Shooting blanks

16 comments on “Shooting blanks ”

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1. cha 1

   30 December 2008 at 3:46 pm

   Unintended consequences and parachuting cats, a true story,maybe?.
2. Shona 2

   30 December 2008 at 5:58 pm

   PD James based Children of Men on the research of Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski and John Peterson Myers. Published in 1992 “Our Stolen Future” though disturbing it is a great non fiction read on how the human race is the author of it’s own demise through constantly poisoning it’s food supply. Al Gore insisted when he ran for President that it was the study that he was going to base his presidency on.Well we all know how that turned out, after all he just talks shyte doesn’t he?
   Happy New Year to you all.
3. lprent 3

   30 December 2008 at 8:53 pm

   hi cha:
   I’s have to class that as legend. Read this (I went and did roughly the same searches)
4. cha 4

   31 December 2008 at 7:29 am

   Yeah, I know lprent, believe nothing you read and only half of what you see, but a giggle and a smirk for a lazy summer arvo at home.
5. myflathasmould 5

   31 December 2008 at 12:08 pm

   Ummm, I seriously object to your statement about pesticides being required. Bio Intensive organics can produce similar outputs to factory farming. I highly recommend you check out “The power of community: How Cuba survived peak oil”.

   Pesticides are required if we want out of season produce battery farmed in vast mono cultures. The green revolution was exactly that. We turned out back on eons of built up knowledge about how to grow food. Hung our hopes on science but didn’t do it properly. Commercial interests have interfered. Money is made not from making food safe, but by making people spend more. Often in the agricultural world this is simplified further to just making more. (Exemplified by the status of having a good yield) Research money sadly follows commercial interest more than human or eco system interest and more money generally means more research and more results.
6. lprent 6

   31 December 2008 at 12:51 pm

   mouldy: Have a good read of

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

   During my lifetime the world population has more than doubled. The population of NZ has nearly doubled. The world population will probably double again before I crap out – hopefully from one of the western diseases of age. I’d really prefer to not die from more violent means at the hands of the starving or epidemics incubated in the same.

   The problem about food world wide is not about marketing, it is about people, population growth rates, diebacks, war, pestilence etc and all of those awkward consequences of what happens when people start starving.

   Sure there is a small fraction of the world that is wealthy enough to care about what they’re putting in their mouths (like me). Most are more concerned with getting enough food.

   The research on organic farming will carry on in the wealthy countries where the market for the goods is. When it gets simple enough and gives good yields then it will be taken up with alacrity by farmers everywhere – most farmers will use whatever works. At present that does not appear to be the case with the organics simply because they haven’t had the degree of research done into them. What works in NZ will probably not work in Indonesia and will take time to find out what does work.

   In any case, there is so much persistent endocrine disrupters around the ‘west’ already, that I suspect it won’t make much of a difference.

   BTW: I’d suggest moving flats. Mouldy buildings are really hazardous to your health
7. Akldnut 7

   31 December 2008 at 1:24 pm

   mama mia – wassa happen to my tadpole, mussa be swimming uppaside downa. Shesa gonna getta worsa before she get betta!!
8. Janet 8

   31 December 2008 at 3:08 pm

   I’m sure all those electromagetic fields such as those caused by cellphones and their towers, microwaves and computers can’t be helping either. The cumulative effect of EMF plus environmental toxins are affecting a lot more than just sperm. After all that’s not such a big deal – a few sperm banks are all that is required. We need a healthy planet more.
9. George Darroch 9

   31 December 2008 at 8:25 pm

   lprent – totally agree with you that trendy “organics” sold in Parnell has nothing to do with world hunger or the like. But the Cuban experience is instructive, as is stuff being done in India, Indonesia, and across the developing world. Sustainable agriculture has been used to produce very high per-acre outputs, with both new techniques and ones used for thousands of years. Small holders are well documented as putting out higher outputs when compared to larger farms. The problem is, however, is that it isn’t as profitable (in dollar terms) as mega-farming, and is thus neglected by business and policymakers.
10. cha 10

    1 January 2009 at 8:44 am

    Janet, a personal observation, having worked at the high voltage end of the electrical industry for more than 30 years, nearly all the blokes involved in HV substation construction and maintainence father girls and lots of them. EMF?, who knows, but at the kids Christmas party, 80% girls.
11. myflathasmould 11

    1 January 2009 at 11:28 am

    Iprent: I understand your confusion of “organics” as a marketing thing. A neighbour of my parents is going organic due to the premium payments available for lamb. A lot of people see organics as a trendy hip think.

    I see organics as a method of production that is massively more sustainable than fossil fuel based agriculture. For me it is not just about the pesticide use but also about the energy used. You claim price is a problem. I claim our eating habits and expectations are a problem. I remember Mum cooking as a kid. Used to always be with raw ingredients, a major component being from the garden and farm. In the late nineties as the tide of Americanisation initiated with the reforms of the eighties rose finally to drown rural Southland. Suddenly we were eating sauces premade from a bottle or a packet, schnitzel that came pre crumbed. It wasn’t preprepared meals, but it was close.

    We have used the once plentiful cheap oil to fund a feast. We have had opulent foods that combined with a lack of exercise are causing health problems for many. You talk as though you expect conventional agriculture to continue to be ‘cheaper’ than organics. What happens when the world economic fires again, oil demand increases to match supply and the price of oil increases again? Many of the chemical solutions promoted by exponents of the Green Revolution have small or large fossil fuel components and/or have high energy inputs required. What happens when all the cheap sources of phosphate (used to make super phosphate more commonly super) are used up.

    Sulphur and phosphate rock – the two main ingredients of super phosphate – had risen from about US$45 ($58) and US$50 a tonne respectively at the start of last year to spot market prices of US$600 and US$300 a tonne or more, Mourits said.

    link

    Conventional farming is based around supplementing natural processes by adding nutrients and using chemicals to control pests. In some cases straight replacement is used. As the prices for these supplements increase this will be reflected in the price. As the supplements are based around non-renewable resources (otherwise they would be organic…) the amount will continue to decrease leading to increase in demand and pricing. This will see at some point conventional farmed produce rise to match organics.
12. myflathasmould 12

    1 January 2009 at 11:29 am

    testing…
13. rave 13

    1 January 2009 at 2:53 pm

    I wonder what the sperm count of the Israeli IDF males is.
14. Janet 14

    1 January 2009 at 4:59 pm

    Don’t pilots also disproportionately father girls? Could be the extra radiation up there or increased exposure to EMFs.

    I know women who work in IT seem to have a higher risk of miscarriage.
15. Janet 15

    1 January 2009 at 5:36 pm

    Cuban revolution 50 years old today. Now there’s resilience!
16. lprent 16

    3 January 2009 at 11:47 am

    Hi mouldy,

    What I was specifically looking at was the expansion of the technology of organics to places like asia, africa, latin america, pacifica, etc etc.

    The tech for growing these types of crops has been tested largely in the OECD countries. After 30 years it is maybe becoming comparable in cost and production possibilities for temperate zones.

    As far as I’m aware the type of tech required to farm outside of the temperatate zones in the quantities required hasn’t been developed. It will probably take about 15-20 years of painstaking work by locals to work out what works where.

    BTW: If you look at the fertilizer usage in NZ compared to when I was a kid, it is way down. It also dropped before the price went up. Different technologies made it less relevant.

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