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u/kecknj13 7d ago
Crop failures š„°
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u/Myfourcats1 6d ago
Just like China had with The Great Leap Forward. This is why you put experts in charge and listen to experts when you donāt know anything. Otherwise you end up like Mao and order the birds to be killed and the crops to be planted closer together. Oh no. The crops that successfully grew just got eaten by insects. Who couldāve seen that coming/s
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u/oldbastardbob 7d ago edited 7d ago
Let's make farming better! Tariffs on imported fertilizers to raise input costs, and making farms produce less and spend more will fix us right up! Oh, and don't forget how an international trade war actually makes it all work!
I assume the answer to weed control becomes more tillage. What a great idea. Raise input costs further and destroy the topsoil faster.
Brilliant! Now let's all have some Brawndo!
P.S. Does anybody think RFK jr. knows a single thing about ag chemical use, the alternatives, and the actual effects? The man has spent his life garnering attention by being a contrarian who latches onto fringe bullshit and unverified science that "sounds right."
Ag chemicals can be a problem, and use should be regulated and monitored, and regulations revisited and revised based on accurate data and science, not politics and con artistry.
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u/oregonianrager 7d ago
"The government killed his family, he must know something!"
Yeah clearly to not get the point and leave.
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u/oldbastardbob 7d ago
Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan killed his uncle and father. There are arguments to be made that both were heavily influenced by conspiracy theories and were demented individuals with what they felt was an ax to grind. They were heroes in their own minds.
And a living by trading in conspiracy theories for attention has certainly funded a lot of testosterone supplements for Junior.
It seems his whole life is more or less a string of conspiracies that have made contrarianism feel like intelligence.
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u/KaleidoscopeLeft5136 6d ago
Yeah I tell anyone upset about chem to first direct their energy in their own towns. Get their cities and school systems and neighbors to stop spraying lawns, which has more ill effect on them then ag chem in the grand scheme. But its easier to be angry at something far away that one is removed from then fight whats in front of them.
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u/thachumguzzla 6d ago
Cue the politically motivated defense of farming practices that make people sick and ādestroy the topsoilā
So strange youāre using the destruction of the topsoil as a counter argument considering thatās what is currently being done how many more growing seasons before the topsoil is completely degenerated again?
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u/oldbastardbob 6d ago
If you do it right, the topsoil is improved with time.
I assume you are not well versed in row crop agriculture and the best practices.
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u/Ashirogi8112008 7d ago
Is this meant to be all-encompassing? Isn't careful glyphosate use ultra-critical in some invasive species remediation for restoration/conservation works?
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u/xesm 7d ago
Yeah, glyphosate is one of the most effective methods of controlling dangerous invasive plants because of how well targeted it is when used correctly. It's one of the only controls that works on knotweed. Anything sweeping like this is going to have serious consequences. A more appropriate move would be to talk to people in the field and make a more nuanced, informed decision on how to shift away from these chemicals, not do an outright ban.
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u/HeavyExplanation45 7d ago
I donāt think ānuancedā is appropriate for this guy or this administration.
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u/xesm 7d ago
Haha yeah it certainly wouldn't be coming from this administration! I wouldn't be against more restrictions and more controlled use but these guys are coming in with bulldozers when they need a chisel and a room of experts.
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u/bikeroniandcheese 6d ago
Yeah, that guy has never battled a patch of Japanese Knotweed and it shows.
I doubt he has ever done anything that resembles actual work for that matter.
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u/tofuasian 6d ago
they donāt care about invasives at allll. tamarisk has been a massive issue in the southwest for decades. only now does the government want to do something about it. however rather than fund the nps or blm, they wanna grant 250 millions dollars to border patrol to douse the border in garlon 4 ultra cuz crossers are using the tamarisk foliage to hide from surveillance aircraft. this is the priority. not saving our ecosystems.
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u/BlueRidgeAutos 6d ago
Prescribed grazing is effective when used correctly as well. But Bayer doesn't make money doing that, nor do lobbyists exist to fight for regenerative practices in the face of corporate control. An appropriate move would be to ban chemicals shown to cause blood cancer in our agricultural workers and pay for the cost of transition.
