Zack Bush - How roundup and other chemicals in modern farming are killing us.

[newholland]

Have a listen to Dr Zack Bush at the food revolution summit 2020
(maybe somebody can sort out a link?) "it all starts in our gut"

Microbiome death, gluten and mental health - He does a very well explained 45 min interview of how modern intensive arable farming's use of round up and other sprays are killing our gut microbes, making us gluten intolerant and causing mental health illness.

@Clive …. This could be a very interesting soundtrack to include in your part 2 "school at home bread making lesson using organic wheat" . (I hope the organic direct drilling ideas find a way forwards)

 

[newholland]

Tune in for the 2024 Food Revolution Summit Docuseries

Embark on a journey to a healthier you with the 2024 Food Revolution Summit Docuseries. Join 45 top food experts in this 8-part series. Sign up for free now!

www.foodrevolutionsummit.org

 

[jack6480]

Brilliant is it, I love his videos

 

[newholland]

Brilliant is it, I love his videos

It was great how he linked soil destruction, chemicals and declining human health. Farming needs to change rapidly or in 70 years time the whole world will be in his palliative care ward with no escape.

 

[SilliamWhale]

I see he is selling his gut health potions for $30 a month which "supports the integrity of gut health lining even against glyphosate"...


Hmm

 

[PSQ]

A note to the forum mods and the OP, do we really need to give these tin foil hat wearing pseudo scientific nut jobs a platform and oxygen on a farming forum?

Dr Chad Hayes wrote up his visit to the "Get your life back NOW" Integrative Medicine conference, hosted by some major league Quacks of the highest order: http://www.chadhayesmd.com/integrative/
It's an interesting read, but it's all snake oil and doctors selling gadgets to improve your 'vibrations'. Below is the schlep for Zach Bush. If you dont want to read it all, skip to the last paragraph.

"In addition to poorly executed science, there were a lot of “facts” tossed out at the conference that left me wondering if the speakers were being intentionally dishonest, or if they were just really, really wrong. Chief among these offenders was Zach Bush, MD, who runs the M Clinic and “Intrinsic Health” center in Charlottesville, VA and sells the RESTORE line of supplements.

Bush, who seems to have some difficulty understanding basic concepts of genetics and mathematics, informed the audience that “genetically speaking, humans are pathetically simple.” His rationale for this was that humans have 20,000 genes, while fungi have 2 trillion. I’ll admit my initial ignorance; although 2 trillion seemed high, I didn’t really know how many genes fungi have. But it wasn’t hard to look up. Gene sequencing reveals that fungal genomes are similar in size to our own, at around 10,000-25,000 genes. But what are eight orders of magnitude among friends? Actual numbers aside, Bush further argued that “if microorganisms were the enemy, we’d be dead.” Which of course, many of our species are, having been unable to overcome infections from a dazzling array of microorganisms.

He then told us how amazing it is that the DNA repair enzyme “travels near the speed of light.” Unfortunately, this is even less true. DNA polymerases responsible for DNA repair travel along DNA strands at approximately 10-20 nucleotides per second, each of which is approximately 0.6 nanometers in length. Being as generous as I can, that comes out to 12 nanometers/second. And in that same second, a photon of light travels 300 million meters, or 25,000,000,000,000,000 times farther than the DNA repair enzyme.

Further revealing his ignorance about genetics, Bush informed us that while “scientists call 99% of DNA ‘junk,’” that simply can’t be correct because “there’s no waste in nature.” Bush asserts that what geneticists refer to as “junk DNA” actually codes for microRNA, small strands of RNA that regulate how our genes are expressed. While microRNA does actually exist, and the roles it plays are fascinating, it makes up a relatively small percentage of our genetic code, about 1-5%.

But then, Bush ruined what could have been an interesting talk when he said that microRNA can be transmitted by breathing. He claimed that you can literally go to the gym, do nothing except breathe in the microRNA that others exhale, and benefit because your cells think they worked out. And, in case that wasn’t enough of a stretch, he described how consuming microRNA from “bored” corn grown in a field with “tens of thousands of corn plants” makes us afraid of diversity and directly contributes to racism and mass shootings."

