Comments lorne0406 has made
Super weeds
This is a perfect example of biodiversity/natural selection in action. Most weeds are susceptible to glyphosate (roundup) but there will always be a few that have genetic immunity. Just like some people got sick and died of the 1918 flu but not everyone did. AIDs and ebola kill most people infected, but not all people infected. Those that survive reproduce.
Keep spraying one herbicide, or more importantly just herbicides with the same mode of action, often enough and soon there will only be resistant weeds left since only they will be able to grow, reproduce and spread.
This principal doesn't just apply to chemical agriculture it applies to all agriculture.
Where only tillage is used to control weeds other resistant patterns develop. Some weeds won't germinate until they are exposed to flashes of sunlight caused by tillage. If you always plant early then late germinating weeds will quickly become dominant. If you plant late then winter annuals or early germinating weed populations grow.
If the early bird gets the worm then soon the only worms you will find are ones that sleep late.
Life on earth isn't static and never was. The faster a population reproduces the quicker they will adapt to any changes in their environment. Since insects reproduce faster than weeds they gain immunity to common pesticides quicker than weeds become immune to herbicides. Since bacteria and fungi reproduce faster than both, anitbiotic and fungicide resistance develops quicker than pesticide or herbicide resistance.
Darwin got it right. Lorne0406
lorne0406
On In Arkansas, state ag officials turn to Syngenta to solve problems caused by Monsanto posted 1 year, 8 months ago 4 Responsessoil carbon
It's pretty simple to improve soil carbon all you need to do is grow vegetation and not disturb the soil. Even if vegetation above ground is removed an equal amount of vegtation is preserved below ground in the root structure. The trick is to plant a new crop without disturbing the soil. Everytime soil is tilled oxygen is introduced into the soil which speeds up the decomposition process which releases carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere.
Agriculture Canada has been doing some really interesting reearch on improving soil carbon through long term zero till. Long term trials conducted at their Indian Head Research farm, as well as on 30 year zero till plots done in conjunction with Jim Halford, one of the earliest zerotill farmers, look very promising.
Halford says his knolls and level areas have stored an average 1.0 and 1.25 Tonnes of CO2 per acre per year over the last 20 years. The storage in the latter 7 years was 1.7 and 1.9 Tonnes of CO2 per acre per year for the knolls and level areas respectively!!
In the future he believes that the soils in his fields can exceed the level of organic matter, (and hence carbon and nitrogen) that exists in our native grass soils!!!
Granted Canadian farmers are about a decade ahead of their US counterparts on the Great Plains but the Canadian example shows increasing soil carbon is very possible in cereal, legume and oilseed rotations. Here's a link to a presentation by an ag canada researcher. If you are interested in soil carbon tis is really quite interesting and remarkably readable for something from a soil scientist
www.farmtechconference.com/pdf/2008proceedings/Lafond_FT2008.pdf
lorne0406
On Two solutions to global warming posted 1 year, 9 months ago 11 Responses