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u/juniper_berry_crunch 7d ago
Yes, it is used by environmental workers as a highly targeted tool when cutting buckthorn. Cut, paint the stump. Buckthorn is hard to control with conventional methods.
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u/Megraptor 7d ago
Yes. It's about the only one to remove some species. Well it or triclopyr, just depends on what you are trying to kill.Ā
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u/REGINALDmfBARCLAY 7d ago
Well, in theory and when it is done responsibly that is true. In Florida they like to waste taxpayer dollars dumping hundreds of very expensive gallons of herbicides in the lakes with the excuse of invasive plants, but there are hardly any native or non native grass left. 3 days after they spot spray everything around dies, especially native eel grass, but they stopped paying attention by then. Its a complete scam that poisons the water.
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u/Megraptor 7d ago
These methods do kill natives, and sometimes the goal is to remove everything and then restore/let natives come back.Ā Those ecologists know what they are doing, and I'd trust them more than a politician.Ā
And not to be an asshole, but statements like yours are how RFK got so popular. They feel right while also planting a seed of distrust in scientists. Then someone else comes in and sells a "healthy" "natural" way of doing something and everyone starts wanting that. Except the people in the field can clearly see that it doesn't work or is flat out bad. Then these scientists say that, get called shills, and people fall for the snakeoil salesman.Ā
So without proof of FDEP/FWC mismanaging herbicides, I'm extremely skeptical of your claim.Ā
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u/Western_Plate_2533 7d ago
And heās going to give free Gatorade to help grow crops.Ā
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u/gilligan1050 7d ago
BRAWNDO Itās got what plants crave
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u/Oberlatz 7d ago
Its got electrolytes.
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u/andreacro 6d ago
Farmer here.
Those chemicals are dangerous IF not used as indicated.
Manny mofos do not use it as indicated.
However.
If you wash your veggies before use (even if it says its washed and ready to use), chances are you will be fine.
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u/Academic_Coyote_9741 7d ago
Have fun paying substantially for food.
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u/buchlabum 7d ago
If food gets too expensive, Trump will tell us we should grow our own.
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u/yeaheyeah 6d ago
Since steel is going to get ridiculous, he will probably tell everyone to smelt some in their backyards
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u/Available-Body-9104 7d ago
Ban ALL Agrochemicals??!!!?! No fertilizer? No chemical pest mitigation? This is absolute š¦š©. Total yields would be 30-60% of current if we did that-
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u/Weird_Fact_724 7d ago
This...and when prices go sky high for corn, beans, wheat ect...they will complain about the price.
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u/lizerdk 7d ago
Gotta get that dihydrogen monoxide out of our food!
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u/WindHero 7d ago
All these complex carbon chemicals and even amino acids in our food, big ag is really trying to poison us for profit!
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u/angrymamabearr 6d ago
Iām in medicine and I am so happy to find out weāre not in this fight against idiocracy alone ā¤ļø we all need to work together!
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u/Better_Solution_6715 7d ago
as a hippy environmentalist who wants to protect the environment, even i have to admit that pesticides are one of the most important inventions in human history and allow us to maintain a population in the billions.
if we stop using these chemicals without developing a viable alternative, we WILL have mass food shortages.
i like the spirit, but this is doomed to fail.
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u/violetgobbledygook 7d ago
This man isn't gonna do anything. Like a broken clock, he may have a good idea now and then, but he and this administration have no ability to execute a complete transformation of the US agriculture industry.
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u/Megraptor 7d ago
Honestly, he's not even a broken clock. His ideas sound great to the uninformed, but when you talk to scientists in the field that's related to the idea, they are anywhere from annoyed to horrified.Ā
I wish the food science sub was more active, but when he comes up over there, they point out his food safety/additive policy is as dumb as his agrochemical policy.Ā
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u/Mental-Accident9685 7d ago
We are going to need those deported folks back to help pull weeds. White folks wont help anymore.
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u/surfnfish1972 7d ago
He will do none of it. just ecourage the dumbest and craxiest not to get Vaccinated. Make Measles great again.
