By the way, in the USA we can't even call rapeseed oil by it's name. We call it Canola oil. But it's ok to joke about male rape.

But don't bother with flaxseed oil. It's popular now because it makes the skillet look nice and black and shiny, but many people have found that the seasoning tends to crack and flake off on the long term. Canola oil is fine, as it has a high smoke point (resulting in stronger bonds) and it's easy to acquire. (Other, saturated fats like Crisco are well-liked for their ease of use.)

I think I see part of the problem. The other option you wondered at is you are comparing(literally) apples to grains.

If your lucky enough to live in a climate that can support orchards and vegetables that's an entirely different story. Grain farming is a different beast and you can't farm canola and wheat the same way you'd farm apples or tomatoes.

As for out here on the prairies, the average family owned and operated farm is on the 1k acre mark. Of the 20k farms in my province, more then 90% of them will be under 2k acres and virtually none of them hire more than 2 people outside their immediate sons and daughters to work there.

As for over production, the grain vs vegetables thing still hits. Crop rotation matters with grains, over production simply doesn't. Most of the land here has been passed down from parent to child for 100 years and they've always been quick to pick up on the latest innovations from new equipment to man-made fertilizers to round-up ready crops. The only consistent theme has been greater(and more consistent) yields per acre each year and correspondingly better profits for the farmer. Your gloom and doom scenario just isn't the reality for current grain farming techniques.

@newtboy

If you are only growing twice what you can eat yourself, you are describing a large garden, not a farm.

More over, what you class as 'industrial' farming is in fact the entirety of all grain farming. If there is a place in farming for wheat, corn, soy, canola and so on, 99% of it is done on what you class 'industrial' farming.

Your typical family farm is over a thousand acres today. If I go out and start naming the family farms of just friends and family I know, I can come up with 30-40+. They all farm over a thousand acres, they use tractors and combines and they make a fair bit more food than twice what they can eat. They aren't the ultra rich land barons that your 'industrial' moniker would imply either, at most they have a singular hired hand to help out with the work. The ones with children interested in taking over often don't need to hire anyone at all.

If you want to abandon that agricultural production and the methods used you mean raising the cost of production more than 100 times over. I can't even fathom the cost of weeding a thousand acres of wheat by hand, let alone removing grasshoppers from a corn crop that way. I'm sorry, but what works for your garden doesn't scale to grain crops.

Oh, and the conflation of herbicide and pesticide was done by the fear monger crowd. Listing round-up as a chemical that only kills plants and not insects and animals didn't fit their agenda so now everything is supposed to be called a pesticide across the board. Maybe that's just a Canadian thing, but the bottom line is that if you had a crop completely over run with insects you could spray it once a day with stupidly high concentrations of round-up and the water in the sprayer would do about the same damage to the insects as would the round up.


As for the video's other claims, I stand by my characterisation. You can't honestly tell me the video is trying to put forward on open and honest picture of Monsanto's actions and history. For example, the Manhattan Project, here's a transcription for clarity:
"Monsanto head Charles Allen Thomas was called to the pentagon not only asked to join the Manhattan project, but to lead it as it's co-director. Thomas put Monsanto's central research department hard to work building the atomic bomb.Fully aware of the implications of the task the budding empire sealed it's relationship with the inner cicrcles of washington with two fateful days in Japan.
"
- queue clip of nuclear blasts-

I think I stand by my summation.

The description sounds like it's the story of Percy Schrieber, one man's fight with Monsanto. Forgive me, but if that is in fact accurate I'm not sitting through a 1 hour accounting. Percy Schrieber's story is nothing like those described by Shatterdose and others. He wasn't sued for his crop getting cross contaminated. He wasn't sued for continuing to replant seed from his previous crop as he had been doing for years and years.

Percy Schrieber deliberately and intentionally set out to plant Monsanto's GMO canola on his own fields, and went to MORE work to accomplish this than most any other farmer that'd been growing that variety. What is more, he has freely admitted this. I can NOT understand how he still remains a rallying point for folks claiming Monsanto is suing farmers just because their seed crop was cross contaminated by their neighbor. I have yet to be pointed to an example of Monsanto doing that to anyone in North America. Until I am pointed to one, I'm getting pretty tired of the completely baseless accusation being declared and accepted as proven fact and matter of course. Monsanto IS a massive corporation, and no doubts has all manner of dirty deeds to it's name, but this particular charge seems to be entirely fabricated to me and that drives me nuts. It renders all manner of valid complaints and concerns less valid all to quickly.

