[Flere-Imsaho]

Sounds interesting. I heard about oat's ability to absorb nasty stuff in the gut for awhile. However, in the UK oats are dried out using glyphosate...a known carcinogen!

Feels like modern society makes it nearly impossible to not be exposed to harmful substances...so I hope you're successful.

[hexbin010]

Flahavans are the best oats (£3/kg). ~200 year old Irish company

> We specifically prohibit the use of Glyphosate spraying at any stage of the growing of oats by our farmers.

https://www.flahavans.com/inside-flahavans/our-oats/gmo-glyp...

[mrob]

I'll try some. For a long time I've been wary of organic oats because of concern about mycotoxins. I first thought about this after buying some Tesco non-organic oats that tasted of mould. I thought maybe pesticides reduced that risk and organic oats would be even worse. I later tasted mould in non-organic Sainsburys oats (which I suspect were from the same supplier as the Tesco ones), and then again from non-organic Mornflake oats (which were presumably not from the same supplier because they tasted different). I eventually switched to non-organic Quaker oats, which for several years had no perceptible mould taste, but not so long ago I had a box of Quaker oats that tasted of mould too.

It now occurs to me that the mould could have grown post-harvest, and maybe reliance on herbicides to desiccate crops could encourage a sloppy attitude toward drying. Maybe organic crops actually have lower risk of mycotoxin contamination because the farmers are forced to take more care with moisture levels. I carefully taste a small portion of each new batch, but I don't think taste is a reliable means of detecting mould contamination. It's also possible that mould grew because of improper storage after the oats were packaged, which is made worse by the modern trend of cardboard/paper packaging.

I'm still not confident with any brand, but I like oats too much to stop eating them.

[gambiting]

The whole point of glyphosate is that it deteriorates very very quickly, and your oats should contain exactly zero of it. Obviously that's the theory, I'd love someone to test it. But in US wheat is routinely dessicated with glyphosate so either their bread is giving everyone cancer, or the compound does actually break down as expected. Or maybe it's somewhere in between.

Either way, it's like the article said - it's impossible for us consumers to figure any of this stuff out. We have to rely on public agencies, which are under constant attack from multinational corporations throwing billions of dollars at the issue, because following regulations costs money. And that's in developed countries, if you're buying stuff from places with barely functional food quality inspection then good luck I guess.

[philipp-gayret]

What is "very very quickly"?

From Wikipedia:

> The reported half-life of glyphosate in soil varies from two to 197 days with a typical field half-life of 47 days being suggested.[56] Soil and climate conditions affect glyphosate's persistence in soil. The median half-life of glyphosate in water varies from a few days to 91 days.[56] At a site in Texas, half-life was as little as three days. A site in Iowa had a half-life of 141.9 days.[94] The glyphosate metabolite AMPA has been found in Swedish forest soils up to two years after a glyphosate application.

It has a lower half-life in water, and a lower half-life when it's warmer. I store my oats both dry and cold.

As for cancer, I don't know - but it certainly is giving everyone parkinsons.

[gambiting]

But you see - this is the whole problem. Every time I tried looking into it myself all I could find was that "dessicating crops with glyphosate is safe because it breaks down before it makes it into your food". If that is just simply not true or at the very least "true but only in ideal conditions that happen 5% of the time" then we're all screwed and no one seems to care.

[IAmBroom]

> it certainly is giving everyone parkinsons.

That's a personal opinion. Actual scientific research is divided, and therefore anything but "certainly".

[cassepipe]

I thought glyphosate was only a danger for people applying it (something that's been denied for a long time) Also as far as I know it goes into the weeds it kills, not in the plant you want to keep (is your food) ? Else it would also die ?

[mpclark]

I heard that farmers ‘spray off’ the crop to kill it to make harvesting easier.

[cassepipe]

Is this a dirty hack or an intended use case ?

[flotzam]

A dirty intended use case...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_desiccation#Systemic_desi...

[jimnotgym]

I have no connection to these people, except I have eaten their jumbo oats. They have been an organic farm since 1949. I doubt they use glyphosate, but you could ask them?

https://www.pimhill.com/

[jimnotgym]

Also, before you demonise glyphosate too much, it is worth realising its role in the widespread adoption of low/no till farming, which reduces fertilizer usage, reduces carbon emissions from the soil, and uses tractor power and time, therefore reducing carbon again.

Basically by killing all of the weeds with something that won't kill the crop you are about to plant, means you don't have to plough. It is a classic trade off, do you want the (hard to quantify and heavily disputed) risk of glyphosate, or higher carbon emissions

No till farming is much more difficult to do organically.

[notachatbot123]

Or you could use electric tractors. Or humans.

Or grow less crop just as food for animals to be eaten again, it is so horribly inefficient.

[jimnotgym]

Electric tractors aren't a thing. That is because a battery big enough to power a tractor pulling a plough all day is infeasibly large. Pulling a constant load is a very different thing to a car that coasts most of the time.

Humans are not strong enough to pull ploughs. You could grow food and feed it to draught animals, but as you point out, that is horribly inefficient.

Mythical Electric Tractor or not, you still have carbon being released from the ground by ploughing to control weeds. You can avoid ploughing to control weeds with glyphosate.

When a better solution for weed control comes along we can say goodbye to glyphosate too, I believe it is about as far off as Desktop Linux, as in 'next year'.

Just remember, glyphosate costs farmers money. They wouldn't use it if there was a better way