I passed a large field growing oilseed rape, I think. Around its edges was a strip, perhaps twenty feet wide, planted with white flowers that looked like ox-eye daises. Can I ask one question – Why?

I believe its to provide a habitat for bees and bugs that the pesticide used kills.

Buffer strip, could be the farm is in a stewardship scheme. Might be a ditch running alongside it and you cant spray with in 10metres of a watercourse.

Conservation headlands – the area between the field edge and the first tramline doesn’t get sprayed with herbicide or pesticide to encourage wildflowers and insects to improve biodiversity. Usually gets some sort of payment under an agri-environment scheme.

rapeseed is desiccated prior to harvest with glyphosate.

The “wildflower” zone as above will either be stewardship land or spray buffer.

Could be an Ecological Focus Area, new greening measures this year in order for farmers to claim subsidy under the basic payment scheme.

The farmer missed a bit!

It could also be a bit not planted due to the difficulty of harvesting that close to the boundary with machinery

wildflowers will have inhabited the space

Thanks all, it wasn’t weed growth, no ditches (Greensand – free draining) and along the slope, habitat and/or sprey buffer zone then. It looked rather striking, with the rape finished flowering and still green.

So they spray rape before harvesting: that’s me switching to organic oil.

So they spray rape before harvesting:

Yep you need to kill it off so that it can be harvested. Whats your aversion to the pesticide, from memory it’s about a week between spraying and harvest.

Whats your aversion to the pesticide

Over time, these things seem to get used for more and more purposes. Some time later the problems emerge (see nicotinoids).

It’s a herbicide. Now it’s not only used for clearing weeds before sowing, with months to fade away, but for readying the crop before harvesting. And then there’s…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11487118/Weedkiller-alert-over-cancer-link.html

I’m just being cautious. I’ll vote with my shopping trolley.

From my parents perspective pesticide use is actually going down, it’s use is much more targeted and application is more scientific to avoid over use – self leveling height adjusting gps guided spraying etc. you need to kill off the rape to harvest it so it kind of happens that way.

It seems a large step from spraying weeds, which will then die and rot away, to spraying a food crop and harvesting it. It’s a surprise to me, I’ll let the experiment continue a few years before I take part again.

I’ll let the experiment continue a few years before I take part again.

Well since I was first involved with it in 95 it’s been done like that, not just a little experiment.

Good luck buying rapeseed oil that hasn’t been Glyphosated.

You can drink Roundup, but you need quite a lot of gin to make it palatable.

Since ’95 eh, I wish I’d known earlier. I wonder what other surprises there are.

I did a lot of the fieldwork on the defra project on wild flower margins
http://www.reading.ac.uk/caer/project_saffie.html

Nahhh … sunflower oil here but how much pesticide used I don’t know.

Another bubble to burst, most farmers spray wheat and barley pre harvest either glyphosate (roundup) or diquat (reglone&others). Your strawberries too,in the week before picking ( Definitly NOT roundup). I’m guilty as hell but its legal.

Good enough reasons to switch to organic produce.

Not all oilseed rape is sprayed off. Some is swathed, i.e. cut off at ground level and left in rows ready to be combined. Please don’t anyone think all organic food is all earth mothery and wholesome.

I find it curious that “chemicals” are considered the big evil while other aspects are often ignored. To produce organically is to eliminate some potentially harmful or undesirable (but very tightly controlled) inputs but it can necessitate an increased use of others (diesel, the sheer amount of land). Sometimes dramatically. While conventional farming methods don’t necessarily strike the right balance, I find it hard to believe organic does a much better job.

Ive not known rape to be swathed for at least 15 years the main problem being poor weather causing the pods to shatter resulting in huge crop losses. Dessicating with an agro chemical kills the crop while allowing the pods to be flexible usually a glue type product is also added too this seals the pod reducing crop loss.

I have never know wheat or barley sprayed before harvest

It’s pretty common, if the field is ripening unevenly or the crop has a lot of weeds through it that will make it difficult to harvest.

Well in the four years I corn carted and ran a dryer never seen anyone spray a field of wheat or barley, everyday is a schoolday.

Go on pigface how long ago?

Good enough reasons to switch to organic produce.

why ? organic doesn’t mean no pesticides

Since ’95 eh, I wish I’d known earlier. I wonder what other surprises there are.

I think you’ll have to give up spuds as well. These are often killed off with weedkiller to develop firmer skins!

Ebygomm exactly, why do they have crop sprayers?

While conventional farming methods don’t necessarily strike the right balance, I find it hard to believe organic does a much better job.

How could you possibly say that when the countryside has been absolutely decimated by increased use of pesticides in the last half a century? The land is slowly but surely having the life squeezed out of it.

Got to be twenty five years ago now 🙁

Jamz – my point wasn’t that agri chemicals are not harmful. It was that farms do need to produce food with reasonable efficiency and to eliminate one harmful input while increasing others and increasing land use per unit of food to levels at which we have no hope of feeding the world does not strike the required balance. In my opinion, which I entirely accept many others won’t share, it makes a few wealthy consumers feel good but it can’t make much of a difference if we can’t (globally) devote much land to it.

I’d hope there’s a better way, but I doubt it’s as simple as just cutting out these things.

It’s also worth noting that most of those used in the past, so most of the causes of your point, are not in use in today’s “conventional farming”.

Never come across wheat or barley being sprayed before harvest either. Tatties and oilseed yes though.

Plus the chemicals sprayed on spuds to control late blight towards the end of the season. About to be banned by the EU as they are considered so bad for the environment. Not much is known about how bad they are for human health.

As said above organic doesn’t mean chemical free. Quite a few organic control measures are assumed to be safe as they are natural chemicals. But the reality is that often they just haven’t been tested as much.

From the environmental standpoint “organic” control measures are frequently less effective or long lasting so need more regular application (increased diesel use and land compaction) or be applied in greater doses. While they may not affect human health they may have greater effects on the environment, for example organic farming approved copper used to control fungi and oomycetes can accumulate in the soil and be toxic to plants, beneficial fungi and drastically alter the soil microbiome. At high enough levels it is harmful to us, although admittedly unlikely to be concentrated through the food chain route.

So a mixed bag really. Don’t assume that organic is healthy or industrial farming is bad, there are arguments each way and it is best to pick and choose based on the available evidence. Until someone does studies on the long term exposure risks of any type of control agent it is futile to claim that one farming method is safer. Probably best not to eat glyphosate though…..

Spuds are a classic, I seem to remember farmers using acid and now it’s other chemicals to kill the greenery off a couple of weeks before harvest

It’s done to stop pathogens being stored and coming back in the crop the following year

This is why GM is good.

The one thing I seem to remember about GM was breeding into the crop a resistance to something (roundup?) so it could be used on weeds that would otherwise compete with the crop. I hope I’m wrong.

This is why GM is good.

Why?

The one thing I seem to remember about GM was breeding into the crop a resistance to something (roundup?) so it could be used on weeds that would otherwise compete with the crop.

True

Those awfully nice people from Monsanto, a_a?