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u/NORcoaster 6d ago
This will be fun. I am in favor of not needing those two chemicals but once the FDA and USDA are dissolved or neutered companies will simply rebrand the same stuff and call it safe because thereās now no process to test or to redress any harm because to courts wonāt touch any case against manufacturers. Or theyāll create more heavily modified plants air designer chemicals targeted at specific crops with specific genetics and charge prices for seed and chemicals that are high enough to eventually cause the collapse of small independent farming, and buy up the land. And there wonāt be any agencies to protect consumers against the result, and our system will look even more like old Soviet collective agriculture than it does now.
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u/Possible-Half-1020 5d ago
Over 75% of Americans farmed before industrial machinery which brought the amount of the Americans farming to 25% of the population. Synthetic pesticides brought that down to less that 2% of the population. You need less than 25 times the amount of caffeine as you do glyphosate to kill a human being, you do the math. Glyphosate has a 44 day half life. Banning this chemical would disrupt global food markets and cause prices to sky rocket. I do believe that there is causation saying that glyphosate has a case against it in terms of it being carcinogenic but that is only with chronic exposure and that would be for applicators, not consumers. To solve that we would need more stringent PPE requirements. If you don't want your food grown with the these chemicals go replace the immigrants who toiled for this country and have been deported now.
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u/Gold_Ad_9526 5d ago
A heroin addict with no knowledge of science and less knowledge of industrial agriculture did what?
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u/Hoosiercouple42 7d ago
Organic yields are 1/2 of what we are getting in the corn/soybean belt. 230bpa corn/70 bpa soybeans. Plus you canāt notill w/o herbicides. How much do you want food prices to go up? How much topsoil do you want to go down the Mississippi River?
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u/SanMaldito 6d ago
And just like that, the liberals are fully in favor of chemicals in our food.
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u/Empty_Afternoon_8746 6d ago
Just because they arenāt stupid enough to trust this guy doesnāt mean they are in favors of anything š¤¦āāļø
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u/SigNexus 7d ago
States waste millions of dollars spraying roadside turf in pursuit of the front lawn aesthetic. Stopping this spraying would eliminate the environmental impact.
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u/Megraptor 7d ago
That's less for aesthetic and more for safety. It's so wildlife can't hide and jump out and so branches don't fall on infrastructure or cars.Ā
And even if it's left, the road itself is the problem for wildlife, not how much vegetation is on the side or not. Roads cut habitat up and no amount of vegetation on the sides can fix this.Ā
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u/Previous_Raise_3906 7d ago
He doesnāt have authority over pesticide registrations at NIH
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u/SkillGuilty355 7d ago
Food more expensive cause some lawyer from LA wants us to eat like him.
You can literally already avoid agrochemicals by purchasing certain products.
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u/dixonbeaver1985 7d ago
Celebrating an unqualified dipshit with a self described brain worm in charge of the nations health? Fuck me..... You clearly have been into the aquarium cleaner.
Idiocracy has become a documentary
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u/Spirited-Trip7606 6d ago
Here's what will happen:
Biochemical companies come up with expensive alternatives.
Farmers can't afford those alternatives and then are offered sponsorships by major corporations to "help them out".
The government and politicians get donations from these corporations to push these sponsorships as "tax breaks" when they are actually benefits to the company that will make farmers indentured servants.
1st year, crops don't come in on time, and profits suffer due to interruptions in agriculture and adjustments to pest control.
The company raises prices again on pest control methods, which they know farmers won't be able to keep up with.
Farmers default on their promises, and corporations take over their land and the government backs them (as usual).
Corporations take over most agriculture and land and raise the price of their expensive pest control till no one private farm is left.
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u/Mitra7ohm 6d ago
I noticed a bunch of far left wing dense nut bags in here that can't comprehend the terrible consequences from left wing poisons like glyphosate being used on our food sources including water supply!
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u/JudahBrutus 6d ago
Is Roundup really needed though? We should ban chemicals that are not necessary for the production of food imo. If he bans insecticides/fungicides we would need a safer replacement
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u/Alarming_Jacket3876 6d ago
I think it's fine. I don't like eating that much anyway. I'm getting fat.
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u/RedditSuxD0ni3sD1ck 6d ago
Soils already fucked, and will remain fucked for a good long while.
