The rescue of the climate would be easily possible. Why doesn’t anyone know? The urban legends almost succeeded in establishing a feeling of powerlessness and to weaken hope: “The climate change is irreversible!” But from a purely scientific point of view, the complete restoration of the climate can be achieved without any problems: The CO2 content of the air can be reduced to an almost pre-industrial level till 2060. Eenewable instead of fossil If we half the fossil energy consumption, it would save 5 Gt C/y. In particular, solar energy would be cheaper than fossil if the inhabitants of the industrialized countries would cover their energy needs with a mix of solar, wind and water energy, the available amount of energy is tens of times the currently consumed energy. Efficient and affordable solar technologies would benefit the over 4 billion people of the tropical and subtropical regions, whose energy needs can be fully covered by solar energy.
Global ban on forest destruction 16 million hectares of forest are destroyed every year, most of them tropical rainforests that absorb 500 tonnes of carbon per hectare. A global ban on forest destruction would save over 7 Gt C/y. (A sustainable use of the forests or their conversion into Agroforestry would still be possible, they do not pollute the climate or pollute it only slightly.)
Less meat Only a healthy amount of meat: Converting one-tenth of global forage areas into forests or agroforestries would save 4 Gt C/y. (Worldwide mast area: ~ 4 billion hectares, but a new forest only starts to incorporate 10 tons of carbon per hectare after 10 years.) The carbon difference pasture-secondary forest/agroforestry is about 250 tons per hectare, after 35 years 10 tons of wood per year and hectare can be extracted for CO2-neutral energy or as building material).
Plan AAA If it takes 8 years to implement these “tripleA”-win-win solutions, then in 2050, CO2 would have fallen to an almost pre-industrial level: – Only half as much fossil energy left: 160 billion tons of carbon reduction – No forest destruction:120 billion tonnes of carbon reduction – A tenth of all pastures to forest: 40 billion tons of carbon reduction In 2050, the amount of carbon in the air would have dropped by 320 Gt C to an pre-industrial level. Global warming would be history. Where there is no will, there is no way: Such scientific calculations show that economy and politics unfortunately pursue other goals than the protection of climate and mankind. These methods cost less than the government bailouts for the financial industry, or the trip to Mars, not to mention the army budgets. We can only prevent climate destabilization if an update of analyses reveals the key industrial strategies and missing links for the empowerment of idealists. A trap works only as long as we don’t see the way out.
(1 Gt C = 3.67 Gt CO2 = 3.67 billion tons of CO2) (At present, the atmosphere contains about 860 Gt C, 250 Gt C less than 250 years ago, the current annual increase of 5 Gt C/y is dramatic. In the 10’000 years from Stone Age to industrialization, the total increase in CO2 was barely 100 Gt C. Calculation basis: IPCC Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Base)
Our crops grow up in this most concentrated poison sauce they can just barely tolerate. But consumers too often not? Well, that’s not entirely accurate: The pesticide concentration reaches now levels that can even sicken the crops.
The urban myth of the high-yielding but sensitive modern varieties.
“We need pesticides because the modern varieties have high yields, but are more vulnerable than the old, robust varieties of our ancestors?” Our arable plants are (almost always) extremely robust giants. With good agricultural practices, damages are minimal, insecticides and fungicides are almost always unnecessary, and herbicides can be replaced by machines. Pesticides are a superfluous but lucrative and devastating scam.
“Le malade imaginaire”
Wheat is usually treated preventively with azole fungicides suspected of causing cancer. Although only one wheat type molds: The glyphosate no-till wheat. It can’t stand the record amounts of glyphosate? Well, only if it is grown after corn, and to make matters worse, if it is one of the very few varieties susceptible to mold. So why preventive fungicide applications? The governmental agricultural research legitimizes them with a single, debunking misquote: “In years of epidemic occurrence, yield losses of 20 to 30% can occur.” (1). And the “forgetting” of the title of this older publication: “Only resistant varieties help against fusariosis” (=mold). As a result of this ancient expertise, the breeding of resistant wheat varieties took place, the susceptible varieties disappeared long time ago, together with the mold, due to a lack of demand. Preventive fungicide treatments, however, became established.
