The future of food

[IndexFund]

I havn't seen food Inc.

I would think that agriculture in the US and Australia are pretty similar. The US farmer gets a lot of subsidies though that aussie farmers don't get. And genetically modified crops are more the norm in the US. Australia has had GM cotton for about 15 years and GM canola is just starting out. I'd imagine more GM crops will eventually start being grown here as it gets more accepted.

GM canola was banned for many years in the hope that by staying conventional, there would be a premium paid by the market for non-GM. But there never was much of a premium. Even Japan would not pay more than a few dollars more per tonne for non-GM canola from Australia, and they even sent a big deligation out here to convince Australia to stay GM free, and at the very same time were buying a million tonnes of GM canola from Canada.

Consumers are always right. If they want non-GM it's up to them, but so far the consumer seems to want cheap food rather than non-GM. They will just have to pay though.

I'd be happy to see GM crops banned globally. That would wipe out a few hundred million tonnes of production, and prices would probably double. All farmers would think that was great. Too bad for the starving poor in developing nations though? And of course, thats just GM food. Start banning herbicides and fertilizer and hybrid seeds and it could go on and on. How much food production do you want to wipe out?


See ya's.

Starving and poor nations would die off quicker if they are introduced to GM crops. They are in effect a trojan horse to wipe out these nations and slow down their reproduction.

GMO, glyphosate and population reduction
GMO crops have never been proven safe for human or animal consumption. Moreover, they are inherently genetically ‘unstable’ as they are an unnatural product of introducing a foreign bacteria such as Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt) or other material into the DNA of a given seed to change its traits. Perhaps equally dangerous are the ‘paired’ chemical herbicides sold as a mandatory part of a GMO contract, such as Monsanto’s Roundup, the most widely used such herbicide in the world. It contains highly toxic glyphosate compounds that have been independently tested and proven to exist in toxic concentrations in GMO applications far above that safe for humans or animals. Tests show that tiny amounts of glyphosate compounds would do damage to a human umbilical, embryonic and placental cells in a pregnant woman drinking the ground water near a GMO field.

One long-standing project of the US Government has been to perfect a genetically-modified variety of corn, the diet staple in Mexico and many other Latin American countries. The corn has been field tested in tests financed by the US Department of Agriculture along with a small California bio-tech company named Epicyte. Announcing his success at a 2001 press conference, the president of Epicyte, Mitch Hein, pointing to his GMO corn plants, announced, “We have a hothouse filled with corn plants that make anti-sperm antibodies.”

Hein explained that they had taken antibodies from women with a rare condition known as immune infertility, isolated the genes that regulated the manufacture of those infertility antibodies, and, using genetic engineering techniques, had inserted the genes into ordinary corn seeds used to produce corn plants. In this manner, in reality they produced a concealed contraceptive embedded in corn meant for human consumption. “Essentially, the antibodies are attracted to surface receptors on the sperm,” said Hein. “They latch on and make each sperm so heavy it cannot move forward. It just shakes about as if it was doing the lambada.” Hein claimed it was a possible solution to world “over-population.” The moral and ethical issues of feeding it to humans in Third World poor countries without their knowing it countries he left out of his remarks.

Spermicides hidden in GMO corn provided to starving Third World populations through the generosity of the Gates’ foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Kofi Annan’s AGRA or vaccines that contain undisclosed sterilization agents are just two documented cases of using vaccines or GMO seeds to “reduce population.”

http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/vaccines-and-gm-crops-to-reduce-world-population/


http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-de...ters/2010/sep/29/gates-foundation-gm-monsanto


The rich just dont waste their money on nothing...

 

[topcropper]

Spermicides hidden in GMO corn provided to starving Third World populations through the generosity of the Gates’ foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Kofi Annan’s AGRA or vaccines that contain undisclosed sterilization agents are just two documented cases of using vaccines or GMO seeds to “reduce population.”


http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-de...ters/2010/sep/29/gates-foundation-gm-monsanto


The rich just dont waste their money on nothing...

Yeah yeah, this is just hilarious now.

Let me get this straight? Bill and Melinda Gates are investing heavily into monsanto, and in cohoots with monsanto, developing secret sterilizing GMO corn that is going to reduce Africa's population...???

OMFG.

