Thread: Is - or should - this be a concern??

I ran a citrus orchard for 15 ears or so. I used Roundup for the sole purpose of controlling nutgrass.

I did not use other herbicides to control weeds. I had a trickle irrigation system and slashed the inter row space.

I had many neighbours and friends who slathered their properties with Hyvar, Krovar or Sinbar. Their properties
looked like clay tennis courts with trees stuck in them. I saw on a visit back there in Oct./Nov last year just how
endemic this practice has become. I understand there are economic reasons for this. But I worry about the long term
effects of these practices. These include resistance and soil structure issues and the possibility of uptake into the food
supply that MAY be harmful.

I have seen the results of wrong dosages of chemicals and they weren't pretty.

What happens when these products flush into the water cycle? How is aquatic life affected? Do we really know anything at present?

I know I have side tracked a bit but there is a broad range of issues here that needs consideration.

This is an interesting question that artme has put forward. Well I might just add my 2 cents worth...

Although I'm not a farmer I have found myself doing a bit of farm hand work for the past few years on a relative's grain property in northwest NSW. The sheer amount of chemical used in broadacre farming is staggering. We might use 5, 6 or 7 shuttles of glypho just at sowing time. 1 shuttle equals 1,000 litres. And this is a relatively small cropping operation.

With glypho being out of patent there is a lot of it now coming in from China because it is cheaper to produce there. I can't help but wonder what other nasty manufacturing byproduct chemicals or impurities are in with the Chinese produced glypho that we don't know about. Think dioxin in agent orange (USA), melamine in milk (China) or asbestos in Great Wall cars (China) just off the top of my head.

Is Roundup safe? I certainly hope so because I have ingested more than my fair share while mixing and spraying it, daresay just like every other spray tractor/rig operator. But I am more worried about some of the nastier selective herbicides, insecticides and fungicides that are used on our food crops than poor old Roundup.

I seems I have rambled on a bit so I had better stop.

Regards
Twosheds

Originally Posted by artme

I have seen the results of wrong dosages of chemicals and they weren't pretty.

What happens when these products flush into the water cycle? How is aquatic life affected? Do we really know anything at present?
.

We actually know one heck of a lot. There are reasons why DDT, Lindane, Dieldrin and 2,4,5-T got banned from first world countries.
Not sure if 2,4-D is still available ...

Carson did a lot of documentation of water-borne run-off. What is even more creepy is when you read her documentation of synergistic effects between some herbicides and some insecticides. Whoa Nelly.

As I said before, I am not in the zealously religious 'organic' camp, I will happily use anthelmintics, antibiotics, insecticides, and even herbicides when warranted - but one has to be extremely conscious about just what one does do. Feeding wholesale antibiotics to broiler chickens and vealers to make them grow faster is wrong on so many levels, for instance .... profits aren't *everything*. Unfortunately profits are the *only* thing that corporates think about. They have no interest in the quality of their product, the ethics, or, for that matter, the land and the continued survival of the species.

Originally Posted by chambezio

He also went on to say that "Farmers should not be sold chainsaws or electric welders"
He clarified the electric welder by saying that a farmer did some casual bus driving. The wheel nuts kept coming loose on one side of the bus.....so he fixed it.......yep with the welder
True story, as sad as it is

My mate was a tractor mechanic at one stage of his life

The Farmer did what I would have done if the nuts kept coming loose and the bus owner wasn't providing a permanent solution to the problem.

Originally Posted by kiwigeo

The Farmer did what I would have done if the nuts kept coming loose and the bus owner wasn't providing a permanent solution to the problem.

Ever heard of loctite....a lot easier the next time you get a puncture.

Originally Posted by TermiMonster

Ever heard of loctite....a lot easier the next time you get a puncture.

I would consider Loctite a temporary fix to to the problem like the weld up job.

The farmer should be given credit....he was obviously checking the wheel nuts on a regular basis. Alot of people wouldn't have picked up that the nuts were loose until they noticed one of the bus's wheels rolling past.

I can't argue with that logic.

Originally Posted by kiwigeo

The farmer should be given credit....he was obviously checking the wheel nuts on a regular basis. Alot of people wouldn't have picked up that the nuts were loose until they noticed one of the bus's wheels rolling past.

That actually happened to a fellow student of mine way back when, tearing down the Autobahn in Germany when people started waving and flashing their lights, next thing his rear wheel was overtaking him ... I just bet that was a brown pants moment at 130+ km/h.

Originally Posted by P.W.H.

That actually happened to a fellow student of mine way back when, tearing down the Autobahn in Germany when people started waving and flashing their lights, next thing his rear wheel was overtaking him ... I just bet that was a brown pants moment at 130+ km/h.

Also happened to my brother while trundling along in his mate's VW beetle.

While the wheel of the bus did not come off, it was not far from it. And while the speed of the bus was no where near 100 km/h, the location had its own problems, not from the passing traffic, but rather lack of it.
The bus I was on was a tourist bus, 1-Jan-1980, at Uluru (Ayres Rock) National Park. Fortunately the driver felt something wrong and stopped. By using a two way radio he was able to obtain a relief bus. We were in the middle of nowhere for about 45 minutes.

Where I grew up this was a common practice on bush vehicles. The "roads" were as rough as you could get and a lot of gibber country. A soft weld and a good file if you got caught out. Otherwise a small angle grinder back in the shed.

Hi,
Bedford trucks had left hand threads on one side to overcome that, I do not know how many got broken by the uninformed trying to undo them.
Regards

The Toyota Dyna trucks I had also had LH threads. The first time I removed a wheel I broke two spanners before I worked this out. Right is right and left is wrong is the way I remember it. If you know what to look for, the LH nuts have a nick on the edge of each face too.

Regards
Paul