1,374 karma · joined January 24, 2017
Rotenone, an insecticide produced by some plants, is used in organic farming because it is naturally ocurring. It has been pointed out as a cause for Parkinson disease in farmers.[1]
The likelihood of danger should be approached without any preconceived ideas.
And everything you do in Organic Farming can be done in Integrated Farming - you only resort to chemical solutions if there are no other options left. And even then, only if you've gone beyond a certain point beyond which the damage will out-cost the benefits of the spraying.
The precautionary principle lies within Integrated Farming, because it is highly adaptable.
There are harmful insecticides being used in organic farming, and the avoidance of synthetic fungicides allows for higher levels of some dangerous fungal toxins in food.
If a fungus-resistant GMO variety were available, organic farmers could then avoid the use of fungicides altogether. But GMOS are completely of of question in OF. Why? Because it is artificial, and that's the end of it.
Like I said in another comment in this thread, organic farming still uses pesticides, just not the synthetic ones.
In my opinion as a farmer, the foundational principle of Organic Farming is not a path towards better farming practices, but one that divides what is supposedly natural and organic, and what is artificial and synthetic.
This has more to do with a romantic ideal of purity regarding agriculture and food production than guiding farming with principles of science-based agronomy or efficacy/efficiency decision making.
Buying organic is not safer, though, because one can still use herbicides in organic farming, as long as they aren't synthetic. Sometimes the safer organic option won't be as safe as the synthetic one.
Some herbicides are dangerous, and if safer solutions were available farmers would use them - if only their crops would survive that substance. That is one of the points of glyphosate-resistant varieties.
Be it as it may, the danger will always be greater for farmers than consumers. Integrated Farming accounts for this as well, and the list of available pest management substances is constantly being updated. I don't know how well IF works in the US, but in the EU (Portugal) at least I get updates every now an then.
I still use glyphosate and will keep using it for weed control. In an olive field, I use a shredder for most of the field, and leave herbicides for plantation lines only. This means that only about 30% of the total area is actually sprayed with herbicides in some orchards.
I'd reserve the ban on allegedly dangerous substances for personal use. And I would start with home spray insecticides.
about:reader?url=https://www.birdguides.com/news/millions-of-birds-vacuumed-to-death-annually-in-mediterranean/
I don't think that is why they do it. First of all, producers are paid according to the titratable acidity of the oil (and classified as extra virgin, virgin, or lampante) and if paid by the tonne of olives delivered, this is adjusted to the oil-to-mass ratio (roughly 20% w/w). These values are determined in laboratory, from samples collected at delivery, and whose results come only at a later time. There is no measure for aroma.
Many times, batches from different producers are mixed before pressing, so there's no point in trying to preserve whatever aromas there might be.
Unless we're talking about producers with their own pressers, producing their own label, trying to preserve aroma is kind of pointless, and subjective at best.
But there is something else: the oil-to-mass ratio improves during dryer weeks, so transportation is cheaper and extraction is better paid. So maybe there is more pressure for a quick harvest in conditions where the oil content reaches 22%, but again I see no point in nightly harvest.
Huge numbers of birds from central and northern Europe winter in the Mediterranean
But they are not being affected, that is, of all the 17 species mentioned in the cited notice, only one is listed as Near Threatened (the redwing, T. iliacus). Vulnerable or endangered species are not being affected as far as I know, and sedentary/endemic species would be in greater danger.
According to the Portuguese Natural Preservation Institute (ICNF) the numbers involved are not statistically relevant for justifying the prohibition of nightly harvests.
I suspect the main reason behind the need for harvesting at night is that the demand exceeds the supply for super high density harvesting service, and contractors harvest day and night in order to face the demand.
As soon as there are enough providers, working extra hours will become less interesting and this kind of practice will go away. This kind of harvesting is a lot quicker than previous practices, so harvesting during the day will be more than enough.
Harvesting is done usually in the winter (ranging from November to January) so only non-migratory birds are afected, and even then only those nesting in super high density orchards.
The harvesters are quite expensive, and usually only larger producers own them. This kind of investment is tricky, because for the most part of the year there is nothing to harvest (although there are some other crops where the harvesters are being tried in order to recover the investment more quickly).
Of course no farmer wants to needlessly kill harmless birds, but I will wait for more data, since there has been some hype regarding super high density orchards in the past months, usually portraying them as something horrible and bad to the environment.
By the way, birds to not get into the oil presses, because olives pass through a mesh in order to remove branches and leaves. Then they're washed, so there is no risk of contamination with dead birds.
I also suspect the decline of bird populations in the south has something to do with the big fires of past years, that forced northern predatory birds to come searching for food at lower latitudes. I have never seen so many eagles like this year.
Or the other side, the Eurasian magpie populations seem to be doing fine, as well as the once endangered storks.
Edit to add: the research cited in the article is not research but an information notice by the Environment Council of the government of Andalucia.
If you are developing an AI sophisticated enough to pilot a tractor, would it only be able to drive one model? If John Deere ever achieved this goal, the AI should be adaptable to other brands as well.
Car manufacturers are doing this already with Android. They do not develop the OS, they simple accommodate their cars for it.
I have a working GPS system that belonged to my father's John Deere tractor. I cannot use it anymore, even in other John Deere tractors. This is wasteful and makes no sense. People working in farms, close to nature and subject to profit margins they do not completely control feel very uncomfortable with this.
I would never do that, unless I was actually renting the land. Some people do rent their land, and perhaps committing to such a contract could make sense to them.