“Before sowing, marinate the seeds well in a strong mold sauce”
No farmer would come up with such an idea. But agricultural research would. In almost all of their fungicide experiments, the seeds get “oculated”, i.e. artificially infected.
Statistical columnar forests can be intimidating to the non-statistic-initiated. But they also reveal embarrassing scoops: The non-infected wheat did not mold and had the best yield. Even better than the infected wheat treated with the best fungicide, an azole. The best-selling azole has just been banned by the EU because it is suspected of causing cancer. The less dangerous fungicides, strobulins and co. had no effect against the mold. Is this now a proof for the protective effect of the azole fungicides? Only if the farmer marinates their wheat seed in a mold sauce before sowing them… Of course, science prohibits the transfer of pesticide effects from artificially infected plants to non-infected plants. Because with a normal, minimal mold infestation, the protective effect of the fungicides would be too low for a (statistically significant) scientific proof. The effect of Azole fungicides on non-artificially infected grain has hardly ever been measured: The scientific publications warn that fungicides can cause mold damage. (And herbicides stop the growth of maize for one month). The industries now propagate the use of up to four fungicides per year in the wheat. They suggest “relevant” increases in yield, but avoid the word “significant”, i.e. scientifically confirmed. Non-oculated fungicide experiments in our agricultural research are limited to (extreme locations (damp, cold, montane) outside the agricultural area, the fields infested with (non-toxic) snow mold suggest Hollywood-style horror visions.
Conflict of interest – the persiflage of science.
The alleged scientifically confirmed successes of fungicides in the research measurements of the agricultural departments are based on inadmissible conclusions. Faking an alleged success on the basis of inadmissible methodological manipulations and interpretations is not only scientifically forbidden, but also legally. Anyone who deliberately fakes an alleged need for cancer-suspected poisons in food approves and helps that every second person will develop cancer. Are such manipulated pesticide evidences the norm? The evidences for the protective effects of the pesticides in the approval documents are secret. Only summaries may be viewed, which prevents errors in methodology from being detected.(2) Are these skillfully orchestrated hazard strategies the normal working way of our administrations? No. But they increasingly seem to be an indispensable prerequisite for a career in the higher floors of the administrations.
The worst possible professional practice
The agricultural ministries legitimize the alarmism of their worst possible theory with corresponding cultivation recommendations. Quiz question: Why is wheat nowadays grown after corn, a very robust crop, known as exhausting the soils? Why did our basic food wheat lose its millennia-old optimal position in the crop rotation? (A crop rotation starts after a meadow, because this most natural form of agriculture remedies all imbalances and damages). The subsidies are designed in a way that farmers earn more with corn before wheat than vice versa? The status of modern consumers is below the livestock. With their “eco-subsidies”, our ministries of agriculture are forcing an optimized combination and concentration of pesticide suspected of being cancerous in our basic food crop wheat: No-till guarantees maximum amounts of glyphosate, the best starting position is given to the corn, the least suitable previous crop for wheat. And as this can lead to mold in susceptible varieties…, all conventional wheat is treated with fungicides suspected of being cancerous. On the other hand, the economically optimal crop rotation got… banned: In the stubble wheat combination (= double wheat) the second wheat gets drilled into the first wheats stubble, tillage is unnecessary.
Instead of avoiding problems preventively thanks to a best professional practice, the agricultural ministries propagate an optimized poison accumulation, this principle applies even more to the only real endangered arable crop: They recommend at least 13 fungicide treatments for the potatoes, in addition to the other pesticides.