Someone call in the blokes in the white coats, we have a live one here..!!!



In all honesty, I started writting a serious piece first about roundup and stuff, but by the time I got to that last bit I just deleated it. I couldn't write something serious after that.


See ya's.

 

[HiEquity]

In all honesty, I started writting a serious piece first about roundup and stuff, but by the time I got to that last bit I just deleated it. I couldn't write something serious after that.


See ya's.

Now you know how I feel in the Climate Change / Carbon threads!

 

[topcropper]

I don't know that much about growing food, but I saw an interesting video about it recently. It was called food Inc. Got it from video rental shop. It describes how food is grown in the US. Monsanto is not portrayed very well, their practice of suing using heavy tactics is covered in details.

Has anybody seen this movie? What did you think? I'm particularly interested in feedback from Australian farmers as I hope we are not heading the same as the US.

Back to your post HK.

As I said, I haven't seen the movie. I could imagine it makes industrial, high yield agriculture look pretty bad. That would have been the aim of the movie, it probably worked I'd guess from the sound of the concern in your post.

Todays current farm practice's probably do look bad. All this chemical and fertilizer and now GM crops. Have you read any Jarrod Diamond stuff? Or David Suzuki? The story they tell about agriculture sounds shocking. And some of it is probably correct. It has caused pollution problems, it has caused land to be cleared. The problem I have with these blokes, is that they offer no solutions to how to feed almost 7 billion people. They all know how to feed 2 billion, via organic agriculture.

The internet is full of bad stories of todays farms. And very little stories of good stuff. It's probably 100 times the bad to the good.

All I know is that my soil is better than it's ever been. It's full of worms now that we don't plough up the ground anymore and soil organic matter is still rising. I'm taking probably 4 times the yield per hectare as we did 40 years ago because we are storing most of the rain that falls now .Soil erosion has almost stopped now with all the stubble left on the surface, and I can continue to farm like this forever more if I continue to add the nutrients that are taken out via the grain leaving my farm.

But this was not the case 40 years ago. Yields were declining as we weren't using fertilizer. Erosion was bad from the constant ploughing, and soil organic matter dropped to below 1%.

Seriously, if the worlds farm land was that bad and buggered from all this nasty stuff being put on it, yields of farm produce wouldn't still be rising would it? It's not buggered at all. That production on my farm has increased by a factor of 4 times would be pretty consistant with agriculture globally. Grain production globally has increased from about 500 million tonnes to 2.2 billion in 50 years or so, from mainly all the reasons I've mentioned.

I've covered all this on my farm threads.



Monsanto's heavy handed tactics? I've covered this on the first page of this thread. A lot of farmers are crooks, and want to use monsanto products without paying. There is this left wing idea that all genetic material should be free. That's a very dangerous thing. If it was all free, where would be the incentive for scientists to keep breeding new higher yielding, more disease resistant varieties? For a company to spend millions developing new varieties, they need to be able to own the genetic material they spend so much to develop, and then to make a profit from. But this happens everywhere in agriculture, not just with genetically modified crops. Nearly all the wheat varieties I plant, the genetic material is owned by someone. I can keep this seed for next year, but I can't sell it to anyone else to plant. And I have to pay a royalty to the owner. As I said, same as GM. And thats wheat. The summer crops I grow are hybrids, so you can't plant those seeds the next season anyway, as the plant will revert back to the parents, and be no good. And I don't even want to keep my own seed anyway. I just finished planting wheat. I put in 500 hectares and used 25 tonnes of seed. I just bought it in town, cleaned, ready to go. So easy.

I said this on page 1 of this thread,....

Not being able to keep seed won't make any difference to me. I don't ever keep seed anyway. All the summer crops I grow are hybrids. You can't plant the seed again as it will not be the same plant, hybrids revert back to the undesirable traits of the parent seeds. Hybrid crops have been around for 50 years or so and the yield boost they gave also happened back then.

I've even planted hybrid wheat seed before, but not just lately.

I don't keep wheat seed generally. It's not efficent. It's a nuisance keeping small amounts of seed for half a year, and you never know what variety you will plant anyway. It has to be kept cool and insect free. I generally would only need 20 or 30 tonnes, so it's better that seed is kept in much larger storages. What happens in the real world is one particular farmer who had a very good quality of seed will likely keep a thousand tonnes. He then gets it tested for germination and other qualities, and he will sell it back to the seed company who holds the rights to it for perhaps double value it would otherwise be worth.