@SveNitoR
i was not asking a question nor did i post any research nor arguments,but..thanks? i guess?

@bcglorf
here is a video of just a few of monsantos legal practices with canola farmers in canada:
http://videosift.com/video/north-american-farmers-VS-Monsanto-david-vs-goliath

Well, I'll certainly grant you obesity as being the fault of GMOs, but only in that they've made foods cheaper and more abundant and thus obesity is easier to attain.

I thought the links beginning to surface for all the other conditions were the fault of human CO2 emissions, or vaccinations, or the NWO...

Back to being serious though, my big, big trouble with 'linking' or blaming GMO for health problems or, well, anything, is a complete absence of any scientific evidence and studies supporting said statements and claims. The glaring absence of such evidence really, really sets of my skepticism meter when bold claims against GMO products are stated as matter of course. It sounds to me much more like new things scare me talk than reasoned factual argument.

Are any of the cattle, chickens and pigs raised today 'natural', or are they so far removed from their original species by centuries of human directed selective breeding to be deemed man-made? Truth is there arguably never was such a thing as non-GMO Canola. It was invented as a derivative of Rapeseed by a university about 2 hours from me in the seventies. Talking about GMO products as though, oh no, we've never done anything like this ever before in human history so be very cautious just seems ignorant to me.

Nope, not really. There is also the anecdotal 'evidence' of 90% of North Americans having been consuming GMO corn and canola products for nearly two decades to seemingly no ill effect.

@enoch

From the Smithsonian article:
"already more than 70 percent of the processed foods in the U.S, such as snacks, breakfast cereals and vegetable oils, contain traces of GM crops because common ingredients, including corn, soy and canola oil,usually have been genetically modified."

Also from the article:
"And so far, there’s little to indicate that GM food is harmful to humans."

It says that more than 2/3 of PROCESSED food contains TRACES of GMO. Reality just isn't as scary as melodramatic music videos on YouTube would have you believe.

My biggest concern regarding GMOs is the relatively unknown influence it will have on natural ecosystems and therefore I am definitely concerned about Monsanto's political influence, but to say that it is all poison is just silly.

And yes, a YouTube video that uses dubious claims and a harrowing soundtrack in order to gain Facebook shares sounds pretty slactivist to me.

And Last-minute 'n not a second to spare, sheppard and this fastidious bachelor-esque gem: Chicken-Mushroom SS w/ P

You'll need 4 boneless / skinless chicken breasts, a can of cambells mushroom soup, cheddar cheese, sugar, and parmesan cheese (grated)

Chicken breasts are easy, just heat up a skillet / pan and cook them with a couple tablespoons of canola oil (make sure to brown them on either side, and save the drippings)

Take your potatoes, wash em, and slice them as thin / thick as you want (thicker makes the cooking time longer) width wise (so you end up with potato circles) Place on a baking sheet and on each potato place a small amount of butter and sprinkle parmesan cheese over the batch. Cook them for ~45 minutes at ~425 degrees.

Start off cooking the soup normally, (however, use milk instead of water as the can instructs) and once it's at a rapid boil, add 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1.5 cups of shredded cheddar cheese, and 1.5 tablespoons of parmesan cheese. Make sure to mix well, and once the chicken is fully cooked / browned, pour this over and mix it with the drippings / oil from the chicken.

Recipe #1
Dystopianfuturetoday:
EGGDILLA

-2 Corn Tortillas (get good tortillas from a mexican market)

-1 Egg

-Oil (I used olive oil, but veggie or canola should work fine)

-Pepper Jack Cheese (Use other types of cheese if you like)

-Cajun Seasoning - I used “Slap Ya Mama” seasoning - which is a mix of salt, red pepper, white pepper and garlic. Improvise if you need to.

