Actually, I grow a garden every year that feeds 4 families and I sell excess of my crops off, probably grow enough to feed 10 families total. Not once have I used pesticides. But, yes, by all means keep using those pesticides to feed billions of people today, that way when the Bee population is gone, we won't have any crops to feed any of those people tomorrow.
Looking at the amount of food waste, probably fine without pesticides. It'd just require more labor to pick away bugs and relocate animals that get into food.
The amount of food waste has nothing to do with pesticides. Without pesticides a whole lot of that food wouldnt ever be produced. I think you underestimate the damage that bugs can deal to large scale single crop farming.
Then maybe we should think about farming bugs. Those things are full of protein and they take up less resources than traditional animal stock, which is what a lot of our crops go to. We rely so heavily on pesticides because we don't want to overhaul the way we farm for a country, and because selling pesticides and pesticide-resistant plants are just too profitable.
I'd like to think that if every commercial pesticide vanished off the face of the earth we wouldn't let ourselves starve.
They actually already do! I've been subscribed for some time now to the newsletter of AgriProtein (http://agriprotein.com/). They've actually got an industrial scale factory up and running! Check it out, it's really cool stuff.
Huh, I guess you have another way of producing food for billions of people?
Actually, I grow a garden every year that feeds 4 families and I sell excess of my crops off, probably grow enough to feed 10 families total. Not once have I used pesticides. But, yes, by all means keep using those pesticides to feed billions of people today, that way when the Bee population is gone, we won't have any crops to feed any of those people tomorrow.
I'm not saying overuse of pesticides is good but what mostly kills bees right now is a certain type of mites, not pesticides.
Looking at the amount of food waste, probably fine without pesticides. It'd just require more labor to pick away bugs and relocate animals that get into food.
The amount of food waste has nothing to do with pesticides. Without pesticides a whole lot of that food wouldnt ever be produced. I think you underestimate the damage that bugs can deal to large scale single crop farming.
Then maybe we should think about farming bugs. Those things are full of protein and they take up less resources than traditional animal stock, which is what a lot of our crops go to. We rely so heavily on pesticides because we don't want to overhaul the way we farm for a country, and because selling pesticides and pesticide-resistant plants are just too profitable.
I'd like to think that if every commercial pesticide vanished off the face of the earth we wouldn't let ourselves starve.
They actually already do! I've been subscribed for some time now to the newsletter of AgriProtein (http://agriprotein.com/). They've actually got an industrial scale factory up and running! Check it out, it's really cool stuff.
This is seriously cool. :0
Thanks for the link!