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Double standard
If the scientific evidence shows that a pesticide is dangerous, the agricultural ministries approve it, or even subsidize it. If the data show no benefits of the pesticides, the (government) researchers pretend a success, without any regard to the measured data. As compensation, they ban highly profitable farming methods without any scientific evidence that they could be problematic. And harmless farmers varieties.
Science and Pesticides
The evidence of the effectiveness of the pesticides
• are either faulty (statistically insignificant or methodologically incorrect, so they cannot be scientifically confirmed)
• or absent (i.e. secret) for over 95% of the pesticides. However, science accepts only published evidence that meets all epistemological requirements; secret evidence or summaries are not scientifically acceptable evidence.
For almost all pesticides, science cannot recognize their alleged efficacy. Probably the greatest taboo of our era. The questionable benefits of pesticides (or lack of scientific evidence) match the lack of need for pesticides. Every second person is diagnosed with cancer, which in itself is a (statistically highly significant and scientifically) incontestable proof that the toxic pollution caused by pesticides is far too high.
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How to sell an unnecessary cancer risk
Sources:
(1) Schachermayr, G. Fried P.M. (2000): Problemkreis Fusarien und ihre Mykotoxine. Agrarforschung 7 (6), 252-257
(2) EU: (91/414/EWG) Art.14 , 283/2013 (EG) Nr. 1107/2009 App II, Switzerland: PSMV 916.161, 52, 3 g
Spring is coming, the meadows are covered with colourful spring flowers. But increasingly also with the yellowish-rusty-red autumn colours of direct sowing. The departments for agriculture took the fears of the population seriously and committed to the protection of nature: With beautiful photos they present the horse-drawn, soil-damaging plow, behind it the tractor with the saviour of the earth, the resource-protecting glyphosate Because glyphosate instead of plow is environmental protection?!
“Eco”-policy cancer instead of plow
The IARC (the cancer research division of the UN) classifies glyphosate as probably carcinogenic. In most industrialized countries, gigantic funding flow into this innovative eco-strategy with its many nice new labels: No-till, no-tillage, direct seeding, minimum tillage…. And their record amounts of glyphosate seeping into the groundwater. Environmental protection thanks to even larger amounts of pesticides? How could the agricultural ministries finance and push such an eco-strategy beyond all good spirits? Plows are primarily used to convert a meadow into a crop field, they kill the grasses. And that’s exactly what a herbicide can do too. But how can the harmless plow be transformed into such a danger that even a cancer risk can be sold as an ecological-progress? The pesticide industry needed a trustworthy partner for this sale strategy: The most ideal, of course, was climate protection, because who would dare to oppose saving the future? Even the most absurd nonsense can be based on an originally good idea. And even the most honest commitment can be abused in the most surreal way: The Kyoto Protocol once ratified the incorporation of CO2 into biomass and soils. In 2008, the chairman of our Swiss pesticide/genetic engineering company Syngenta, now ChemChina, announced that they could store up to 80 billion tons of carbon in the fields over the next 25 years, most of the excess CO2. Glyphosate instead of plow saves the climate, Eureka! The authorities cheered and showered the saviour of heaven and earth with their financial blessing.
To die for a fistful of dollars!?
The glyphosate promoters managed to taboo the real climate footprint: Glyphosate direct seeding was supposed to incorporate a maximum of 500 kg of carbon per hectare and year. Since one hectare of wheat produces about 6 tons of wheat, and the Europeans eat about 60 kilos of wheat per year, one hectare of wheat is enough for a hundred people. We finance a maximal accumulation of a carcinogen in all our bread, pasta and pizza in order to save about 5 liter of gasoline per person per year?! Probably the most dangerous of all conceivable climate protection methods?! If this kind of climate protection would had worked, but it didn’t. The Swiss agriculture department knew this long before it introduced the no-till resource protection subsidies. In order to conceal this madness, they downsized the once proclaimed climate and soil protection into the empty slogan of a “resource protection”.