Then at planting time you decide what variety you want to plant from the say 10 different types, and order it in. Then you still have to pay PBR royalties to the company who bred the plant type anyway, and you can't sell it to the neighbour or the company who breed it will take you to court, just like monsanto would.

It's an argument I hear all the time, but it's a non event as far as I'm concerned..

There is permaculture? Sounds good. Organic and all. But it involves tiny little plots. It involves importing onto this land, straw and compost and such, all which originated on another farm. It involves a massive amount of labour.

Todays industrial agriculture means that only 3% of the workforce is needed to feed everyone. This obviously also means that 97% of the workforce are doing other things, which allows countries with industrial agriculture to have such high standards of living. It also means that agriculture contributes a smaller and smaller percentage GDP output. This is obvious, as it takes less input and employs few people.



If consumers don't like how most food is grown, then don't buy it. Buy organic. You just have to pay a lot more. I encourage anyone to eat organic. I don't myself, but the much lower yields and more land needed means it's reducing total farm output, and that's good for all farmers.

There is thousands of choices to make in a supermarket. And then also farmers markets. Everyone can buy whatever food they want, and there has never been a better and bigger choice.


Any more questions? I enjoy discussing this subject.


See ya's.

 

[pursefattener]

Hi TC

I enjoyed that and find the subject very interesting also .

I often wonder what may happen in the more distant future not with standing wars , natural disasters and plagues etc if the worlds population surges past 10 billion or so . What is the balance of probability for agriculture generally then ?

Maybe there will be new ways of producing food that no one has even thought of yet . Or perhaps humans may find another planet ( like avatar )

I saw food inc about a year ago and it is very negative on industrial agriculture and that no doubt is as it was intended . You should see it .

Shawn

 

[Sunfish]

I admire your patience TC. You have made these points often but there are always new challengers.

I'm aware of the old ploughing and ripping methods and what you do sounds MUCH better.

 

[Graingrower]

I saw Percy Schmeiser in 2008, when he came to our local cinema to speak. I had already been convinced of the benefits of GM crops but wanted to see what the negatives were. They showed a short movie which was along similar lines to Food Inc. It may have even been an excerpt. I haven't seen "Food Inc." yet so I'm not sure.

Anyway in this short movie they showed some army tanks marching over a hill in a war scene. In the next scene they showed some tractors lined up in the same fashion. It was a very effective subliminal and somewhat dishonest way of getting their point across. Even more so when most of the people there had already mostly made up their minds. Other things that they did were to give you two pieces of information and get you to put them together. An example of this is a youtube video mentioned on SS. They told you about Indian farmers who were committing suicide, then they mentioned GM crops. They didn't link the two in the video but left the viewer to do that themselves. It a way of getting people to believe lies without actually telling them.

The movie was a real dig at monsanto and industrial farming. At the end of the movie Percy told us about his battles with Monsanto, again a one sided argument. I remember one young lady at the end of the evening very emotionally asking "how do we get rid of this, well, um ****?" Percy advised people to write letters to their local MPs.

That day I felt bad to be a farmer. Not because of GM food, but because I decide how to farm based on the best info available and people hate me for it. More than anything else I want to be a farmer, which I am. To do this I have to change with the times, that means using big machinery, herbicides, fertiliser, insecticides, fungicides, hybrid seed, and now GM crops.

It's human nature to listen more to the side of the story that supports our own view, thus providing reinforcement for whichever view that is.

I reckon you could sell anything to almost anyone if you could get them in a cinema to watch a 93 minute ad.

 

[topcropper]

I'm aware of the old ploughing and ripping methods and what you do sounds MUCH better.

It's amazing when someone from the city comes onto my place, and not knowing anything about farming they say....


"Oh, I see you guys are organic farmers, that's great".

I say, "ah, no mate, we aren't organic farmers, we are about the polar opposite"

They say, "but what about all this straw and mulch you've got?"


Obviously I have to tell them that the organic farmer has those ploughed up paddocks you used to see, since as they aren't allowed to use roundup or any other herbicide, they have no other option but to plough up the dirt. But as I don't plough up the ground any more, and haven't done so for 20 years, my land has all this mulch over it.



