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Comment by TheMiddleMan | Hacker News Reader

You say this like there aren't alternatives. We can find a way to grow crops that isn't harmful to people.

Everything involves some harm to people. For example, if you use a tractor to plough that land, you'll be emitting some diesel particulates giving the people in the area worse health.

If you ban machines and plant everything by hand, someone's going to get a bad back.

Every option involves some harm. The trick is to minimize it.

Not permanently damaging the soil and causing long term chemical poisoning to the population and our offspring is a pretty basic don’t

OTOH how many offspring will you manage to have without these techniques? Probably a lot fewer. Corn yields have gone up 10 fold over the past 100 years. If we use that as proxy for other crops, then the population would be literally decimated (reduced to 1/10th). Assuming no exports and other things that are certainly at play here of course.

https://extension.entm.purdue.edu/newsletters/pestandcrop/ar...

That plow will do a lot more damage to the soil than roundup.

> We

Who is "we", and why are you including yourself in this?

It's one thing to state that. It's quite another to go and do it.

The farm industry has made a choice. What are you going to do to make them change that? Offer to pay more? Get lawmakers to side with you? Purchase different things at the grocery store?

I think we'll still be talking about glyphosate in another twenty years and that not much will have changed.

> We can find a way

Are you a commercial farmer? What crops, what volume?

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