Karl highlights an important distinction that most people in the GMO debates miss. It is not the genetic modification of the plants that is the issue. But rather the huge amounts of round-up that can then be used on the plants and the health effects of such. I wonder if the focus of the debate being on the genetic engineering itself could be smokescreen to deflect attention from the latter issue.

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Its all in the mitochondria

Yep.

I am not particularly concerned about the GMO aspect ITSELF.

I am quite concerned about what this lets the farming industry spray in wild quantity all over the place, and how much of THAT winds up in the food.

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You can do a small test for yourself using pasta made in Italy and imported here vs what is made here. If I indulge in "American" pasta, I feel like crap on multiple levels just a short while after eating it and for the next day. If, instead, I eat a product made in Italy, the side effects are fewer and much shorter lasting, essentially just the carb rush. One thing the EU has gotten right is the lack of chemicals they allow on their crops, at least in comparison to the US.
Today we will be heading down the lane to clean off some old tomato towers for the garden. Seedlings are doing great in makeshift terrariums we move throughout the day for maximum sunlight. We've already scouted for a couple of local farmers markets in the area and the number of farms in the area that are selling local, grass fed beef was a pleasant surprise. Considering the price of meat and the better quality available, it's a no brainer. Just need the space to store it.
And Georgia finally got around to "allowing" raw milk to be sold for human consumption. I'm looking forward to making my own butter and yoghurt.

@Whitehat - lot of truth to what you stated. Amazing that people can't see the same game being played over and over in different areas of "govt" and business.

Nobody is looking out for you and no-one has your back. We will need to devolve back to "all for one, and I'm the one" to survive.

I agree with you 110%, Karl.

Grew up on a 3rd generation "real" farm. My father started farming in 1958 and retired in 2003. He farmed the span of the industrialization of agriculture. Even after graduating from college and working off the farm I'd go home and help until the mid-1990's. He started as a subsistence farmer with hogs, cattle, small grain, and row crops but was all row crop corn and soybeans on 1,000 acres when he retired.

Having spent the entirety of my 60 year life living on an active farm or working first hand with active farmers I can't disagree with any of you. Industrialization, financialization, and GMO crops have sterilized and emptied rural America. Everything that subsistence agriculture relied on is gone; infrastructure and people - most notably the knowledge.

I could write a thousand words on neighbors clashing over Dicamba drift.

Roundup resistant weeds have become such a problem that they are now marketing elaborate chemical cocktails to "clean up" fields. Quite the profitable coincidence, wouldn't you say?

What no one is talking about is the inevitable pest, fungus, or other infestation that will devastate crops due to the concentration of hybrids into a very few, specialize varieties. Think of a franken-infestation of crops on the order of Covid-19. Something will show up from somewhere that no one was prepared for. Or worse, the "experts" will once again f***-up the response. If you talk to the average farmer about this they will quietly agree.

Does re-occurring bird flu variants requiring millions of birds be destroyed and the resulting egg supply disruption then price increase ring a bell with anyone? Is it not likely that this could happen with confinement hogs and cattle or with crops?

Covid-19 put bio-warfare on the table as any hostile nation with a mad scientist in a lab could likewise unleash hell on our agriculture sector.

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"Economists are no different than the prophets of ancient Pompeii who reassured that Mt Vesuvius would never blow. After all, it never had before." Baxter Black, DVM and Cowboy Poet

"You can avoi

@Whitehat

Quote:

Then again, i have watched in astonishment as common whites and other groups moved their wives and families into infested hovels of disrepair and disorder, because that is all that they could afford. We called them peasants and treated them accordingly, and peasants who out reproduce and develop power groups make the whole society into peasants which ultimately leads to the greater society's ...people living like and eating like ...peasants.

I've read the same opinion by 19th century Brits regarding the Irish. All societies, as a rule, are xenophobic to some extent.

@Workerbee23 There is no climate and volcanic soil in the US matching that of Italy. Certain plants perform differently due to local unmatched conditions. For a quick couple examples Vadalia Onions and French wine come to mind.

