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Soil and noxious weed spraying

 
pollinator
Posts: 1475
Location: Zone 10a, Australia
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I didn't really know where to fit this topic. Here they regularly spray against noxious weeds. I am quite opposed to this because I do not believe that this can help to get rid of weeds. They do this since maybe twenty years and the weeds are still there. Phil Nauta writes in building soils naturally a bit about this topic and I read invasive plant medicine and some articles on the web I can't find anymore.
I have to write a letter to the council because they want to spray once again round here. According to what I read so far I would write the following points, please tell me if you think they are scientifically incorrect. They spray with Glyphposphate and Triclophyr the latter I couldn't find that much to read about.
1. Weeds grow at a place because the soil is out of balance, don't kill the messenger.
2. Weed killers kill the soil live, critters, bacteria fungi. Repeated spraying makes that the soil cannot support native vegetation anymore, only weeds can grow there.
3. The invisible part of our natural heritage is as important as the visible. (I don't really know if there are soil dwellers who only live in Australia)
4. The area is surrounded by a ditch and the weedkillers will end up in the nearby creek.
5. Weedkillers are diametrical to human health, sorry I don't want to die of cancer.
6. There are snakes and frogs which would be killed.
I don't really think that we can convince them the only thing which we could offer is to do the scrape and paint method ourselves, but it is a real big job.
What do you think?
 
Posts: 1670
Location: Fennville MI
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I think you might want to check with Geoff Lawton about how to approach your council. On a bet, his PRI probably has something already packaged that makes a good, Australian based, argument about why not to use herbicides.

 
pollinator
Posts: 3847
Location: Marmora, Ontario
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Apart from it being detrimental to all life that comes into contact with it, what they are actually doing is something of a weed breeding program. The individual plants of each species that don't die go on to produce seed. That seed will produce more spray-resistant individuals, until you find that the yearly sprayings don't kill anything they want to kill.

This is what is happening all over the spray-addicted US and Canada. That is why the sprays that used to be so effective at killing everything aren't doing anything anymore. That is why the new ones will fail, and the ones after that.

I wonder how long it will take for chemical companies to go tits up when their products stop working, people stop buying or are made bankrupt by the failure of their sprays, and the outcry and outrage would cause the gubment to stop all subsidies (I am guessing that if they aren't yet all subsidized, they will be, to "save" the failing monocrop earth rapers, I mean short-sighted, agro-chemical cancer-peddlers, I mean, what is the politically correct term for blind fools who couldn't find their assholes with both hands?)?

-CK
 
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