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Comment by throwawaay31aq | Hacker News Reader

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>> An average of almost 130 pounds of glyphosate herbicides were sprayed per square mile in U.S. counties.

Is this the weight of pure glyphosate, or it includes the solvents like water?

Wikipedia says that the density of glyphosate is 1.7 but they have no units. Let's assume it's g/cm^3 (the density of water is 1g/cm^3, so it's a good guess.)

From https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=130pounds+%2F+%281.7g%2... this is 0.00001mm ~= 0.0000005 inches .

130kg sounds like a lot, but it's actually that a square mile is very big.

Only 17% of the US landmass is used for agriculture, so averaging it out like this doesn’t make much sense.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=130pounds+%2F+%281.7g%2... 0.00008mm ~= 0.000003 inches

In the linked article it actually shows max concentrations at 500. So for those areas it (basically) really is your original number.

It's further telling with this quote:

> Iowa and Illinois, where the most corn and soy crops are grown, accounted for 15% of national usage

Which means some states heavy skew the results and many, many areas of the country are below 100 or near 0.

It's easy in America. As soon as your industry becomes big enough you can afford to petition (lobby) the government to write regulations that favor your busines in your industry.

Fortunately any American can petition their government. Collectively we could hire our own lobbyist to write better laws (and regulations).

lobbyists aren't supposed to write laws, but the reality is they probably do.

Politics are pay-to-play. We do have organizations that started as citizens coming together to try to influence government, but unless you have a lot of money to throw around, your public interest research group is almost impossible to hear. Who do you think has outized influence- a group of citizens proposing common-sense reforms, or industry lobbyists paid a lot of money to protect an industry's bottom line?

I mean, take ALEC for instance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_...

Laws written by corporations.

Also, anybody who doesn’t think corporations buy legislators is being very naive.

Maybe we should all dedicate a percentage of our income to hire lobbyists that would represent our interests to the government /s

And call them politicians?

Meanwhile the EU food safety regulator is okay to continue using it.

https://www.politico.eu/article/glyphosate-is-safe-to-use-in...

The Drilled podcast covers in detail the history of how corporations in America engineered their right to use their money and influence for political speech.

Our representatives are supposed to be our lobbyists. Part of the problem is people ignore when their lobbyist is doing a bad job when they wear the right color uniform, and refuse to acknowledge any good they do when they wear the other color uniform.

US bulk agriculture exports are what keep vast swathes of the developing world from starving. GMOs, herbicides and pesticides are how the US produces immense quantities of cheap food for the rest of the world [1].

I don't really care what the rest of the world whines about, when the US is the country actually keeping millions of the global poor alive.

[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/international-markets-u-s-tr...

US bulk agriculture exports are what keep vast swathes of the developing world from sustaining themselves. Wheat, corn and other heavily subsidized crops are how countries are incentivized producing cash crops like coffee, tea and Kat instead of food.

I don't really understand why the rest of the world doesn't whine, when the US is the country actually keeping millions of the global population poor.

Thomas Sankara said it better: https://twitter.com/Beardington/status/1685213481010667520?s...

No. The US (and European) ag subsidies are what fuel overproduction, undermine local production and markets in other countries, creating dependencies and poor diets.

Ah yes. If only the US didn't sell food to subsaharan Africa, they'd learn to pull themselves up by their bootstraps! It's really the handouts that makes them dependent on the US government.

The horseshoe theory of politics truly explains a lot.

This is literally what happened in Haiti with rice. Even Slick Willie finally apologized for it.

https://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/11/bill_clinton_s_trade...

Overproduction? Of food?

Yes. Specific foods. Such as corn, sugar and soybean.

“The US sugar program relies on import quotas and limits on domestic production to ensure domestic prices for raw and refined sugar are, on average, about 100% higher than world prices.

4,000 or so farms that raise sugar beet and sugarcane, many of which also plant most of their cropland to other heavily subsidized commodities such as corn and soybeans.”

https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/recapping-the-e...

> and limits on domestic production

How can you possibly be arguing that limits on domestic production are causing overproduction?

They cause overproduction of poor substitutes. Like beets for sugar because of limits on sugar cane. Or monoculture GMO corn for HFCS. This skews diets and prices, usually for the worst.

The production limits effectively cap how much subsidy will be paid. The subsidy is still there. Without it, there would be less sugar grown and the land involved (mostly in the Florida Everglades and specifically developed to suit this sugar program) would go to other uses

> I don't really care what the rest of the world whines about

thank you for clarifying your point of view so well

To be fair, you’re quoting only half the sentence when the second part of that sentence justifies/qualifies it rather well.

Justification for indifference is on par with justification for ignorance, only is more nihilistic in its apathy for others and their plight. If you seek justification to not care about a thing which others care about, your interaction with them is patently malevolent. If, indeed, care is not given, then no statement should be made, and shutting up is how to be both honest and accurate.

It really doesn't. The person is saying it's OK to poison the US environment because we get good boy points for feeding the rest of the world (something the US does help with, but which impact is exaggerated for rhetorical effect). Apparently they're objecting to the fact that his research comes from a European institution and labeling that as 'whining'.

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