This is just taken from my farm threads.

Just an example of what we can do these days. November and December of 2007 was very wet. Once we'd harvested the wheat in late December, the soil was just about full of water again. So in January 2008, we drilled sunflowers into the paddock. One spray with roundup, and plant with a zero-till planter, and sunflowers are growing, just a few weeks after a wheat crop was taken off.

This would have been completely impossible 30 years ago. You have to start with a weed free seedbed, so 30 years ago the ground would have had to be ploughed up, probably twice. Once it was ploughed up twice, there's no way sunflowers could have went in and germinated.


Sunflowers emerging through wheat stubble.

And about a month later,..

And at flowering.

So this is a complete crop that we got that would not have happened 30 years ago, so not only are yields much higher per crop, but we can crop more often too.




Planting wheat into heavy sorghum stubble, just months after 7 tonnes per hectare of sorghum was taken from the paddock. Once again this was not possible 30 years ago.

I'm glad I caught the end of the old plough and bash and burn stage. Atleast I know how much things have improved. Spending weeks and weeks, going round and round, burning diesel on a big tractor was no fun, and a rather pointless exercise too.


All these photos taken from my 'TC's farm threads'. All my neighbours do exactly what I do. Most farmers in Australia do similar to what farmers in my area do now, although in this area we were all a bit ahead of the pack, but most are catching up.

The organic farmers? They do it tough. They are a different type of person, and good on em for sticking to what they believe in. But they are slowly going bust in this area. I bought one out 15 years ago. There's probably only a handfull left on the whole Liverpool Plains.


See ya's.

 

[Sunfish]

And all that ploughing gave you a "plough pan" where the tractor wheel ran along the bottom of the furrows so you had to get in a D7 with ripper tines every few years. And after ploughing you had to harrow before planting.

All this with a Fergie. Eating dust for 80 hours a week. They didn't even have roll cages in the '60s let alone airconditioned cabs. LOL

I remember on Fairymead Sugar plantation (a big one) they would plough around the clock.

 

[Aaron Sice]

I admire your patience TC. You have made these points often but there are always new challengers.

I'm aware of the old ploughing and ripping methods and what you do sounds MUCH better.

I'm happy to admit to being corrected across to the TC camp. In fact, I can't believe I ever used to think the opposite, but I did. Part of learning, I guess.

 

[Macca]

Hi TC and Thorpie,

I have been reading in the papers about the vast amount of land being bought by Chinese (and others) interests around the Gunnedah coal seams.

It reads like they do the test drilling, if they find coal they then buy the properties for "coal value" which is much more that farm value. Then they apply for mining rights and as they own the land no one is left to object, so it gets dug up for the coal.

It is a business and they have the right to do that but when they are finished it makes me wonder what the land will be good for in 30 years time.

I assume the population will still want to eat so where are we going to grow the crops if all the good land has been dug up and aquifers destroyed ?

 

[topcropper]

Hi

I assume the population will still want to eat so where are we going to grow the crops if all the good land has been dug up and aquifers destroyed ?

They say they are only going to dig up the poorer ridge country. But there are some black soil plains being bought up. This is very good coal, and there is a lot of it, so there will be years and years of coal can come from the poorer ridge land before any black soil would even need to be dug up.

Prices paid are fairly similar whether it's black soil plains or ridge country, which makes sense, as they don't really care whats above. So the good land seems to be going for about double, and the crap land might be going for 5 or 6 times it's ag worth.

I think the coal companies also want a buffer around the mines. So less whinging from neighbours. I wouldn't be surprised if the black soil is left to be farmed by the mining company and so that is their buffer. It would be leased to a farmer, or even in plenty of cases, it's leased back to the farmer at 'mates rates' who sold it to them in the first place. There's a bit of that going on. So the farmer has ten million dollars in his bank account and his still farming his dirt.

What happens to the aquifers? Buggered if I know. All under this land is plenty of water, great clean water. It's something you don't have to worry about in this part of the world.

Most farmer objection is calming down. I think people are surprised at how much cash is being thrown around, so most people just take whats on offer and they can go and do whatever the hell they want, or do nothing. At first some farmers who sold out copped a bit from others, but now no one could care less, and are happy for them.