 

[newholland]

@PSQ Thankyou for your input and food for thought - I value your opinion.

This is the holistic thread area of TFF and therefore I would appreciate the content not to be moderated by the conventional arable department. I don't mean to attack conventional farming, but you must accept that there is a large percentage of very alert organic, holistic and biodynamic farmers on TFF who are very passionate about what they do and who would perhaps agree with Zack Bush or at least may enjoy listening to his view point.

If you wish to start your own thread declining Zack Bush's information in further depth, then that's great.

 

[som farmer]

there is a place for all points of view, as we are a democratic country, and there are points of interest in all points of views, what I don't like, is the maniacal promotion of alternative opinions. Being a fanatic, and trying to force their view onto others, simply means they are largely ignored, which is a pity, because there are usually some valid points, and these are missed.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

It was great how he linked soil destruction, chemicals and declining human health. Farming needs to change rapidly or in 70 years time the whole world will be in his palliative care ward with no escape.

As I tried to promote on an outdoor lambing thread, WE need to redesign our systems for health, not production from inputs.

That's our way out of all of this - make better decisions with more emphasis on whole-system-health, rather than trying to beat last year's output all the time.
A lot of stuff that's routinely done is mere "bandaid" because of the sheer fact that it kills parts of vital pathways and this stops regeneration - and what is cancer when it's not a sign of the zodiac?
A problem with regeneration.

 

[som farmer]

As I tried to promote on an outdoor lambing thread, WE need to redesign systems for health, not production from inputs.

That's our way out of all of this - make better decisions with more emphasis on whole-system-health, rather than trying to beat last year's output all the time.
A lot of stuff that's routinely done is mere "bandaid" because of the sheer fact that it kills parts of vital pathways and this stops regeneration - and what is cancer when it's not a sign of the zodiac?
A problem with regeneration.

as we try to listen to your 'idea' to leave more residual after grazing, cow were second time over a reseed yesterday, we estimated 3 feeds, they stripped the lot down to the soil in 2, result, took ages to get them in, they were to full to move.
but I think longer residues are right, its not always things go as planned !

 

[PSQ]

@PSQ Thankyou for your input and food for thought - I value your opinion.

This is the holistic thread area of TFF and therefore I would appreciate the content not to be moderated by the conventional arable department. I don't mean to attack conventional farming, but you must accept that there is a large percentage of very alert organic, holistic and biodynamic farmers on TFF who are very passionate about what they do and who would perhaps agree with Zack Bush or at least may enjoy listening to his view point.

If you wish to start your own thread declining Zack Bush's information in further depth, then that's great.

No, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

While we live in a liberal ‘free’ society where free speech is rightly cherished, we also have a responsibility to check the veracity of what we say and repeat. You have completely failed to look into the background of this complete and utter charlatan, and are repeating his unsubstantiated smears against farming verbatim. If your best effort to promote “organic, hollistic and biodynamic” farming is to swallow this mans claims that his $70 bottles of lignite pills (coal dust) can cure every modern ill, then you are doing ‘alternative farming’ a great disservice. His claims aren’t even ‘muck and magic’, they are fictitious mumbo jumbo, designed to make the scientifically illiterate part with their money.

 

[SilliamWhale]

@PSQ Thankyou for your input and food for thought - I value your opinion.

This is the holistic thread area of TFF and therefore I would appreciate the content not to be moderated by the conventional arable department. I don't mean to attack conventional farming, but you must accept that there is a large percentage of very alert organic, holistic and biodynamic farmers on TFF who are very passionate about what they do and who would perhaps agree with Zack Bush or at least may enjoy listening to his view point.

If you wish to start your own thread declining Zack Bush's information in further depth, then that's great.

I'm in to Holistic farming etc but this guy is singling out one type of thing and pinning too much on it without evidence. Mental health problems could be as much attributable to facebook than glyphosate.

