I recently read an article about and epidemic called colony collapse disorder (CCD) that is wiping out commercial bee hives. It seems that this is another one of those cases where pesticides are having a negative impact our food supply. You can go here and watch PBS's introduction to the series "Silence of the Bees".
I read an article in the Oct/Nov issue of Mother Earth about how Dow's herbicides persist for years. These herbicides have been found to to contaminate compost. Confront, Dow's clopyralid, was found to be the contaminant that killed many nursery and home garden plants in several states. You can go here and read more.
If you don't know what GEO's are then think about it this way. You want your corn to have specific characteristic, such as being drought resistant, so a scientist inserts specific genes into your corn's genetic make up without having to go through the trial-and-error process of selective breeding.
Some farmers have been planting round-up ready seeds. Round up is a herbicide that kills everything it touches. By planting these roundup ready plants the farmers can spray round up without killing their crops. This is supposed to reduce production costs and increase yield, so food becomes less expensive. Now how do you feel about eating a plant that was genetically altered to resist a herbicide?
The bio-tech industry is exploiting the nations concerns about the future by telling us that GEO are the only way we will be able to feed ourselves in the future and this just isn't true. They are hoping that this scare tactic will allow them to expand there GE crops into other countries. I believe we need to think of the human health concerns.
The studies just don't show that GE crops are yielding more that natural crops. In fact, there ares some weeds that have developed a resistance to the herbicides that are being used with the GE crops. We can garden naturally and get better results if we simply put some for-thought into our crop rotation. For more information on GE foods go here.
2 comments:
AMEN, Sister.... we all know my stand on GMO.... We just have to keep spreading the word!!!!! One these days we won't be able to grow ANYTHING if the companies are allowed to keep making and selling these engineered seeds.... it will contaminate everything... not to mention the effect these foods have on our health.
Here is the answer to your question!
m~ we own a fern nursery and sell on ebay.... shade is at a premium. We try to keep the ferns in as natural state as possible until they are sold. Then they are shipped bare rooted to the new caretakers. The fern tunnel is pvc hoop structure with shade cloth where we transplanted tender young plants this spring. Our regular beds were already full for the spring summer selling season. Good question!
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