Posted on 08/17/2010 2:20:27 PM PDT by neverdem
Last week, a federal district court judge in northern California issued an injunction against planting biotech sugar beets next year. Why? He accepted the activist argument that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) must issue a full environmental impact statement (EIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act before permitting the improved sugar beets to be grown. An EIS is required when a federal government agency engages in actions that might be "significantly affecting the quality of the human environment."
So how are biotech sugar beets (already approved by the USDA, mind you) significantly affecting the human environment? Activists at the Center for Food Safety and the Sierra Club argued in federal court that sugar beets improved to resist the herbicide glyphosate might result in the development of superweeds or might interbreed with organic chard and regular beets.
Let’s consider a few background facts. Sugar beets are the source of half the sugar produced in the U.S. Biotech sugar beets were approved as safe for growing by the USDA five years ago. The frankenbeets at issue in this case are now so popular with farmers that they constitute 95 percent of the current crop. In fact, there may not be enough conventional seeds to replace biotech seeds for next year’s planting.
Meanwhile, weeds treated with any herbicide tend to become resistant to those that are applied to them, this is not something peculiar to biotech plants. And most sugar beets are grown nowhere near organic chard or red beets and so will have no chance to interbreed with them. (Even if they did, sugar beets are typically harvested before they flower and so don’t get a chance to produce pollen in the first place.)...
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
Ditto Wurlitzer.. I cannot use sugar substitutes either. Turns out I have a recessive super taster tongue or something cause they all taste like battery acid to me regardless of which kind and how they are incorporated into food and drink. Yuck! I will add sugar to my stockpile...lol. Thankfully I can eat my sugar rich diet and maintain my petite frame. If the sugar substitutes were really working, why wouldn’t there be more skinny folk?
“....Govt bans IMPROVED beets....”
Govt bans improvements. Gee. what a shock.
Activists at the Center for Food Safety and the Sierra Club argued in federal court that sugar beets improved to resist the herbicide glyphosate might result in the development of superweeds or might interbreed with organic chard and regular beets... Sugar beets are the source of half the sugar produced in the U.S. Biotech sugar beets were approved as safe for growing by the USDA five years ago. The frankenbeets at issue in this case are now so popular with farmers that they constitute 95 percent of the current crop. In fact, there may not be enough conventional seeds to replace biotech seeds for next year's planting.And this hurts farmers because the price of sugar will go up, and, uh, hey, wait a minute...
This hurts farmers because there isn’t anywhere near enough NON GMO seed to make up for the sequestering of GM seed.
Besides which, if you think the FARMER is the one to profit from a shortfall in any commodity, you are woefully ignorant as to how markets work, even though you’ve been here for years.
It’s not the actual PRODUCER that gains the greatest benefit from their labours, it’s the MIDDLEMAN, closely followed by the government. If there is a 90% jump in the price of sugar, you can bet that the farmer will see no more than a 5% increase in his income. Just look at the way commodities futures have worked from day one.
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Amen
Bingo. How long do sugar beet seeds retain viability?
Besides which, if you think the FARMER is the one to profit from a shortfall in any commodity, you are woefully ignorant as to how markets work, even though you’ve been here for years.
It’s not the actual PRODUCER that gains the greatest benefit from their labours, it’s the MIDDLEMAN, closely followed by the government. If there is a 90% jump in the price of sugar, you can bet that the farmer will see no more than a 5% increase in his income. Just look at the way commodities futures have worked from day one.
With our thanks to Congress and the USDA for all the "food safety" standards that generate useless paperwork to assure the dominance of the middleman.
I long for the day that software will displace these creeps so that buyers and sellers can go direct.
I’ve been around long enough to appreciate the anti-social anti-business (and for that matter, anti-farmer) paranoid nutjobs who pollute this place here and there.
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