Re: Pesticides and Why Robins don't sing these days

trapper, I know a little of the culture you are commenting on. I've moved back to my home of origin, which, amazingly, to a large extent remains as a reasonable facsimile of the same hickish smalltown rural farming community that it was when I started growing up in it 50 years ago (Shhhh, don't tell anyone ;) Upon further review and closer inspection though, I have been surprised at how accepting the momNpop dirt farmers (we still have quite a few of them, although the white-collared coroprate business farmers have made a significant and continual dent in taking control of local dairy farming) are to such laboratory inventions as Roundup-Ready-Seed-Stock. I've talked to a few local farmers about this, doing a bit of informal study of my own, and each one I've discussed this with seems thrilled & tickled that "they" have come up with a GM'd seed, such as for sweet corn, that allows them to drench the crop during the growing season with such insecticide..... to their heart's content. In the short term, it seems the primary wonder of this invention is that it wipes out, literally, offending "weeds". It's in the longer-term view that I'm worried about what all this invention wipes out. This is just one example, how it applies to other crops I have suspicions but do not know. Best I can tell, nobody, no farmers, zero, locally, still use what once was known as heirloom seed stock for sweet corn.