 

[Guleesh]

No, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

While we live in a liberal ‘free’ society where free speech is rightly cherished, we also have a responsibility to check the veracity of what we say and repeat. You have completely failed to look into the background of this complete and utter charlatan, and are repeating his unsubstantiated smears against farming verbatim. If your best effort to promote “organic, hollistic and biodynamic” farming is to swallow this mans claims that his $70 bottles of lignite pills (coal dust) can cure every modern ill, then you are doing ‘alternative farming’ a great disservice. His claims aren’t even ‘muck and magic’, they are fictitious mumbo jumbo, designed to make the scientifically illiterate part with their money.

I completely agree with your view on this and you're right to call it out for what it is, but you really have to allow the discussion, nobody ought to be ashamed of themselves for inviting the discussion.

My thoughts are that HM, regenerative, or 'alternative farming' farmers are just as likely to be preyed on as 'conventional' farmers by clever salespeople (whom I would rather bluntly describe as 'parasites' to the industry)

The fact i want to get across is that somebody buying into one idea is no worse than somebody from the other end of the spectrum of ideology buying into the other. I think only an idiot buys into the idea that expensive lotions and potions will fix everything. There's many examples of this from the 'tin foil hat' wearing fringes but also a lot of examples from what are considered more mainstream sources.

Just look at all the Herbicides, animal vaccines, medicines and supplements that really are contributing very little, nothing or turned out to be harmful to food production industries in the long term.

Remember that whilst most farmers thoughts are preoccupied with their own farm business, there's a huge amount of people who dedicate their daily efforts working on how to get money off those farmers. Are new agri chemicals and medicines designed primarily to help agriculture? or to syphon wealth from it? Just because the marketing is slicker it doesn't make the product any better in my estimation.

For a long time now it's been all about the latest chemicals or medicines that will save farms from financial doom by eliminating all the diseases or parasites that have always naturally existed, but now that a lot of these miracle cures are failing us some are turning away from them and turning to alternatives - guess what? there's going to be a whole new wave of 'industry parasites' ready to cash in.

Unfortunately with regenerative agriculture gaining in global popularity at the moment it's going to receive more than its fair share of 'entrepreneurs' desperately trying to sell products and ideology to cash in on the movement. But they are not really any different to the big pharmaceutical companies that have sold their various wares to the agricultural market for many decades.

 

[PSQ]

@Guleesh I agree, there are charlatans trying to lift the leg of everyone in agriculture and in every other industry.
Which is why most business owners and decision makers develop a fairly sharp ‘bullsh1t detector’. To do that we look for the empirical evidence that a product or process does what is claimed, and to do that we require impartial peer reviewed data. A scientific paper perhaps, or university backed trials.
Dr Zach Bush has been asked to provide the peer reviewed research data that he claims to have, but has repeatedly failed to disclose it. Why might that be? Hmmm...

As for @Newholland implying that this forum should be a ‘safe space’ for hollistic practioners to malign every other type of agriculture that doesn’t conform to his / her / ‘their’ dogma: not going to happen.

Read the frankly absurd and insulting opening post again, and ask yourself why 95% of the forum wouldn’t feel that it is a direct unsubstantiated attack on their livelihood by someone with a (half baked) agenda. The Soil Association used to promote their brand with this kind of sh!t right up to death of Peter Melchett (or Peter Mond, 4th Baron Melchett to give him his full title). It’s unbecoming to attack your competitors to promote your agenda. Trying to promote a carpet bagger on the anti glyphosate bandwagon, we need to question the integrity of everyone involved.

 

[som farmer]

a favorite point I like to make, is, at agri shows, looking at all the nice shiny paint, superdoopa gadgets, and all the salesmen, to tell the younger generation, look, ask, and remember, all of what you can see displayed, is the simple point, they are all living off us, and what we make.

 

[Guleesh]

@Guleesh I agree, there are charlatans trying to lift the leg of everyone in agriculture and in every other industry.
Which is why most business owners and decision makers develop a fairly sharp ‘bullsh1t detector’. To do that we look for the empirical evidence that a product or process does what is claimed, and to do that we require impartial peer reviewed data. A scientific paper perhaps, or university backed trials.
Dr Zach Bush has been asked to provide the peer reviewed research data that he claims to have, but has repeatedly failed to disclose it. Why might that be? Hmmm...

As for @Newholland implying that this forum should be a ‘safe space’ for hollistic practioners to malign every other type of agriculture that doesn’t conform to his / her / ‘their’ dogma: not going to happen.

