Vegan Society's view on beekeepers

[Geoff]

No I haven't been reading too much vegan propoganda. Something that is extreme in its views tends to put me off. I tend to listen to my wife who is a health visitor and who is quite well qualified on infant nutrition and also on the views of a nutritionist.
I think it is easier to get a balanced diet if you are vegetarian rather than a vegan, but you dont need to eat meat. Sometimes we have a meatless meal and now I dont miss it when we have such a meal.
I know that the Holstein is pretty rubbish for meat production but can they use the bull calves for veal? Recently on TV they have featured this pink veal where the calves are not kept in crates but kept in barns and slaughtered at about 6 months. I notice that one of our local farms is offering home produced rosiate veal. Also quite a few farmers are not using Holsteins. One is using friesians and another a French dairy breed.
How do they produce sexed semen?
My home area is going over to meat production. It used to be about the best part of the UK for dairy but there is just no money in it. Those farmers who are surviving are tending to go to beef. The wildlife depends on the livestock.

 

[BKF Admin]

Was that the programe with the female farmer who was trying to bring on veil calves while giving them a good life ?

ok 6 months is not long,but it's better than 6 minutes.

 

[Geoff]

Yep thats the one. They were also trying to see if the general public found it morally acceptable. And they did. Rather than being slaughtered at birth the animals had the freedon to run about, not outside and were slaughtered at an age that is comparable with many other animals.

 

[oliver90owner]

Did you not read any of my post?

Very sorry. We had Fresians, mostly.

That's where it came from. A long time before before 3 legged stools went out of fashion.

RAB

 

[gavin]

To get back on topic ...

http://www.peponiexports.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=19

 

[tonybloke]

porterswoods,

it makes the society look as if it is full of no brainers not knowing the true facts of agriculture. Wait maybe i've hit on something there.

Sure does.

Grass and wheat (a grass) are wind poillinated. That is why the pollen is so very much smaller than most normal flower pollen. That is why you suffer from hay fever - the pollen is being blown up your nose.

OSR, (Rape or Canola) is, likewise, mainly wind pollinated or self pollinated - estimates are about 90%.

The bees were working the grass pollen and working the wheat when i visited his apairy this year.

If you say so.

Wheat has to be pollinated by insects, just like rape,

Are you implying a close connection between wheat and rape? They belong to two entirely different families.

I really think you should go to google and search for bee pollination or wind pollination. Or try Wiki. There are many good articles on the net, I am sure.

But please don't continue to assert that bees are a necessity for pollination of grasses, wheat and potatoes (the latter a vegetative organ of perennation which is actually a stem tuber).

RAB

A local farmer (Suffolk/Norfolk border) estimates a 16% increase in OSR yield if bees are taken to his field.
Potatos are BRED by cross pollination of the flowers, how do you think new varieties are created? (not by vegetative reproduction)

 

[Frisbee]

Very sorry.

Apology accepted

We had Fresians, mostly.
That's where it came from. A long time before before 3 legged stools went out of fashion.

Fresians, nice cows. I wonder if there eventually won't be more go back to them. Course the Fresian and Holstein are the same cow, but Holsteins were exported to Canada in the 1900's and wrongly named Holsteins as they thought that is where they had come from, then they were improved to the point where they were a completely different breed, standing a good 6" higher and quite different in body shape.

How do they produce sexed semen?

Alas I don't know that.........it's been around for several years, but has had it's problems, mostly working better on maiden heifers than cows for one and only available from a limited amount of bulls, but that has improved and is now being used on cows.

The trouble with veal is it has never been widely eaten (approved of) in this country so it will struggle to get more than a minor following.

Frisbee

 

[Finman]

A
Potatos are BRED by cross pollination of the flowers, how do you think new varieties are created? (not by vegetative reproduction)

It is sure that potatatoe varietes has been bred with hand pollination.

In South America, where potatoe has been developed, there were no honeybees in those days.

So we can say that honeybee has nothing to do with potatoe breeding.