I buy most meat and eggs from local pasture-based farms. The price difference over conventional isn't even that much anymore. Going carnivore is slowly healing me. Plants have chemical defenses, natural or otherwise. Some of the natural ones are nasty. Engineered plants boost those defenses and add new ones, which isn't good for the eater. Read "Toxic Superfoods" sometime. We also need far more animal fat than most people get. Want to avoid GMO garbage? Pastured livestock is as good as it gets.

As we go further into system collapse those local farms that don't import trainloads of feed from Iowa are going to be exceptionally critical.

@ Sammuell. I am starting to wonder about all vaccines now too.

By that I mean I had no idea at first what some of the anti-vaxxers were talking about, long before covid.

I didn't know about the huge increase in various shots given to children right from birth. Could this assault on their immune systems leave some of them predisposed to extreme obesity?

The reason Dr. Fauci was paid so much was that he was supposed to be investigating the rise in childhood allergies. Since he obviously wasn't doing that, is anyone?

@Tickerguy
I never knew the details of the viremic term. It's a fundamental issue, that I used to to trust most doctors. But in fact, I have to treat them like most attorneys!
I do know, because of the employer driven health plans, that the damage ironically comes from overtreatment in the US healthcare system, rather than undertreatment, which is the case in places like the UK.

Jack Sparrow coffee is sprayed a lot.

Technojunkie, I had forgotten that eggs once tasted good, until I started buying the pasture raised, vegetarian fed variety.

If whole foods don't taste good, people will naturally go for the junk.

Plants have to break down before we can absorb the nutrients. Look at all the drug commercials for medicines to help people whose digestive systems don't work.

Kolya02-Good day to all and hopefully your grocery shopping habits will change a bit after having read this!

Actually, a little bit earlier for me. I read but don't know if it's true that large scale factory farms are injecting their cattle, chickens, and hogs with the MRNA "vaccine", so that was enough for me to go "organic"-if I'm to believe what I buy from my local co-op truly is organic.

I'm not exactly freaking out over it, but damn! They couldn't inject the smart ones who didn't want the Fauci Ouchi poison injected into us, so they're just gonna inject it into our food. So now, I avoid meat at the Harris Teeter (owned by a Black Rock and other questionable groups), and pay ostensibly more at my co-op

Interesting times we live in with an explosion of kids with peanut allergies, autism, and obesity-rarer than hen's teeth in my youth. As Karl states, no exact correlation, but things that make you go hmmmmmmm.

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Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.-Dorothy Parker

Boys don't make passes at girls with fat asses.-slightly modified DP

As in shoe, pharmaceuticals, clothes, food ad nauseum, consumers have demanded cheap consumables. They want cheap food so farmers and suppliers stepped up. The demand for grass fed beef, butter, chickens ad nauseum made farmers turn mix pastures to fucking grass. Want to know how to keep mesquite and other invasive species in control on 2,000 acre pastures?
It ain't with some Honduran's with a hoe.
Want that pretty pasture grass all green and bursting with nutrition to make your Bullet Proof coffee all pure with grass fed butter? There is not some broke ass Ukrainian farm laborer spreading manure over hundreds of 200 acre pastures.
Humans have decided they want to extend their expiration date. Humans have decided dying in a famine is not a good thing. Humans have decided, all things considered, they would rather live. They are willing to take the risk today the number of seed corn species is getting less because they want food tomorrow!
And everyone in the food supply chain has stepped up.
We have first world problems!

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Blessed, Grateful and Living a Dream

My family farm was started 1916. Third generation now. Spray before planting, during planting, prior to harvesting and post-harvesting. Corn and soybeans are MAJOR crops with smaller fields of other grains.
I don't eat sugar/grains, so I don't "go there" in any conversations.
Add to this the number of acres required now to "make a living", pay for near million $ equipment (each), fuel, labor (international, by the way).
And, yes, Round-up, dicamba by the truckload.
The "family" farm is extinct. It's big business now to be a farmer.

