Glyphosate approval

Emotive language there, burnie . Crop rotation lessens the likelihood of pests and diseases but not weeds? One of the claims made for glypho was/is that it becomes inactive once in contact with the soil.

 

Round here one of the staple crops is wheat. I think most of it is exported, but it makes you wonder if the imported equivalent used for French bread has also been treated

 

Maybe that's why I cant grow plants as well as I did when I was younger, I've consumed so much glyphosate I kill any plants I touch.

 

I figure that if any of the crop treatments, all the way back to DDT, didn't get me already, it won't get me now.

Yes, careful and targeted use of just about any herbicide is just fine with me for around the home. After all, golf courses are allowed to widely broadcast whatever they bloody want just for a game!

 

Our local farmers primarily grow, barley, rape seed and potatoes on a three year cycle, lifting the tatties seem to shift and weeds. There's also polytunnels moving every 5 years and the odd carrot crop , in 20 years I've not seen any spraying going on, they pump the river nearly dry on the tatties, but otherwise low environmental impact. The bonus(as well as decent crops) is we still have good numbers of farmland birds, Skylarks, Yellowhammers, Corn Buntings and Linnets all in decent numbers here.

 

If farmers dont spray what do they do for most of the year.
The apples where I worked were sprayed on a regular basis from before blossom almost up until picking.
If they didn't most of the crop would eventually be worthless as pests and diseases build up.

 

Which is why I stopped buying them from supermarkets decades ago unless I know where they came from, I try not to buy them.
Farmers markets are a boon to top up what I cannot grow myself, we were in a supermarket buying milk earlier, looking at the fruit, it came from Peru, Morocco and Spain, some serious food miles there for grapes, raspberries and blueberries.

 

The other thing is farmers are having to compete, its a competition and if their product doesn't look good they wont be able to sell it, people wont buy blemished fruit especially.
Mind you, still doesn't make spraying fields with glyphosate alright.

I often buy Morrisons "wonky" potatoes, last time I got a good mix with some really big spuds for baking and some smaller ones, this week I got a bag of marbles, pretty much useless really, I'll probably throw most of them away, its the kind of stuff you dont even bother picking up when digging spuds.

 

The main problem if glyphosate is banned would be the spread of knotweed. A study I read that covered a few years and compared various herbicides with simply cutting back, found that only glyphosate managed to control it.

 

The main problem on the fields round me is Mare's Tail, closely followed by Bindweed. They could both be eradicated if only the farmers used glypho properly

 

That's good to know. 2,4D is used as a selective weedkiller here on young wheat. I get the odd litre from farmer friends to spot-treat lawn weeds so could mix up something definitively fatal to the worst pests I find a 7l hand sprayer very precise and economical, too.

 

Apparently there was something that was far better on mares tail - it got through the crystalline stuff on the stems. I believe that was banned only a couple of years ago

 

Do you happen to know what the active ingredient was in the pre-emergent weedkillers like the original Pathclear, @Drahcir? The bane of most Brits' lives here is gravel drives and no effective way of keeping them clean and tidy. A clear case of glyphosate not being appropriate in all circumstances, as it doesn't get rid of annual weeds and their seeds. It beggars belief what is being chucked around nowadays...bleach, vinegar, salt...and when that doesn't work, application of a flamethrower . Who needs terrorists?