[ConstantVigil]

Right, so as politely as I can say this...

Tell me you have never lived on a farm, without telling me you have never lived on a farm. I say this, because if you had lived on a farm; you would know it's really, really fucking difficult to spray a chemical on a bunch of weeds separately when they are infesting your entire crop...

Though I do agree with the premise that we should only be using it on the weeds, if at all. I personally don't think we should be using it at all though, because we can easily deal with all the weeds and such; by hiring laborers.

Congratulations, we just created a new job market out of an old profession that should have NEVER gone away.

P.S. Just as an FYI for anyone who figures this would be silly to do...

We already do it to some degree with crops that are better off hand picked... And there are A LOT of people who could use that job... and would have no problem doing it either.

[dotancohen]

  > if you had lived on a farm; you would know it's really,
  > really difficult to spray a chemical on a bunch of weeds
  > separately when they are infesting your entire crop...

It's difficult, so we should let the farmers poison our children? Writing secure software is difficult, should we accept security issues so the poor devs won't have to work hard? Keeping airplanes in the sky is hard, should we let Boeing crash a passenger jet every year to save some grueling engineering work?

[drewcoo]

Back atcha!

Farmers know that it's used not only to kill weeds but also as a desiccant just before harvest, to harvest sooner. That is likely the cause of the contamination in the food supply.

[quadrifoliate]

> because we can easily deal with all the weeds and such; by hiring laborers.

This, or a combination of laborers and robots. Robotic arms and cameras have come a long way – surely we can invest enough in them instead of conducting large chemical trials on the human population?

[gwill]

luckily these things are getting easier. with spot treatment from drones you can hit areas of crops that are affected by bugs or weeds. blanket chemicals won't be eliminated from soil prep for a long time though.

[ConstantVigil]

Yes, the drone approach is very tempting. But I still insist on us removing the need to use of manmade chemicals that don't exist in nature naturally... (That I am aware of...)

For instance, I am all fine and dandy with using lye soap and vinegar to kill weeds. It's not 100% effective, but it's also not going to poison you just because your potatoes happen to be near by. Lye is a tricky example, because it's not exactly always natural, but not exactly always manmade either. You can get naturally occuring sources, etc.

[dotancohen]

Camel feces is natural, would you eat it? How about hemlock? "Occurs in nature" is a naive metric.