale to get the economies of scale necessary to make a living, which is somewhat at odds with the view of small farming.

 

Do I like using sprays? No. Do I see a practical alternative? No.

 

Alec

[Mark Bolam]

You're on form tonight Sir.

Very well explained.

 

 

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[Billhook]

I dont know much about chemicals,but i do know that a good friend of mine who,as a farmer,has been spraying roundup and the like for years like its going out of fashion,and now,in old age,has the terrible shakes of parkinsons,a decease often linked to exposure to r/u.

And secondly a yard ive had for years is surrounded by big arable fields being sprayed with something every other week,and year on year the birdsong has decreased in line with the reduction of aphids weedseeds and insects,until now,the whole area for miles around is as quiet as a grave.

What price progress?

 

"I don't know much about chemicals" is not such a good start to link it in an unscientific way to Parkinsons and birdsong.

 

Parkinsons could be linked to many other things, even sitting for too long in front of a computer screen while lack of songbirds cold be more to do with the increase in raptors and carrion crows and magpies.

 

When I was a child in the sixties there were song thrushes and blackbirds all over the lawns and in the eighties there were little clouds of feathers after the sparrowhawk had done its work.

In those days there were hundreds of house sparrows in the yard but today there are none. Modern chemicals you say but we are now organic and have been for over ten years. Even at double the wheat price I would not survive without HLS environmental subsidies.

But there are also no sparrows in peoples gardens in towns, where they and starlings used to be a real nuisance nesting in the roof. No chemicals there generally.

However in our local Spa supermarket car park there are hundreds of sparrows which you hear but never see because they are in a thick holly hedge, protected from the hawks.

 

The same thing on my morning bike ride I hear song thrushes and Mistlers singing but never see them out. Darwin theory at work here I think.

 

A sad truth is that DDT when it went into the eco system and killed the raptors, magpies and crows actually did a lot of good for a variety of smaller birds and what we see now is the pendulum swinging the other way before a natural balance is restored.

[tothby1]

birds go where the food is .

the decline in food source around the farm has in my opinion been in the introduction of crop assurance schemes in the last 20 years which fully enclose all grain stores from birds etc.

thus removing a all year round food source for many birds

[Billhook]

birds go where the food is .

the decline in food source around the farm has in my opinion been in the introduction of crop assurance schemes in the last 20 years which fully enclose all grain stores from birds etc.

thus removing a all year round food source for many birds

 

Our corn has been in bins since 1965 and there is no access for birds. In the old days we had lots of men to sweep up at loading time, now most farms have few men and a lot of pressure so the forklift driver has not the time.

But it still does not explain the loss of sparrows in towns where they have a constant supply of food all the year at bird tables.

[easy-lift guy]

Our corn has been in bins since 1965 and there is no access for birds. In the old days we had lots of men to sweep up at loading time, now most farms have few men and a lot of pressure so the forklift driver has not the time.

But it still does not explain the loss of sparrows in towns where they have a constant supply of food all the year at bird tables.

 

The amount of food needed to support a very large population of birds is proportional. Like another member stated the animals go where the food is.

John Dillinger was asked by reporters why he robbed banks and his reply was because that is where the money is kept, same principle just a different animal.

easy-lift guy