Exorbitant increases of the limit values
Direct seeding uses record amounts of glyphosate, that seeps into the groundwater. With the no-till-subsidies, the limit values for glyphosate residues in food were increased by a hundredfold, for the water a thousandfold increase was planned. At the same time, the “siccation” was introduced in the EU: Wheat and potato plants are poisoned with glyphosate, they die, so the harvest dates can be be adjusted to the agendas of the agricultural managers, regardless of the weather conditions. As agriculture is allowed to poison food crops to death, the question arises why limit values for pesticides are needed, because the use of even more pesticides than for fatal poisoning of the crops is pointless. Every second person will be diagnosed with cancer, and now this rate of suffering and death is increased by the “ecological” funding for a toxin suspected of causing cancer. This shows the priorities of our agricultural policy: To promote and finance health risks.
The arrogance of power
“Alcohol is more toxic than glyphosate.” With this argument, the Minister for Economy Schneider-Ammann, rejected years ago our appeal against this “ecological” strategy.
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The tip of the iceberg
Ecology = Maximum toxic levels for the fields and the people?! Is this greenwash of a cancerogene an isolated case? Or the future of our agricultural policy? The agrarian transition promised non-toxic, sustainable solutions to problems, the eco-subsidies could have financed an agriculture compatible with health, environment and climate. But a true ecological or organic agricultural would have meant the end of the toxic agrochemical/-genetic industries. That’s why the nepotism of the agricultural departments misused the idealistic trends, demands and laws for the rescue of the agribusiness: The glyphosate direct seeding subsidies prepare the field for the introduction of glyphosate/RR-technology in GMO -resistant Switzerland: Machinery and cultivation methods are established, now it just needs the acceptance of GM products. These innovative strategies are Trojans, the tip of the iceberg, there are even more toxic pesticides in the queue, because the resistance of the weeds to the glyphosate is increasing. The USA approved a new generation of “green” GM plants that are resistant to the herbicide 2,4 D, better known under the brand name “agent orange”. An even more embryotoxic poison, also suspected of causing cancer.
It is time for a parliamentary investigative commission, or the justice to investigate against the fraudulent funding for the “resource protection” of the glyphosate direct seeding.
Let’s not fool ourselves: The idealists would have built a paradise on earth long ago.
But the problem creators always managed to entrust themselves with the leadership in the fight against their own lucrative business strategies.
Science and herbicides
Healthy and eco are trendy? So the agricultural ministries decorate innovative record quantities of glyphosate with proven fake eco-greenwash labels in order to save this most likely cancer-causing pesticide from the social critics and fears.“The sleep of reason produces monsters” Francisco Goya
The only thing we can’t split is concrete
Resource-protecting agrochemicals?
One of the best-kept secrets of agricultural policy: When it comes to wheat, our basic food, the European farmers produced twice the yields per hectare of the US farmers. Glyphosate direct seeding was never supposed to protect the soil, but just to mitigate the soil destruction caused by industrial agriculture, but in reality it compacts the soils into hard rock. That’s why the yield measurements are usually forgotten in the publications of glyphosate direct seeding…
In China, workers pollinate fruit trees by hand. In California, almond monocultures are fertilized with mobile express beekeepers. What’s next? Autonomous robot bees? Because organic production or a ban on insecticides is too expensive?
The agony of choice
The pesticide-industries present in their subtle rainbow colours catalogues a never ending choice of pesticides. Such as the insecticides for the wheat. Quiz question: Why does wheat need insecticides? Who has ever seen insects attacking wheat-fields? In fact, aphids can infest over-fertilized wheat. But (European) farmers who over-fertilize lose their subsidies. Corn is also very rarely infested, only in corn monocultures, but they are also banned, precisely because they are so susceptible. But some bugs eat canola flowers? If so, the plants just make new ones.