-Mayo - You can leave this out if you are trying to be healthy

-Gochugang Sauce - This is a mix of pepper paste, brown sugar, rice vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce and honey. Mix to taste, put it in a squeeze bottle in the fridge and it will taste delicious on just about anything. Formal recipe here: http://www.luluz.net/articles/eat/gochujang-sauce-for-bibimbap/

SO here's a taste of the first entry submitted by a stellar fixture and long-winded SO-Cal so-called here, dytopianfurtdy:
Eggadilla - an original dft creation

You will need:

-2 Corn Tortillas (get good tortillas from a mexican market)

-1 Egg

-Oil (I used olive oil, but veggie or canola should work fine)

-Pepper Jack Cheese (Use other types of cheese if you like)

-Cajun Seasoning - I used “Slap Ya Mama” seasoning - which is a mix of salt, red pepper, white pepper and garlic. Improvise if you need to.

-Mayo - You can leave this out if you are trying to be healthy

-Gochugang Sauce - This is a mix of pepper paste, brown sugar, rice vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce and honey. Mix to taste, put it in a squeeze bottle in the fridge and it will taste delicious on just about anything. Formal recipe here: http://www.luluz.net/articles/eat/gochujang-sauce-for-bibimbap/

DOn't feel bad if you can't cook, your parents raised you so feel free to blame them for your developmental disabilities, of which there are no-doubt tomes on the subject that remain unwritten (That goes double for you, Miss, low-sugar buttery cinnamon toast woman...I'm kidding, your offering sounds delicious.....you may be one of 2 entries which puts you well ahead of 3282 other Hot-Pocket-eaters around heyah!)

As baffled as I am by people spending so much money on bottled water, I think it is ignorance, not stupidity that has people paying money for bottled tap water. The same forces that have convinced people to put carbonated sugar water, big macs or other garbage in their bodies for over a generation. Advertising has kids begging their parents for sugar coated pork puffs in the cereal isle. There are ads on all the time for "beverages" like Beep (a drink loaded with sugar and canola oil) for breakfast. People have been being told to eat garbage by television, and other advertising mediums for years, and they listened.

I think people make bad decisions like paying for bottle water regularly and eating unhealthy foods not because they are too stupid to grasp the idea of tap water or healthy food, but because no one has explained the alternative to them. During his address to TED, I was shocked when Jamie Oliver showed that an elementary school class could not identify a potato.

The kids in that classroom aren't stupid. What's stupid is an education curriculum that allows french fries to be placed in a food group in their school's cafeteria.
>> ^Xax:
How sad. It's nothing short of astounding stupidity amongst the populace that bottled water has become such an epidemic.

In reply to this comment by jan:
Yes, absolutely.

The picture as I understand it involves not only the farms but the financial profits reap from them.
There has been some conflict of interest reported as government officials have investments in these farms.

The logging of BC forests also impacts the accessibility up creeks and rivers to spawning beds.
Forest companys have guidelines, but some get broken.

Some farmed fish are fed fish pellets that have been produced from other countries fish stock. So they take fish stock from sometimes poor countries to feed fish in farms.
Last year I heard a biology student talking about feeding the farmed fish canola pellets, imagine carnivorous fish eating canola pellets.

Other issues involve the antibiotics they have to give the fish in order to help them survive in the pen. Too many fish locked in one space.
The larger than normal amounts of sea lice is do to the fish being confined. The fry swim past these farms and pick up the lice in lethal amounts.

I could go on.

Yes, absolutely.

The picture as I understand it involves not only the farms but the financial profits reap from them.
There has been some conflict of interest reported as government officials have investments in these farms.

The logging of BC forests also impacts the accessibility up creeks and rivers to spawning beds.
Forest companys have guidelines, but some get broken.

Some farmed fish are fed fish pellets that have been produced from other countries fish stock. So they take fish stock from sometimes poor countries to feed fish in farms.
Last year I heard a biology student talking about feeding the farmed fish canola pellets, imagine carnivorous fish eating canola pellets.

Other issues involve the antibiotics they have to give the fish in order to help them survive in the pen. Too many fish locked in one space.
The larger than normal amounts of sea lice is do to the fish being confined. The fry swim past these farms and pick up the lice in lethal amounts.

I could go on. I'm looking for anther vid.