Saturday, November 29, 2014

What Contaminates Crops? Manure, Roundup, Both or Neither?

   As I slipped into my car to drive home, I was thinking it is a little odd that some who do not approve of insecticides and pesticides being used on crops find no harm at all in manure being spread on them.
   How can manure not be harmful? I thought, for it is the same principle.
   Now, set the thought I had while getting into my car side-by-side with what I experienced as I got out of my car and began to walk to my front door. A sudden and urgent need to attend to the bathroom hit me -- diarrhea, I guess they call it. Food poisoning. I had eaten two new organic foods that afternoon, and one of them was the culprit.
   Well, after giving it some thought. I doubt my organic food's being raised in cow manure caused my food poisoning. For one thing, manure is spread on the field before the plant is even planted. The manure is changed chemically as it enters the plant and becomes part of it, or, so we are told. That is different than an insecticide being sprayed on a growing plant, absorbing into it and not being changed genetically. Does the pesticide evaporate away? Or, is it, indeed, changed chemically as the plant grows and absorbs into it? Somehow, I do have doubts about the chemical composition of Roundup being altered by the plant so as to make the deadly chemical harmless. Maybe so, but I certainly have doubt.
   And, consider this: While I do not know how long manure takes to decompose -- how long it takes for the bacteria to die -- the manure doesn't all enter the plant while it is a seed. Some probably brushes against the plant once it is growing -- same as the Roundup does -- and is absorbed at that stage.
   Is it that the bacteria is dead by then, that it isn't harmful? Or, is it that the bacteria can be changed genetically, while the Roundup cannot? Or, can Roundup, just as well, be changed genetically?
   To give this line of questioning further perspective, as we wonder if some poisons are safe and others not -- what if we sprayed arsenic on our crop? And, well, I guess nerve gas would be a bad idea.

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