U.S. Farmers Continue to Use Pesticide (Methyl Bromide)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051127/ap_on_re_us/pesticide_politics

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The concerns stretch globally.

Other nations watch as the United States keeps permitting wide use of methyl bromide for tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, Christmas trees and other crops, even though the U.S. signed an international treaty banning all but the most critical uses by 2005.

The chemical depletes the earth's protective ozone layer and can harm the human neurological system, an increasing concern as people settle further into what was once just farm country.

Methyl bromide's survival demonstrates the difficulty of banishing a powerful pesticide that helps deliver what both farmers and consumers want: abundant, pest-free and affordable produce.

The Bush administration, at the urging of agriculture and manufacturing interests, is making plans to ensure that methyl bromide remains available at least through 2008 by seeking and winning treaty exemptions. Also, the administration will not commit to an end date.



A sign, required by law, warns of a pesticide application of methyl bromide on a field near Watsonville, Calif., Aug. 12, 2005. The pesticide is used to fumigate the soil as preparation for strawberry planting. The U.S. continues to permit the methyl bromide to be used despite signing an international treaty that banned its use by 2005. Its survival demonstrates the difficulty of banishing a chemical that is a powerful toxin but that also helps deliver abundant, pest-free and affordable produce for farmers and consumers. (AP Photo/Rita Beamish)

... my God, they want to kill us all... :(

while the so-called FOOD they are providing the consumers is full of poison, and the people working for them with their toxic waste are getting ill and dying.
As long as the INDUSTRY has good fucking PROFIT MARGINS, who cares?
:sarcasm:

:puke: :grr: :puke:

Finnian?? but I used to work with this stuff, we mounted it on the front of tractors in tanks, I think we called them pigs... and three knives injected it down into the sands of South Florida... then the rows were covered with rolls of plastic to keep the goods "underground" where they were "safe".

Its survival demonstrates the difficulty of banishing a chemical that is a powerful toxin but that also helps deliver abundant, pest-free and affordable produce for farmers and consumers.

this statement is proffered as news but it may as well as come from a chemical industry spokesperson. studies have shown that biointensive/organic farming is just as efficient as *conventional* (and again i ask, WTF is conventional about dumping poison all over the food i'm gonna put on my plate or my kid's plate?) and what makes it affordable besides the outrageous subsidies given to monolithic agri/chemcorporations that are growing chemically infused shit masked as vegetables? spread those billions out among the real family farmers, the organic farmers and the bio-intensive farmers and lessen the reliance of our food supply on petro-chemicals even more and we kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. we have some very basic problems, and we have to start with the very basics to correct them.

I wish more people knew this stuff. Everybody just believes the hype. If we go back to doing things right the Earth's bounty will provide. Chemicals kill multi-generationally. Please post more about this stuff if you are well-versed. I get so little internet time and it would be nice to happen across more posts like this when catching my daily news fix. Thanks.

Screwing their grandkids for one--not to mention their neighbors-- is probably routine stuff.

country home is the total loss of access to organic produce. During the 18 years I lived in the country, I gardened extensively, organically growing all my vegetables save root crops (for which the soil contained too much clay).

But then in 2004 the property changed hands, and I was vindictively evicted -- forced by my limited income into subsidized housing, which means I will live the rest of my life in a city, and will therefore never again be able to garden. These same inescapable economic realities forever deny me the money necessary to buy organic vegetables, which cost AT LEAST twice (and often four or five times) what vegetables grown by conventional agriculture cost. Thus I am once again exposed to all the deadly agricultural toxins that increasingly shorten the American lifespan, and this time there is no possible escape.

The knowledge of organic gardening I acquired during those blessed years was considerable. But where I am forced to live -- Tacoma (the only place in the entire Puget Sound area I could find affordable housing) -- "urban gardening" is impossible. The soil throughout the entire region is so befouled by ASARCO that any vegetables grown from it are poisonous. Yet insurmountable economic limitations decree I will never set foot in the country again. Hence not only my gardening skill but all my rural knowledge in general is pointless and useless: 18 years of life totally squandered.

As I have said before, if I had known this is how it would end, I would have stayed in Manhattan.

You could grow flowers!! Or be the bamboo guerrila, planting rare and beautiful bamboos in vacant spots around Tacoma. Or whatever.

Check out Miss Rumphius for inspiration.

Also please note that in very few years a large number of US farmers are going to have to learn to grow organically as pesticides and fertilizers are quite dependent upon cheap oil and natural gas. Peak Oil will push farmers into organic practice and they will need help.

I want on my table.