Karl, thank you for this blog! I've been reading since the last economic meltdown. One part of the equation I never hear mentioned is the fact that the advent of Roundup-Ready crops resulted in a huge reduction (1000s of tons of atrazine, et al) of other weed killers that were in use. That seems like a net good. That being said, I used to sell GMO seeds and when they came out, we had to get a signed agreement from the farmers that this GMO corn would not be used for human consumption. Something happened along the way and now we have it being used on several crops for human consumption, even near harvest. We were never told what the fate of glyphosate is in the plant. I still don't know. I imagine spraying it on a small corn plant would allow a huge dilution before harvest. We've learned that glyphosate can kill microbes in the gut, and certainly that can impact health. Dose makes the poison, so I really don't understand why we can't calculate what an average daily intake is from an average diet. Seems like a relatively easy calculation, but I've never heard what that number is, and if it is enough to be impactful or unlikely to have effects. For a product that has been on the market since the 1970s, there are still way too many unknowns.

Joancrawford, someone quite a while back told me he was allergic to "factory" chicken. This was pre-covid.

That REALLY got me thinking.

Even if you think you are eating well, cooking your own food from scratch, you may not be eating something that is healthy for you.

We all live, breathe, work and eat in a toxic, chemical soup. Been this way for a long time, and getting worse.

I remember as a youngster the first time I heard of "bottled water". I thought it was insane. Kind of like "pet rocks". Little did I know what chemicals (and increasingly so) were in our water, and now I try to drink spring water or filter it myself as much as possible. I also buy from farmer's markets when I can. But regardless, we cannot stop the onslaught of toxins, modifications to food, etc. Back when I was in grade school (before they went feral woke and leftist)...we actually learned the marketing gimmicks of the food industry. "All natural" and whatnot are generally marketing scams. That was even before the "organic" craze, which is also mostly a scam. Big Ag is the same as Big Pharma. Corrupt and fraudulent.

The same criminals fucking with your food are the same ones who sold you the food pyramid, the same ones who want you to eat fake meat, and now even eat bugs. All I can do is limit the poisons that I knowingly ingest, knowing full well that I cannot avoid them all. Our oceans are polluted with mercury and other metals. Our industrial farms are GMO'd, polluted and stripped of nutrients. And tons of our food is imported from the third world which generally have zero environmental standards. The human body can take a lot IF it is cared for properly. It is amazing in its ability to protect and heal, truly a wonder to behold. That is what I am banking on. Exercise, sleep and attempt to eat as clean as I can. I hope that is enough.

Workerbee23 wrote..

And Georgia finally got around to "allowing" raw milk to be sold for human consumption.

My grandpa ran a 70 acre farm in Waleska, GA. He always kept around 40 head of cattle, and had a couple of milk cows when I was a kid.

I remember him milking a cow, pouring the raw milk through a cheesecloth into a large glass jar, and then drinking a glass of warm milk. He lived to be 90 years old.

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The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. ~Jack London

What I see is government and corporations hellbent on controlling the citizenry and that pisses me off. I have no great beef against corporate farming innovations. I have a huge distrust with corporate farming colluding with government to oppress small farmers and forcing them to play by the corporate rules.

Massie is not a fan either of government regulations that protect corporate farming interests.

Quote:

there have been repeated claims that these herbicides in particular are "safe." Are they? We don't know

Secondhand anecdotal I know but good friend of mine comes from a large family of professional farmers in a breadbasket state. He tells me they all die of cancer, and everyone simply expects to after a lifetime of dealing with the chemicals.

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Yep. Its a toxic world for sure. On many levels.

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The whole world is one big fucking scam
Why are you giving a vulgarity warning here? Our genial host is an advocate of both skullfucking and sodomy via rusty chainsaw. Credit to Rollformer

Most of my farming family died of cancer. The exceptions are the old school ones. But they soon get forced out.

Used to be 2500 acres to make a modest living. Last I ran the math it was north of 3000.

