Cowmans Questions

[ianben]

How are things in England? How were your crops? How are the prices?
What do you think of Tony Blairs government and the great Iraq adventure?

England seems to be pretty good at moment.
House prices are soaring giving most people a feel good factor. When their asset rises 25%/yr who can blame them?
I question the sustainability of this fueled by stock market/pensions crash. People buying to rent as an alternative.
Is it just another dotcom bubble or can homes be a rock solid investment.
Is this happening in Canada too?

Cropwise yeilds were pretty much average but the weather well that has been the best I ever remember. If I could have ordered it I doubt I could have done better. Just enough rain when needed then dry and sunny. Sure makes a difference to the way I feel those high pressure systems compared to our usual dreary lows.

Grain prices are better too. Less production in FSU and southern EU has put the buyers under a little pressure. Beef is still flat though and the thought of bringing over thirty months cattle back into food chain with no real customers is a worry. Milk is being producded at 1p/2p loss as supermarkets drive prices down with their loss leading discounts.
Suppose that sound familiar the same the world over!

Tony Blair and Iraq
Took some guts to go in there against UN and I am glad to see the fall of Sadam and his corupt government. Would like them to sort out Zimbabwee too but there is no oil there so perhaps that will have to wait!!
Not sure how it will work out Sadam was /is a wily opponent leaving all the armies guns in the country as soldiers melted away and letting out all criminals was sure to cause invaders massive problems and WMD which have vanished!!! I believe they thought there was a real threat but where bluffed by an expert at deception Sadam.

Good to have you back,m Cowman. Where were you for 10 months

[charliep]

Hi Ianben

Any thoughts on the UK study on GMO crops? Seems weeds are a good thing and contribute to biodiversity. Western Canada has lots of fence rows, wooded area/sloughs and neighbors who don't manage weeds to serve that function here.

What really amazed me was they found GMO corn was actually better than traditional in terms of biodiversity. Atrazine does too good a job and guess what, has carryover issues.

Appologize for giving you a hard time for your country man. Good to have you back in the discussions.

[ianben]

Hi Charlie
Yeah! Weird how some people see things.
GMO here and BSE kinda got linked together with due to timing of introduction of GMOs at time of discovery of BSE/human link.

Media called them Frankinstien Food and just cant seem to loose that image.
The hype here still focuses on the failures starlink, resistant canola, the some moth I cant remember its name.

More food from less harmful chemicals does not seem to register when there is a percieved mountain of food which of couse should be grown organically.

Till Monsanto etc. get some better PR and can show a proven health advantage all UK/EU trials with prove to be for the status quo.
Even if we were allowed to grow GM consumer resitance is such that profitability would be questionable.

Tom questioned the GM thing a while back.
What would be the the concequences of a BSE type problem that was linked to a GM crop?

Is it a risk that can be managed?

I am not sure how unless everything is GM and the consumer has no choice.

Now you too have experisnced BSE.

Is it a risk worth taking?

[charliep]

I will leave your comments on GM for discussion. I thought I would throw up the website for the UK study.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/latest/2003/fseresults.htm

[cowman]

Ianben: I was real sick and didn't think I'd make it. Pretty well got that fixed.
Here in western Canada we are all pretty familiar with round-up ready canola and it has sure made for some really clean crops. I guess I would question why we need the extra production? Why grow more if the price goes down?
I believe in the next few years we will get more and more pressure to not use chemicals. I'm not some tree hugger or back to nature nut but I wonder if we've taken the chemical thing too far? We are told by the "experts" that all is well and chemicals, hormones, GM foods are completely safe. Which is fine but who are these "experts"? Do they work for corporate agri-businesses? Or the government(who are the lackeys of the big boys)?
Do you trust Science? It would seem more and more people don't! Thus we have organic farming, one of the fastest growing sectors in the country!
I guess when enough people believe the food they are eating is killing them, they will switch to organic.
I suspect a lot of farmers who use a regular chemical soup on their crops are pretty organic when it comes from their own gardens. Or treat the beef they are going to be butchering a lot different than the ones for sale?

[ianben]

Cowman
Good to have you back and I hope you keep fit and healthy for many more years with lots of posts and comments!!

Personnally I would love to grow GM canola. The agrimomic benefits I can see
no weeds and a very safe tested chemical.
Survey out here today shows 70% see GM food as unsafe and would avoid eating it.In my view no good growing something which people dont want to buy.

Organic on the other hand I see as untested. Just because we did it for years does not necessarially make it better or more wholesome.

I would willingly eat anything I grow knowing the chemical soup I have sprayed on it has undergone stringent tests. I also believe it may be less toxic for being sprayed if it is then free of fusarium or ergot for example.

We seem to fail to get the message across about the quality and quantity of todays food compared to yesteryear.

People smoke, drink, eat to excess, use mobile phones and then worry about the chemicals in their food while taking their pills for blood pressure hangover etc. What ever happened to logic!!

Bet you have had a little help from the bottle to get you better, and why not your still alive!!

So why are people so opposed to chemical help for food?

[cowman]

Ianben: Round up ready canola has really cleaned up the thistle problem. Just about all the canola grown here is GM because it works so darned well. There is a bit of corn grown here now and a good part of it is roundup ready too. Sure looks nice without all those weeds! And I must agree that Round Up is a pretty safe product compared to some other sprays.
I actually never got no help from the "bottle". In fact the drugs they gave me damned near killed me! I went to a herbalist and she got me on the right track. I have a pretty low opinion of the "medical community" and the drug dealers! They are more concerned with profit than health!

[cowman]

Ianben: What's this about mobile phones(we call them cell phones)? I have one glued to my ear just about all the time. I remember a few years ago they said they might cause cancer or something but wasn't that pretty well proven false?

[ianben]

Yeah mobile phones got the thumbs up from the same sort of people who test spray chemicals and GM
Huge amounts of money riding on results so why do we believe one and question the other.
Could it be a cell phone is just too convenient to be harmful!!

All really just a big experiment which can only be prooved in the long term.

Not the answer either side want to hear.

So do results often favour the one providing the funding

Then with so much change occuring in our livetimes today how safe is it to attribute any problem to a single cause?

Glad to here you got better in spite of modern medicine. There are still an awful lot we dont know about the world in which we live which most "experts" seem loathed to admit.

Perhaps you cant be an expert and admit you dont know but it would sure help sometimes if they told it like it is.

Would we pay to be told "we dont know"?