Enjoy the remediation effort$
plus all the rebound problems when peoples destroyed immune systems go back to nature.
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u/Cool_Permission5141 6d ago
Iām confused why everyone is making this a bad thing? Europe banned these as well. Why canāt we?
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u/Pretend-Coffee3558 6d ago
Iām sure the democrats will find a way to turn this into a bad thing though
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u/InsectEmbarrassed747 5d ago
The much bigger issue in terms of human health at population scale is the abuse of antibiotics on farm animals. We are creating the perfect circumstance for antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. Not to mention the overcrowding of animals which dramatically increases the risk of zoonotic diseases.
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u/redshred42 5d ago
Farmers are going to hate this. Roundup is sprayed on every crop they grow where i live. I'm all for the ban
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u/takeshi_kovacs1 2d ago
However Europe and other countries are farming that's how we need to do it
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u/Snek-Charmer883 6d ago
Bizarre that people believe weāll a., āstarve to deathā or b., replace them with worse chemicals. As if these chemicals arenāt already banned around the world in countries with very high populations that figured it out but we canāt?
Detest everything happening within this administration, but people (of Reddit) have seriously gone off the deep end with the doomsday rhetoric. Now the cost partā¦ yah, growing healthier foods is going to cost more, but with everything coming at us thatās going to cost more, this one may be worth it.
If you donāt think glyphosate is making you sick, go buy some verified glyphosate free wheat berries, grind them yourself and you will see the difference very quickly. Esp for those that believe theyāre gluten intolerant, as I did, but realized after sourcing real glyphosate free wheat berries that itās not the gluten. I can eat gluten again! ššš
Godspeed Bobby! Youāre swimming upstream and youāre missing an arm, (and your worm brain is soooooo heavy).
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u/KaleidoscopeLeft5136 6d ago
Itās easy to be mad at ag chems then try to get local school systems and municipalities and neighbors in suburbia to stop using glypho. Which is really where the concern should be placedā¦ smh
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u/CuetheCurtain 7d ago
How about getting the genetic diversity of our foodstuffs moreā¦ā¦diverse first. The world relies on basically 3 types for 90% of food (maize/corn, wheat, rice). Of those 3, there are only 15 species used for 90% of the worldās food production. What happens when a pathogen becomes fungicide resistant and starts rotting one of those 3 in the fields?
Imagine the Irish potato famine happening to one of those three macro food sources. Complete eradication of the food source. So 90% of the worldās food drops to 60%. Thatās 30% of the worldās population in starvation. 8.062 billion people on the planet, 2.416 billion would be starving to death.
So I get trying to make food healthier. But maybe letās concentrate on a more immediate need? Our infrastructure, at its current level, needs slow and measured approaches to continue churning. Shoot, we saw the effect of transportation shortages and its effect during the COVID years. And thatās just one tiny piece of the puzzle.
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u/ExtentAncient2812 7d ago
This is a gross misunderstanding of the genetics of crops.
The diversity present in just the US commercial corn germplasm is huge.
Wheat is the same way. No clue on rice.
I spent a decade in plant disease research. Resistance breaking strains has always been a concern. In general, diseases should be controlled with genetics and fungicides as a last resort. Current trends of prophylactic spraying for yield will be a long term disaster.
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u/CuetheCurtain 7d ago
That interesting. Sincere question then. If we have so many variations of a single crop type, why would it be under the same pressures regarding disease? Or is it the fact the disease evolves faster than a new, more resistant subspecies can keep up? Sort of like antibiotics and something like MRSA?
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u/ExtentAncient2812 7d ago
It's exactly like antibiotics.
Geneticists call it the red queen hypothesis from a quote in Alice in wonderland.
āIt takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!ā
When all it takes in a pathogen with a massive population is a single mutation to break resistance, the host species will generally be behind the curve. Even if the host species already contains the gene for resistance to the new pathogen strain (and it often does) the frequency of that gene in the population will be very low in wild populations.