Read the frankly absurd and insulting opening post again, and ask yourself why 95% of the forum wouldn’t feel that it is a direct unsubstantiated attack on their livelihood by someone with a (half baked) agenda. The Soil Association used to promote their brand with this kind of sh!t right up to death of Peter Melchett (or Peter Mond, 4th Baron Melchett to give him his full title). It’s unbecoming to attack your competitors to promote your agenda. Trying to promote a carpet bagger on the anti glyphosate bandwagon, we need to question the integrity of everyone involved.

Maybe 95% would feel it a direct unsubstantiated attack on their livelihood, maybe not though, but even if that's true you have to allow the discussion, to which you've made an excellent contribution to by pointing out a few truths.

I don't think the OP was intended to insult or attack anyone, you're obviously quite passionate about your viewpoint on this, but you can't win debates by shutting them down or removing platforms. You do the right thing by simply debating it and adding your voice of reason.

 

[newholland]

Maybe 95% would feel it a direct unsubstantiated attack on their livelihood, maybe not though, but even if that's true you have to allow the discussion, to which you've made an excellent contribution to by pointing out a few truths.

I don't think the OP was intended to insult or attack anyone, you're obviously quite passionate about your viewpoint on this, but you can't win debates by shutting them down or removing platforms. You do the right thing by simply debating it and adding your voice of reason.

@PSQ the above reply by @Guleesh is a very accurate conclusion. I listened to the ZB interview at the food revolution summit 2020. What I heard in that one particular 50min interview caught my attention as a farmer and that's why I thought it would be helpful to post the link regarding that individual interview as a thread on TFF. I am not here to promote ZB in any way and I have no interest in his products. Thankyou for drawing attention to what he offers for sale and opinions of his work integrity which are on the internet. I have no wish to attack any area of British farming and am not asking you to comply with ZB. If you found my opening post insulting or absurd, then I offer my genuine apologies - it was not designed to be an attack, however I realise that everybody reads things in different ways. I will be more careful in the future, point noted.

I think I would reflect back to you that attempting to demand somebody to feel ashamed for starting a thread is a fairly strong feeling to try and request them to experience. TFF is a platform for debate and information sharing. We would get bored with out a challenge!

 

[Treg]

Ain't farming Brilliant!

So many ways to do it & great to have people passionate about the way they farm.

The older I get the more I find that I can't explain .
I think TFF is a great way of having open discussions and learning things that you may not necessarily come across in your local group of friends or even in Agricultural magazines & the fact you can question someone else's opinion is a valuable asset.
I like the idea of biodynamics, alot of it sounds absolute nuts but I realise in my life that actually that's usually what works!

 

[newholland]

@Treg , it was a biodynamic dairy farmer who drew my attention to the interview mention above. There is a lot of fascinating stuff involved with biodynamics and it has opened my eyes whilst slowly learning about the logical thinking behind all their preparations which they apply. Some of the big biodynamic farms out in the States were spraying their preps over hundreds of acres and employed very highly qualified people to just focus on making sure all the compost and prep routines were done properly.

I did smile because the biodynamic farmer was concerned for all the conventional farmers - felt they were getting done over by snake oil sales people - as in the multi million pound spray and fertiliser companies. Which made me think of this thread!..... If @som farmer uses fert and spray, maybe they can assess the shiny paint level of chemical company's reps ……. do those companies need farmers or does farming need them?. It all interesting food for thought.

 

[farmerm]

As I tried to promote on an outdoor lambing thread, WE need to redesign our systems for health, not production from inputs.

That's our way out of all of this - make better decisions with more emphasis on whole-system-health, rather than trying to beat last year's output all the time.
A lot of stuff that's routinely done is mere "bandaid" because of the sheer fact that it kills parts of vital pathways and this stops regeneration - and what is cancer when it's not a sign of the zodiac?
A problem with regeneration.

Would redesigning out systems for health not production mean we have to start firstly by "redesigning" the size of the global population that needs to be fed and secondly by removing some of the freedom of choice for the population. Humans are biologically primed to make bad food choices when price, convenience, sugar and salt are involved.