This is roughly where the shenwa mine is.
http://maps.google.com.au/?ll=-31.280605,150.435791&spn=0.156391,0.308647&t=h&z=12
Caroona and the BHP mine is directly to the south.

The shiny white and green blocks is black soil, the duller yellow land is poorer ridge.

Go 100 ks the the north west, and you come to the Pilliga National Park. It's that big dark green blob. This is some of the poorest, most worthless land you would ever find. It was never taken up by farmers, or if it was, the farmer went bust, or worse, went insane and comitted suicide. Some of the early explorers and their horses nearly starved to death when they were crossing through here 180 years ago. Use street view to check it out? So now it's a national park. Pity they wouldn't dig all this up?


See ya's.

 

[Macca]

Thanks TC,

I was thinking that surface water currently seeps down to the top layer of rock and stays there as underground moisture.

If this layer of rock was removed and then just tipped back in when they had finished, it would allow the water to keep on going down, so less ground water for crops and shade trees.

Tumultuous times we live in !

 

[topcropper]

Hey Macca.

I posted this on the foreign ownership thread, but here it is again,

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...-up-43-nsw-farms/story-e6frg6nf-1226082387428

So that is just the Chinese mine. And nothing has even started yet!


See ya's.

 

[House_Keeper]

Just caught up with this discussion.

Thanks TC for another detailed explanation of farming in Australia.

I must confused you a bit when I mentioned Food Inc. What was most scary about it wasn't the part about agriculture. What I found most scary was

1. The industrialization of the meat industry, where cows no longer eat grass and live in green fields, but are fed corn and live in a dirt patch. Apparently, they can also inject them with some hormones that increase the milk output, with questionable impact on their health. The whole thing is turning into a meat factory. Understandable when the whole industry is driven price, but a bit shocking when most people still have this image of cows living in the fields.

2. The close links between the staff at the Food & Drugs Administration and the big food companies. The movie gave the impression of corruption, where the food companies where granted a very lenient regulatory oversight because of these close connections.

I am aware that it is very easy to manipulate people in a movie. This movie looks like a documentary. However there may well have been some hidden agendas behind it.

I made the effort to learn about nutrition a few years ago. I reckon that what the food industry does is nowhere as near important as what people choose to put in their mouths. From what I gathered, eat plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables, and eat unprocessed food as much as possible and you're doing ok. No point blaming the food companies if you make poor decisions.

I have a lot of admiration and respect for our farmers. They often have to get in debt, take risks, cope with bad weather, then accept whatever price the market will offer for their products. Not easy. Yet a few % can feed the whole population. Very impressive.

 

[topcropper]

What was most scary about it wasn't the part about agriculture. What I found most scary was

1. The industrialization of the meat industry, where cows no longer eat grass and live in green fields, but are fed corn and live in a dirt patch. Apparently, they can also inject them with some hormones that increase the milk output, with questionable impact on their health. The whole thing is turning into a meat factory. Understandable when the whole industry is driven price, but a bit shocking when most people still have this image of cows living in the fields..

Hmm?. Remember, in the food bowl of the US, it gets absolutely freezing for about 4 months of the year. Animals are kept inside sheds for those months for their own benefit and this would cause all sorts of problems. This doesn't need to happen in Australia. I'd imagine things would start to look pretty ugly inside that shed at the end of 4 months. Good time to send a TV crew in to get a horror story.

I don't know about hormones at all. Shawn, or 'Pursefattener' is a dairy farmer. He might fill us in on hormone use in milk. But a lot of bullcrap info gets spread. Apparently everyone thinks chickens are fed hormones, but I believe this is all bull too.

Here,....
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/stories/s543233.htm

I reckon that what the food industry does is nowhere as near important as what people choose to put in their mouths. From what I gathered, eat plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables, and eat unprocessed food as much as possible and you're doing ok. No point blaming the food companies if you make poor decisions.
.

Yep. Good point. People in Australia have a million food choices they can make. If anyone is worried about how most food is grown these days from high yield oil based industrial agriculture, then buy organic from our great organic farmers. You just have to pay more, that's all. Or buy for price, it will be cheap and come from a conventional farmer.