At $12k an acre

Family farms aren't extinct and are even making a bit of a comeback. The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund helps to defend them. https://www.farmtoconsumer.org/ Sites like eatwild https://eatwild.com/ help you find them. Buy direct from the farm or from the local market that carries them when you can. Unfortunately there's no good way to get around government food security theater and that makes life difficult for family farmers. Here, drive your livestock hours away to an approved abattoir so government minders can glance at the illegals processing the meat. It's for Safety! They haven't killed all of the small local processors but it's not for lack of trying.

Good call, Karl.

Here's a book about the consequences of pesticide drift: Changing Faces: The Consequences of Exposure to Gene and Thyroid Disrupting Toxins
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/197913....

Scary stuff: don't live close to non-organic farms. In the cases described, even 100s of miles isn't enough due to the geography and air flow.

@Ihsmta - regarding crop specialization. TPTB just keep ignoring history.

Irish potato famine anyone? Result of government-forced monocropping stupidity, millions starved. Mass emigration or the rest would have. Fortunately, America needed some railroads built!

The subsistence-farming Scots whose land was so poor and rocky only sheep could graze it, the people could barely stay alive. They invented paper money because too many carts broke transporting gold. Fashion changed, wool demand went poof, so did the farmers - no product sold, can't pay taxes. So their land was taken and the peat that once heated their huts was too-aggressively harvested by distilleries, killing the bogs. Those only take a century to regenerate, if they can at all.

Enjoy your single-malt while you can, eventually they won't be able to make any more.

American farmers know biodiversity is critical, but they are at the mercy of Big Agra/Bucks if they farm large. Commercial farmers have admitted they personally will not eat the crops they grow for distribution, due to all the poisons. Small farmers are what we need for sustainability. You actually have to be pretty smart to be a farmer! But can't have that anymore; they might think independently and make intelligent CHOICES not follow orders!

Remember Pollan's words to live by: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants" - it's not complicated.

Want better food for Americans? Don't take things for granted. Support your local farmers, buy as directly as you can! Eat what's fresh in season. Find out where your food comes from, how it's produced. Farmers' markets are great, go talk to the people who actually do it! Yes it takes a little effort to change your buying habits, but it's not hard and it can be really fun. If you live urban - maybe find a CSA and join. For most CSAs you'll have to make a financial commitment up front - and oh, I heard so many people whine they "can't afford that much all at once!" I'd bite my tongue thinking - well, to you it's a few hundred dollars for six months of weekly veggies; isn't your health worth a little commitment? Just put it on the credit card like the fancy vacation, you had no problem "affording" that. Remember, the farmer's commitment is likely over a MILLION before he even plants the first seed, and too much of it debt. Think of it as robbing the bank! CSA offers a better way for eaters to support farmers. All it takes is a group of people who want clean food direct from the source, and some organization.

@Bodhi

Dad took us kids to the dairy farm he worked at as a boy, taught us how to milk cows by hand. He asked if we wanted a taste. Thought he was going to dip a cup in the bucket, but he squirted the milk into my mouth directly from the teat! Fast forward a few decades, he thought it was terribly dangerous when I got a raw milk share from the CSA. Milk that hasn't been pasteurized isn't safe!! (Really? Cows are different now?) I told him I had been to the farm, their milking room is cleaner than my kitchen, and the farmer knows each cow, they even have names. Farmer was a rabbi. We got pasture chicken from them too, birds were raised kosher and the best I ever tasted - simply pan sauted in a little olive oil with salt & pepper, nothing else. Just awesome.

Real, actual food. Forget all the "edible food-like substances" from factories and labs - if your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize it... don't eat it.

Correct me if I am wrong but "organic" does not mean what most people think it means. They are not as clean and pure as we are told. My understanding is organic items are allowed chemical application in the form of herbicide, pesticide/fungicide etc. The difference is that some /many chemicals are disallowed and to be certified organic you must allow inspection of your facilities. But they can use chemicals - just they have to use them at labeled doses and concentration as per manufacturer and government regulation. But organic produce are not all heritage seed sown and grown with zero inputs.

Or maybe I read bad info. Willing to learn.