The alternative is to simply buy a tractor and then hire someone that does many other things, like driving other tractors, cleaning them and do some repairs and maintenance. (If I could do that to my own AI-powered tractor, maybe then I would buy one). This is about who controls your business.
I believe there's future in modularity, but I also believe some kinds of equipment won't fall into the automation ratchet or the "evolve to AI or die" category.
In which case you still won't be locked out of your machine, in the sense that you can choose the company with the best farming AI.
The only way for a quick automation scenario is to make crops a lot more predictable. In our days, this means linearly sown and harvested, artifact free crops.
If we choose a more hands-on approach to farming (and food production in general for that matter), then automation ceases to be as interesting.
Yes.
Most contractors use New Holland tractors now.
I suspect the reason is a shift from annual crops to permanent crops, that do not need much of the high-end functionalities.
But they also want to protect their business with lockout strategies.
My father owns a John Deere, kind of old, and it is a good machine. It is not that sophisticated, and all the electronics we use are bought separately. We do not have this kind of problem yet.
The convenience and added benefit of a self-guided, GPS/RTK oriented tractor has this annoying cost. John Deere wants a share of what farmers save with more efficient machines, and then some more.
In Physics, it is almost impossible not to make use of History timelines for the sake of understanding the evolution of ideas. But that's that.
I think some course in the History of Science would be highly valuable in STEM. Philosophy of Science would also be very beneficial.
There are many writings by Bertrand Russell that would fit in Math courses and that have a lot to do with Philosophy and that are very pertinent to any math student.[1][2]
In my opinion, one of the books that better makes the bridge between the Humanities and Science is Florian Cajori's History of Mathematical Notation. No only it is a very interesting book, shedding light at the intimate relationship of our symbol lexicon, our skills at abstraction and the progress in Mathematics, but it also teaches about cuneiform writing, rhetorical Math teaching in ancient Egypt, and how fundamental the invention of typography was for the stability of Mathematical notation.
A Professor I once knew lend me his only copy just because I mentioned the topic, and after skimming through I knew I had to buy my own. (For all of those of have lent books, you must know how much of a gamble it is, specially when the person you're lending the book is some random student!)
[1] Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (http://people.umass.edu/klement/russell-imp.html)
[2] On Denoting (http://bactra.org/Russell/denoting/)
Apparently they had bought several other smaller companies, integrated their software into their own program when useful, built huge servers for their cloud service that they also rent.
I knew the program was good - I was familiar with previous versions - so it was kind of a no brainer. The problem was the new cloud thing.
I am in favor of economic rational practices in agriculture (in addition to the normal functioning of markets), so that crops are chosen wisely between farmers and prices do not plunge because of all-or-nothing decisions, and sharing information between farmers is essential.
But data harvesting (no pun intended) of farming practices to the purpose of informing large companies and futures markets brokers of their possibilities can work against the interests of farmers and consumers. The way large corporations treat small farmers is ruthless and they negotiate no terms.
So if my and other farmers' data was being uploaded to the cloud without possibility of local storage, who had access to it? Every crop, production, pesticide, invoice, price was going there!
They wouldn't sell it, they told me. It is stored with e2ee, they assured me. If I ever forgot the password, data would be irrecoverable, they said.
But there was also the problem of internet connection issues, because farms are remote. Would it ever work?
The first thing I noticed after installing the program was that there no important message was shown that informed the user of what would happen if the password was lost. I typed in some new data, saved and exited. Then I started the program and reset the password with ease. There's no possibility of 3FA, either.
So I told them I could not use the program because of my poor internet connection, which was true. They installed a local version that was temporarily available.
But they took so long doing this that I developed my own modular managing system, based in - yes, that's right - spreadsheets. It fits my needs, it is completely portable and it works.
The formulas are getting cryptic, and there are still some things I have to do manually (like sorting lists or generating pdfs), but the files access each other and it works. I have no time to code anything and I don't think I have sufficient knowledge of database software (I am trying to find time to learn MySQL).
Maybe some day I'll make some GUI that handles all of this, in such a way that if everything else fails, I can still access and edit files manually.
I talked to some local people about it, and it seems his disease was treatable. I don't know if he was in pain, but I do know he was still working as usual until the day he took his life.
Does anyone want to comment on this? I don't feel qualified to judge, but isn't this throwing the baby out with the water? Can't privileged access be managed remotely by some network authority, i.e. access granted, revoked and logged?
Alentejo, the part of the country where I work, has the greatest suicide rate in the country (~28 suicides/100k in the coast region, 19 suicides/100k in the interior region, when the national average is around 10 suicides/100k).
Some say isolation, ageing alone, the economic crisis and poverty and unemployment are to blame. I suspect alcohol consumption has a lot to do with it.
Just a few days ago someone I knew ended his own life. I was away visiting family, and sadly I could not attend the funeral. He knew my great grandfather. I believe he was sick and didn't want to suffer anymore.
I guess I could have named it Disk Memory Manager or some other important-sounding thing.
This was meant as a joke, and I never actually went through with it. I know the person very well but it still felt douchebaggy. But the idea was to make an app file, save it to some seemingly legitimate folder, and adding it to the autostart list.
The trick to hide the thing was to drag and drop Safari's logo onto it, and naming the app "Safan": it almost goes unnoticed when checking the Activity Monitor, thanks to the system font's proportions.
The idea is interesting, and it could've been puppies or some other corny wallpaper that did the trick.