That is clearly not true. It may be one of the less toxic human made functioning, profitable herbicides, but that's not what you said by far.

Roundup is not a pesticide, it's an herbicide. Conflating it with pesticides is ridiculous and incredibly misleading. Roundup is used to control weeds and remove genetic 'contamination' of specific crops. EDIT: Many of those crops are genetically modified to act as pesticides without spraying chemicals, which is a good reason to want to limit cross contamination in either direction.

Other alternatives are no chemicals at all, or only ecologically safe (usually natural) chemicals. I don't use chemicals on my farm, I weed, I spray horticulture oil, I spread ashes, I grow twice what I can eat so some loss to insects won't matter, and I remove insects, slugs, and snails by hand. It takes more work, but the statement that the only alternative to Roundup is worse chemicals or agriculture collapse is completely and obviously false and indicates a total ignorance of the issue you speak about.

"Modern Agriculture" today means hydroponics, aeroponics, and aquaponics, none of which can benefit a whit from Roundup. You mean to say "Industrial Agriculture". The collapse of industrial agriculture might not be a bad thing, as it's incredibly destructive and produces a sub par product. More people farming on smaller farms puts more people to work, makes better product, and makes the people who work on the land feel responsible for it's upkeep, not consider it a resource to be exploited as efficiently as possible.

Mentioning Monsanto's involvement in the project is not the same as saying "neither Einstein or Openheimer or others were behind the Manhattan project, it was Monsanto all along that plotted to destroy Japanese cities with nuclear weapons". They clearly implied that Monsanto joined the project as a way to 'cozy up to' the political elite, and it worked.

Where did you hear this ridiculous hypothesis about their motive? Do you see and hear things that other people don't see and hear? It's clear that the motive in all cases was profit, either directly, or future profits secured by 'making friends' in government by cooperating with them or by forcing farmers into untenable contracts and positions where, in some cases, farmers that don't use Monsanto crops were sued because Monsanto said the pollen that pollinated the crops came from a neighbors Monsanto crops, so the seed belongs to Monsanto. Monsanto does not set out to cause damage and harm, they simply don't care if it happens as a side effect of their profit making methods, which they will protect with any means possible.

Just wow, a more deliberately misleading description of the video would be hard to create.

^I don't think you have researched this topic enough to make accurate conclusions.

Chickens can eat grass, which if you have a yard which you would otherwise have to mow every week, is a free source of chicken food.

You will never be able to buy produce for cheaper then you can produce it yourself. Even if you have to grow it indoors and pay electricity it would be cheaper.

You say that 10 square meters is impossible to grow $1800 of food a year. If you space, tomato plants for example, so that each takes 0.5 meters squared, you can grow 20 plants in a 10 square meter area. Using aeroponics, each plant matures in approximately 10 days. Mature tomato plants can produce up to 20-30 lbs of fruit, so with this modest setup you could achieve:

20 plants x 36 harvests x 20/30 lbs fruit = 14,400 lbs min/21,600 lbs max of tomatoes per year. Sold at $2 a lb, that would be $28,800-$43,200 a year.

aeroponics recycles both water and fertilizer, so your costs would be very low. Using new LED grow lights, you can cover approximately 1 square meter for only 30 watts. So a 10 meter squared setup would require 300 watts of grow lights running 12 hours a day 365 days a year (just to compare, your computer uses 400-600+ watts).

Energy costs: 300 watts * 12 hours * 365 days / $0.05 per kilowatt hour = $65.70 annual cost.

Yearly profit after startup costs: $28,800 - $65.70 = $28,734.30

To make $1800, you would only have to harvest 3 times a year with all 20 plants, or harvest 10 times a year with only 5 plants (2.5 meters squared). Even with only a single meter squared, you could make $2,880 a year if you harvested all 36 times.

The science is there...you just aren't taking advantage of it

*As an aside, why are you arguing with me over well documented information? Presumably you have the internet, why don't you use it?

I don't think theres any basis for these statements.

>> ^jwray:
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Probably half the population lives in places that are too densely populated to have significant vegetable gardens

68.1% of Americans owned homes in 2007. Of those, almost all of them have at least 600 square feet (0.01377 acres) somewhere in their yards.

Even those living in apartments have enough space. With modern aeroponics, you can acheive 20-30x the yield of traditional agriculture in the same space. 600/30 = 30 feet squared. That is only a 6' x 5' space.

Besides, that takes time, and time is money.

Using aeroponics, a tomato plant can grow from seedling to mature plant with fruit in 10 days. Even with traditional methods, a tomato plant yields fruit in under 50 days. With canning, you can have fresh fruit all year round. Tending to a garden takes less than 30 minutes a day, and a full garden can be planted in a single day. Time is money, but so is food. Tomatoes sell for 2-3$ a lb and a single plant can yield 20-30 lbs of fruit.

Division of labour and specialization is efficient.

Modern, large-scale monocultures are not more efficient, nor will they ever be. The fuel costs alone in transporting them to your house will be larger than the time and money involved in growing them yourself.

Like I said, you can spend $2 for a dozen eggs, or you can buy a chicken for 5$ which will give you 365 eggs a year. 5$ or 182$...thats a difference of 1600%.

To address your original question though...yes the government is to blame for those prices being higher. In terms of raw material costs, grain should be almost 10x cheaper to produce than eggs; as dictated by the laws of biology.