Best practice instead of pesticides
Problems in agriculture? Put the blame on mother nature!? With good professional practice, arable crops are hardly damaged by insects. In fact, there is no (scientific-statistical) correlation between infestation and yield of a field: Even record yields may well have suffered severe pest attacks, while many poor crops have never been infested; an ideal variety and nutrient supply is more crucial for the yield. That’s why the industrial brochures just praise the effects of the insecticides on the insects, but not on the yields.
The imaginary invasions
Insecticides fight losses in the field that would be prevented if the subsidies conditions were respected. We sacrifice bees because we need to prevent insects from damaging our crops? Food destruction by insects is not measured in real terms, but estimated, usually using intercontinental projections. It makes no sense to invest in damage control without knowing the real extent of the threat. In southern Europe, fire departments are well equipped against forest fires; in humid regions, they do not even exist. Collateral damage must not be worse than the damage it is intended to prevent.
Evil nature?
Who fears nature, has no green thumbs. But problems. In arable farming, damage is almost always the result of a bad professional practice. In organic farming, potatoes are the only arable crop that suffers real, but modest losses. Potatoes are susceptible to disease in the cold, wet autumn; because in their native Andes, it rains more in summer. Such “taxes” to nature are bearable; they are far lower than those to the state. This exceptional case, together with the damage in vineyards and orchards, served for alarmist scare tactics against a hostile, dangerous nature. The lobbyists even conjure up the devastating plagues of locusts, even if they only come when we heat up the climate even more.
The self-control of toxins
About 20 years ago, when organic, eco and healthy became trendy, politicians in Europe ordered an eco-agricultural transition: Pesticides can only be used if the financial loss caused by a pest is higher than the cost of the pesticide application. Farmers receive subsidies only if they comply with theses damage thresholds. In road traffic, the authorities control randomly the respect of the speed limits. But as for the poisons in the food production, they rely on self-regulation and abstain from any controls. Even though every second person will get cancer.
The governmental eco-sabotage
Not helping endangered people is a punishable offense in road traffic, deliberately endangering them even more. Since the “ecological transition”, pesticide contamination and civilization diseases are continuously rising. The agrarian ministries undermine and sabotage deliberately their ecological threshold regulation: They saved a few sips of the oh-so-cheap and healthy milk in the forbidden fodder maize monocultures with the preventive neonicotinoid seed treatments. And sacrificed the bees for it. Since this could be forbidden, they save some of the oh so cheap and healthy chips with neonicotinoids for canola and potatoes. The canola has even to be treated before flowering so that it does not have the opportunity to outsmart its predators by its own and for free. Now there is an innovative generation of even more toxic insecticides, which are allowed to kill the bees until in a few years the scientific proof is given that the damage is enormous, the benefit minimal etc.,
Bees are dying because of the toxic overkill of a poor agricultural practice and policy. Our agricultural ministries are unilaterally committed to saving an endangered pesticide industry. They sacrifice the bees for it. And the people.
The pretty-harmless catalogue for selling… bees killers. And fatal poisonings in all families . Impossible!? Along with the herbicides, fungicides, and other poisons that are just as “essential” for our survival.
Science and insecticides
Our agricultural ministries suggest massive crop losses and protective poison solutions. But they don’t measure the real crop losses. Nor the success of the pesticide applications. Because without scientific measurements, no one can complain, that the pesticide applications are all too often, or almost always, senseless.
The art of magic is to divert attention to a different direction. The art of lobbying is to distract from the crucial issues. “You can only solve a problem if you find the right question”: Why do we need pesticides? Life without pesticides seems unthinkable, and to question their usefulness is almost a sacrilege. That two Swiss initiatives dare to commit. (In Switzerland laws can be changed by votations)
“We need pesticides because so many people are starving”
Half of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans.
