Do you buy onions, corn, sugar, grains, fruits, potatoes, beans, mint, or beer in the grocery store?

Question

Would you like to know how many applications of pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and miticides each of these crops has applied each and every year?

Click on this link, scroll down and look at the shocking charts:

http://www.uidaho.edu/wq/wqu/wqu34.html

Did you know onions have at least TWENTY TWO applications of chemicals in a single season?

By the way for those who do not know, most of the sugar in the U.S.A. is now made from sugar beets, not cane sugar.

Hops of course make beer.

Field corn is what is fed to livestock as it is being raise for meat, eggs, or dairy.

After viewing the charts, do you think you will buy more of your produce from small farmers, who do not use these chemicals, or at farmers markets, or possibly grow your own garden?

Just currious about how people feel, when faced with the reality of the oil based chemicals that are going onto our food crops.

Answer 1

How do I feel about it?  Distraught.  "No problems so far" is one h**l of a scary statement.  

An old golf course guy explained it to me 30 years ago.  After years of applying chemicals to the soil to keep the grass green and growing, eventually the soil dies.  No further application of any agent will get the grass to grow again.  They would have to scrap off the topsoil, truck more in and start over.  He said the sustainable solution for your lawn is to use only lime, organic fertilizer, aerate and reseed.  And accept a few weeds.  

We are doing this to an entire continent.  The soil is dead, the worms are gone.  It takes years to rehabilitate dead soil.  Should we wait for total collapse?  Or begin the transition to sustainable agriculture now?

I have one goal now.  My wife has stayed home with the kids while I work.  The kids are in school now.  She is going to continue her career and I am going to stay home and build the farmstead.  I just hope I have enough time.

Answer 2

Gee, thanks for that. Only problem is, there ARE no small, local farmers around here. So I guess  I have no choice but to continue eating poisonous produce. Now I can add THAT to my list of worries.

...Wonderful...

Answer 3

Turingschild is right.  It is the fortunate or privileged few in America who can follow your good advice.  I live in a farming community and it is so sad.  These folks actually don't know any other ways.  They seem to have forgotten that their ancestors weeded their kitchen gardens by hand, etc.  I can understand it for some purposes, but not as much as the reality.  Weed killer, then fertilizer, then insecticide, then weed killer again.  This is one area where other countries have us beat hands down.

Answer 4

Yep, have been for almost 60 years and no problems so far.

Answer 5

These pesticides aren't toxic to the consumer, unless there is a mis-application...we are discussing ppt residues here. So no worries there.

In terms of the fact that they are petroleum based, all the more reason to get other forms of transport and heating so we can keep all the oil for our pesticides and herbicides.

The fact is, there are too many people to feed to just let half of the crops get eaten by bugs or outcompeted by weeds.

Answer 6

How else would this country be able to feed so many? The US exports far more agricultural products than it imports, and I think that hoeing 500 acres of onions, picking potato bugs from a 1,000 acres of russets, and then weeding another 1,000 acres of beans would have a tendency to make a farmers back sore.

Answer 7

Our farmer's market people drive to Los Angeles every morning and purchase the same fruits and veggies sold at the grocery store. So unless you know them personally there's no telling that your "small local growers" aren't doing the same.

I would LOVE to have a garden and grow my own veggies! Maybe someday when I actually own the land I live on that could be an option.