A key advantage of physical pesticides over toxic pesticides is that pests are highly unlikely to evolve resistance, as this would require them to develop much larger and stronger bodies.
Goddammit, stop playing with fire, scientists!!
In the Jurassic period there were giant insects like dragonflies with 4ft wingspan. Turns out THIS is how we get to Jurassic park
Carboniferous period. Jurassic was about 100m years later.
Insect body size is dictated by oxygen levels, and since they absorb oxygen through their skin if they get too large with too little oxygen they suffocate.
There are plenty of ways we shorten a specific phrase that renders it general but still understand it as the specific version.
The word “chemicals” is rarely misunderstood when used this way. Colloquially, many/most people mean “harmful chemicals” when they say it.
Is there room for misunderstanding? Yes. Is that a problem? Not any bigger than most problems with using spoken/written language to communicate.
You don’t come off as wise when you point this inaccuracy out, and It doesn’t invalidate the whole article.
You are correct, but having spent 7 years of my life learning general chemistry, biochemistry, and organic chemistry.... I will fight with my last breath that chemicals exist.
To play devils advocate, lets say we "agree" that "no chemicals" means no harmful chemicals.... now we have given corporations the weasel defense to say anything has "no chemicals" because they will define away any measure of harm.
Pointing out the incorrectness of the article doesn't mean it has no merit, but now the critical reader must be extra cautious because the author has demonstrated very poor domain knowledge, and their conclusions are suspect.
Well “technically correct” is the best kind of correct, so I’ll agree.
You don't serve the greater good by misusing words. A new sticky substance as an alternative to chemicals? If you want to educate people through your reporting, then you try to make it accurate and choose words carefully.
It doesn't invalidate the whole article, fair enough. But it does make a "wise" person question what else they got wrong.
Everything is chemicals.
Which is why it should be considered bad practice to use the word "chemicals" as a synonym for "poison."
I've watched chunks of society freak out over everything from basic food ingredients to vaccines because they contained polysyllabic words that people decried as "chemicals".
And I've spent my whole damn life listening to people abuse the word "theory" until the the Christofascists and neo-nazis managed to become mainstream.
People abuse technical words with a purpose. Don't play apologetics for them because you believe their understanding of words is more nuanced than they are.
I don't ingest anything with ingredients I can't pronounce.
Drinks mercury
It just really feels weird to me to describe something as GLUE, but then also say that it doesn't use chemicals. One thing I take into consideration most times I'm using glue, is whether the item I'm gluing will be melted by the glue.
I get what they're trying to say, but glue is a description of a chemical compound in my mind.
The sticky drops will biodegrade but the team is investigating how long this takes.
They probably should have waited to write such a glowing article until after we find this out.
Because I'm thinking people aren't going to be all that into trying to pull apart grapes that have been glued together.
Sticky grapes that taste like orange peel.
And are covered in dead bugs.
You don't think they could, you know, wash them before selling them?
You don’t think they could, you know, wash them before selling them?
When you wash produce you reduce it's shelf life drastically, create more waste and add significant cost. Grapes in particular are very delicate.
Now that's a valid argument. I appreciate that!
If it could just be washed off, it wouldn't be especially economical as a pest killer. It would have to be reapplied every time it rained.
Water+a surfactant. It's oxidized oil emulsified in soap and water already.
"Without chemicals"
Okay, no need to take this seriously.
A new non-toxic pesticide can be valuable regardless of the journalist who wrote an article.
While I agree in principle, the people who write the headlines are very often not the writers of the article or the people who are actually working on the solutions to the problems.
This is good news but I love that our current standard is at "not nearly as disastrous side-effects"
We gotta start somewhere. Remember that food security is a big part of the issue as well. We can't just stop spraying the toxic stuff without an alternative because global food systems could collapse. I don't like that we were using the toxic stuff in the first place but it has become a cornerstone of our food production.
This is a really, really, bad idea.
The issue is that sticky traps are non-specific. Any insect the size of a trip can be trapped. Then when predators are attracted to all the free food, they are potentially stuck or damaged as well.
Thrips are also one of the easiest species to control using predatory species.
Well at least one person agrees with me.
Thrips are a pain in the ass but if you use pesticides you kill the beneficials that eat them, for example Minute Pirate Bugs (Orius insidious).
Article says larger bugs are ok
Article says larger bugs are ok
And all the smaller beneficials? A huge number are the same size or not much bigger than thrips. They will be caught by this spray.
97% of all insects are beneficials, meaning they are completely harmless or predate on the insects that eat your crops.
But sure, kill them all because bugs ewww.
Edit: Apparently this isn't so obvious to people. Ok, let me explain:
No pesticide can be precisely targeted. You will always capture or kill more insects that are beneficial than are not. In the article it mentions that the sticky spray doesn't capture bigger insects like bees. That's certainly progress over other types of physical traps, but not all insects are very big. Key beneficials like lady bugs, green lacewings, various spiders, pirate bugs, etc are very small. They will be trapped by this spray. If it traps a thrip, it will trap those bugs (and the study abstract says this - "small anthropods"). This isn't mentioned in the article but I can speak to this from personal experience farming. I've tried various options and the results are always the same - you may get rid of some thrips (and boy do I have thrips) but you also wipe out the insects that will eat the thrips and you end up in a kind of arms race. The more beneficials you kill the more pesticides you need.
Ecologist here ... you're absolutely right. We can have less efficient agriculture that doesn't require indiscriminate killing of species.
Not surprised you got downvoted here, the literal grass-touching prevalence on this site is extremely low.
We can have less efficient agriculture that doesn’t require indiscriminate killing of species.
Thank you!
One of the big lies of modern industrialized agriculture is that we have a production problem. We don't! We have a "profit problem" in the sense that industrialized food producers demand ever greater profits which means they have to continually find ways to get people to eat more "value", in volume and/or value-added processes.
In reality we have a distribution problem that is caused by industrialization and centralization. The real solution is decentralization and diversification.
🫰🏻🫰🏻Yes! We don't need to all eat the same things everywhere. I don't need avocados shipped in from Chile. Local foods is a great way to increase efficiency as well, there is less loss from transportation. But it does mean that you can't eat the same things everywhere you go. If we want to live in a sustainable way, there are big policy changes that need to happen, but those policy changes would lead to changes in our everyday lifestyle. The party's over, we see the results happening right before our eyes and being able to eat the same McDonald's cheeseburger in every country is not worth the cost of mass extinction.
"boy do I have thrips" triggered a funny memory.
When I worked in Ag. Research we had a big international field day. People from 50+ countries visiting in. I got the wonderful job of doing presentations in the field all day long. This was in late summer on a bad thrip year.
Well, one of the office goons decided that they would order all the staff polo shirts for the three day event. We were all supposed to wear the same color on the specified day.
They ordered in a light blue, yellow, and green polos. The first day was to be light blue. I "accidentally" wore the green one instead and had a few very irate office goons on my back first off that morning. Strangely enough all of the experienced outdoor staff "accidently" wore the green shirt as well.
For those that don't know, thrips are highly attracted to light blue and they bite. I laughed my ass off most of the day.
The following two days everyone wore green. Except for the one determined office goon who wore the yellow shirt. In a field full of honeybee hives...
It's literally in the post. Not even in the article, it's in the synopsis. Why didn't you read that before commenting?
A community for discussing events around the World
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/