Organic food production is highly labour intensive. You will find already that African farmers produce a lot of organic food that is exported to Europe, as African farm workers can work all day for a dollar, and western organic farmers can't compete. And Western nations export mass produced grain, meat, and dairy products back to Africa, where poor African farmers can't compete with modern mechanised food production.

I predict more of this sort of thing will happen. Organic food produced in poor developing nations. It's happening already with organic veges coming from China, and we export grain and meat and dairy back to China.


See ya's.

 

[House_Keeper]

Thanks for the link TC. Interesting stuff.

It's hard to know what to believe in regards to food & health though. Even the doctors can't agree. Anyway, I'm not that worried as long as I make the effort to eat mostly fresh, unprocessed foods. Add a little regular physical exercise and you're already doing better than most to stay healthy.

Thanks for all your fascination explanations in this thread. It helps to debunk some of the myths out there.

 

[Perp]

But a lot of bullcrap info gets spread. Apparently everyone thinks chickens are fed hormones, but I believe this is all bull too.

Yes, the use of hormones in chickens was made illegal almost 50 years ago. In the USA, it's illegal to label chicken as "hormone-free", because it falsely implies that it's possible to buy chicken which *has* been fed hormones. I wish we had similar laws in Australia, because the presence of those "hormone-free" labels does seem to perpetuate the myth. When I told a friend of mine that hormones weren't used on any Australian chickens, she said "why are there 'hormone-free' labels, then?". So those labels are doing their job of sustaining urban myths. Grrrr.

Cattle can be treated with hormones. The type of hormone used is exactly the same one which the cows produce in their bodies, the levels are just boosted a little to increase yield, though the end levels are not extraordinary, ie it ensures that all cattle have growth hormone levels within the high end of normal, but doesn't create levels which are outside normal variation. This reduces the number of cattle which have to be killed and reduces carbon footprint. The levels of hormone measured in the resulting beef are indistinguishable from non-hormone-treated beef.

 

[topcropper]

US heat wave.

This news hasn't made the mainstream media yet. If the heat and dry continue, I'd expect it will start to get general media coverage.

The US has been hit with a hot dry spell that is effecting the corn crop. It's in the crucial polination period right now. The US corn crop is ten times bigger than the Australian wheat crop. So a 10% reduction in yield amounts to grain the size of the whole Aussie harvest.

Also, the Russian wheat crop is not yielding well. It got hit by a freak cold spell in February, and then dry weather.

http://theland.farmonline.com.au/ne...neral/grain-market-goes-on-a-run/2605263.aspx

.
Australian wheat prices are currently at around $270 a tonne port at present, amazing many analysts and producers who thought seasonal highs would struggle to push through the $230/t mark.

Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) July wheat futures have pushed through the US700 cents a bushel mark, but it is corn that is the talking point.

Corn futures on CBOT have risen an incredible 23pc in the last seven trading sessions, as pressure comes on official yield estimates.

For months, there have been whispers from within the trade that the influential US Department of Agriculture (USDA) yield estimates were too high. Now, with crops in the crucial stage, it appears yields are unlikely to be up to earlier estimates.

Corn crops in the eastern cornbelt of the US were not helped when forecast good rainfall fizzed somewhat over the last week, meaning in the crucial pollination period there is insufficient moisture, which has led to the bull run in corn prices.

It's good news for Australian farmers that's for sure. I've just finished planting wheat, and a month ago prices were dismal. Now it's all changed. Also, most of my sorghum crop was unsold as prices were also unexciting. We will now sell into this rise, and lock in production for next year as well.

Huge rain in the US could probably save things if it fell right now though.


See ya's.

 

[pursefattener]

Just caught up with this discussion .

I don't know much about the use of hormone growth proponents in livestock and am always amazed at the perception that they are used in chicken meat production . Some of our non farming friends are often saying they won't eat chicken for this reason . Perception can be very powerful .

I have heard that if hormone injections are given to yearling heifers then almost none of them will get in calf . It stops them from coming into anoestrus .

I have never heard of anyone local using HGP but I have read a bit about it in farming magazines from the US and elsewhere .

Great news for wheat prices ... My grain contract runs out at the end of September so I will need to reassess from then going forward .

Milk prices are not looking good at the moment . The $AU makes it tough ...