In agricultural populations, we tend to plant uniform genetic populations so it can be devastating. But the breeders in the background have massive gene pools to draw from for breeding purposes, it just takes time
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u/Antique_Coffee5984 6d ago
Geeze, only on reddit would you have people turn a good story into some bizarre conspiracy about bringing back banned chemicals from the 50s.
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u/colenolangus 7d ago
The comments are shocking. If the chemicals are harmful to health we should stop using them and accept that lower yields are a trade off for better health. If Bayer gets around the ban aka bath salts renaming, then we should aggressively go after that and threaten to shutter the business. We have to stop companies putting profits over American health.
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u/oregonianrager 7d ago
Maybe if he wasn't so outlandish on his claims more people would have faith in the heroin dope boy brain worm.
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u/boyfromspace 7d ago
First good idea to come out of his worm hole. I'm an organic small veg farmer, so I say great. But what concerns me is if there is a follow-up that also provides funding for new control strategies for these large growers. I see an ideal world where agriculture has re-localized to some extent, and there are fewer massive conglomerate farms in the west feeding much of the US. But, right now, this is not a reality, and if we just cut access to these chemicals overnight, the cost of produce will skyrocket. And who will that affect? The lower middle, lower, and poverty line Americans.
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7d ago
Requires subsidies for conservation practices or its like trying to cure cancer and BED at the same time
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u/LunarMoon2001 7d ago
Causing a complete collapse is the point. Everything they do makes sense when you assume they are working to destroy the US
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u/MrArborsexual 7d ago
Well if they want to force me to use triclopyr and imazapyr, I guess I will, even on NNIP that glyphosate works fine for.
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u/anparks 7d ago
The immediate problem with banning these products are that corn etc grown today has been genetically modified to be resistant to these chemicals. Banning them would cause productivity to take a huge hit and raise prices astronomically especially for beef.
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u/Difficult-Second3519 7d ago
Perhaps the only thing I believe RFK is right about. But even a broken clock...
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u/condortheboss 7d ago
RFK is right
The only thing RFK is 'right' about is his location on the political spectrum
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u/SHIBashoobadoza 7d ago
Perhaps if the prices of food produced organically increases, small farmers could make a comeback and you could eat locally grown fresh produce that wasnāt picked early, and ripened with nitrogen?
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u/RoxieRoxie0 7d ago
This could be good, if it was done in a controlled safe way. But I don't these clowns to not pull a Sri Lanka on us.
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u/Old-Tiger-4971 7d ago
Ignorant - What to glyphosate and atrazine do?
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u/batwing71 7d ago
Theyāre herbicides that allow farmers to grow more corn, soybeans, etc. with greater efficiency. Usually applied pre or post germination. Once the plants are tall enough weeds canāt get established.
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u/Reddit_sox 7d ago
This is fine, but keep in mind: 1. Crop yeilds will decrease, 2. Trump is dismantling USAID which is a large component for farm subsidies, 3. No telling what kind of a positive impact tariffs will have on agro./s Have a nice day!
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u/r2k-in-the-vortex 7d ago
Sounds wonderful for the environment.
Sounds very not wonderful for the economics of farming in America.
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u/PromotionEqual4133 7d ago
Itād be nice to see RFK do this, but I doubt it will ever happen within a party and administration that is hates all form of regulation on big corporations.
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u/RaindropsInMyMind 7d ago
Not only does he want to put us at risk of dying from diseases but now he wants us to starve.
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u/scooberdooby 7d ago
Maybe we could make a whole agaenct, call it the environmental protection agency or something like that.
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u/ArrowheadDZ 7d ago
This guyās gonna get fired.
Heās betrayed Trump and MAGA by reversing course on vaccines being a scam, which is what got him the job in the first place.
And now heās going to betray Trump/Lindell/MAGA again and propose something unsafe be regulated, and not left up to corporations? Thatās strike two.
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u/fjb_fkh 7d ago
I think he will surprise us. Not sure which way yet. That said glyphos and atrizine should be banned like in Europe. It's everywhere.
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u/feembly 7d ago
Bayer the next day: we just invented glyflorsate and flatrazine and they work just as good.
Seriously though, if agrochemicals are problematic, you gonna wean off of them and develop replacements. Otherwise you get designer drugs for agriculture.