The (agricultural) economic policy causes systematic food waste: Since decades the industrialized countries are complaining about their price-destroying overproduction, and therefore subsidize the destruction of food by feeding cattle and cars. While children starve (to death). Why do we need harmful pesticides to bumperyields when economic policy destroys way more food than all insects, fungi and flowers together? Switzerland imports up to half of its consumption, often from countries with extreme poverty. (Not only all our rice is imported, a large part of our wheat comes from India). People do not die of hunger because there is not enough food, but because they have too little money. Hunger is not an agricultural problem, but an economic and political one. And a moral one.
The agricultural monopoly of agro-chemistry
To produce food, it takes land, rain, seeds, manure, machines, farmers and knowhow. Nothing more. The only legitimation of the pesticides is the hunger relief of our always openly irresponsible toxic industries. This noble humanitarian commitment allowed them to acquire the leadership over agriculture, and to enrich fields, food and people with their toxins, a lucrative sales promotion for their pharmaceutical departments. And at the same time, the agro-industrial companies invest in land-grabbing and buying up all seed companies, they abolish the farmers’ privilege* and forbid the sale of traditional local varieties, in order to establish an exclusive monopoly over food production. The (agro-) economic policy entrusts hunger aid to managers who earn more in one minute than the poor people in a lifetime. And who promise to solve all those problems that we would not have without them. Agricultural fuel for overweight Offroaders and SUVs? Smaller cars and steaks and in return healthy and well-fed children would be better for almost everyone. Except for the immoral industries and investors.
* Farmer’s privilege: Farmers used to have the right to sow their own seeds.
A pesticide ban harms the farmers? Pesticides harm people. When two quarrel, the third enjoys.
“Farmers need pesticides to secure their crops and income”. But why should they secure it with dangerous toxins? Their incomes could also be secured with a pest insurance: Yield losses due to butterflies, mold and other natural pests would be reimbursed by the state, like the damages caused by lynxes, wolves, bears and late frost. The costs of such an insurance would be too high? It would be the simplest, cheapest and most efficient way to reduce civilisation diseases. Pesticide contaminated food is the dumbest possible method of saving money.
The big taboo question in agriculture: What do we need pesticide industries for? What can they do that farmers can’t? To produce food, we need arable land, rain, seeds, manure, machines, farmers and their knowhow. Nothing more. And pesticides, because they secure the yield? With a best professional practice there are hardly many problems in the fields. Because the most profitable of all investments is professional competence. The only real lack in agriculture is the lack of appreciation of the real experts in the field: With their concepts of an evil nature and of inept farmers, the chemical industries succeeded in denying not only the professional competence to the only food producers that are really needed, but even their right to exist.
Pest insurance instead of pesticides is like speed bumps instead of radar traps: Clever instead of techno-overdrive.
The hyper-parasites Farmers don’t need pesticides.They need a secure and fair income. A pest insurance is a win-win solution for all: For farmers, consumers and the environment. Except for the pesticide industries. But the damages they cause are infinitely worse than the modest yield losses caused by beetles, butterflies and fungi. The agricultural policy entrusts the agricultural leadership to the toxin industries and pretends, that we cannot afford fair wages for the farmers, and even less a healthy food production. But only a gigantic pesticide industry, the astronomical profits of their managers and investors, and the enormous costs of civilization diseases. The only real problem of agriculture is the untouchable Leadership of the poison industries over food production. The pesticide industry is a superfluous parasite, with the typical characteristics of parasites: They are incapable of feeding themselves, they have to take over the work of others.
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We better pay for the damages of bear, wolf and even butterflies than for those of the poison industry.
If you are afraid of horses, you will never win a race.
A pest insurance? How can a pest infestation be detected cheaply and correctly?
With a contest: The best and easiest pest app for mobile phones: Overall photos of the central infestation and zoom image, and five additional photos each five meters apart, straight across the field, all photos with automatic GPS and dates. Please send suggestions to the ministry of agriculture. Because it will reject such an efficient and quick solution to the problem… … voluntary websites or groups may choose the winner of the contest in order to try to help the governments to protect public health for free but quickly and efficiently.