"The tough pre-Columbian farmers first discovered and cultivated the potato some 7,000 years ago. They were impressed by its ruggedness, storage quality and its nutritional value. Western man did not come in contact with the potato until as late as 1537 when the Conquistadors tramped through Peru. And it was even later, about 1570, that the first potato made its way across the Atlantic to make a start on the continent of Europe. "


In eastern Finland we started to use potatoes 100 years ago. Before that we burned forest to get farm land.
When wood industry raised, the forest burning was forbidden and "Economic Socienty" teached to farmes, how to cultivate potatoe.
We ate turnips before potato and its nutrition value is 30% that of potato.

The most popular food in eastern Finland was bread and it was dipped to a big meat stock bowl.

Cows milked only in summer. Good hay was needed to horse because it make work.
Milk soured at once and only butter was taken and sold. Butter is made from sour cream.

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Not vegans in that painting...

 

[Finman]

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Dead vegans.......

The Great Famine was a period of starvation, disease and mass emigration between 1845 and 1852[2] during which the population of Ireland was reduced by 20 to 25 percent..

Approximately one million of the population died and a million more emigrated from Ireland's shores.[4] The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as late blight.[5]

Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland—where a third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food—was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.[6][7]

 

[Finman]

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Starvations years in Finland


We were under Russia in those days and Russia has food but it was impossible to deliver to folks.

Great famine years were 1866–1868. Eight percent of population starved to death.

We have lakes and fish but we did not know how to get fish under from ice cover. During second world war Russian war prisoners teached how to fish in winter.

************

VEGAN DOES NOT KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY. THEY ARE WELL DOING PERSONS AND SELCET WHAT THEY WANT.

My father went to timberwork at the age of 12 and he needed good food to earn money to his family. My father hated whole his life vegetables. It was not meant to adult man. He liked sugar, fat, butter and pork. . He died 4 years ago.

30 years ago the biggest dead reason in work age peoples was heart and blood vessel diseases for fatty food and too much salt in eastern part of Finlad. Now it is alcohol.

.

 

[oliver90owner]

Potatos are BRED by cross pollination of the flowers, how do you think new varieties are created?

Old news and irrelevant, Potato breeding does not take place in a field these days. I know that and so do most poeple. The public don't eat these 'new breeds' until they have been vegetatively multiplied for vegetative crop production. One cross pollinated plant is the origin of all the crop producing, vegetative clones of that one variety? Really useful for a colony of bees to work on!

So are apples (breeding), most apple trees being a combination of a root stock, for growth control, and a grafted top from the species required. Some (most, all?) have to be pollinated by crosssing as different varieties have to be planted nearby (or even dual or triple grafts) for maximum crop, or even a crop! Such is agriculture. Seeds from every apple on one tree would probably give rise to different new varieties, the large majority of which would not be acceptable as a cropping variety.

We should all know that 'F1' hybrids do not breed true in later generations. Mendel sorted it out with his peas (amongst others, of course) a long time ago. Keeps the seed producers busy but the bees at large do little to help the process (although they might get some forage from them) as the following crop yields would be considerably lowered. Such is agriculture!

Not a lot of long term symbiotic exchange (with bees) for GE crops that are rendered sterile so the genes cannot(?) escape into the natural flora.

Good job all this unnatural methodology to grow crops by human manipulation doesn' put off vegans from eating them.

estimates a 16% increase in OSR yield if bees are taken to his field.

I never said bees do not pollinate OSR. I know they do. I said OSR pollination is mainly wind or self polinated. The crop would exist if insects were absent.

'Estimates' is a funny word used by many when the results are just guessed. They often cannot be checked scientifically. It would depend, surely, on the size of the fields, other insect populations already pollinating, how many bees (a handfull or 20 colonies per hectare)? Yes, it will make a more noticeable difference if the insect fauna in the area has already been decimated by that same farmer (pesticides, herbicides, removal of hedgerows being just three possibilities). All operations in agriculture are compromises to achieve the highest return. Agriculture is a business, not a bee charity.

There is well proven data showing increased yields within, I think, 1/2km or maybe 1km from the forest edge for coffee production, demonstrating the power of, and need for insects for pollination.

1 out of 4 is still not a very good score for someone purporting to know about agriculture.

RAB

 

[Finman]

Rab is right.

In my country most of rape fields are without beehives, and farmes get same yield. And if you put 10 beehives on 20 hectares, most of field is not visited by bees. They go to nearest flowers. There are plenty of insects, which visit in rape like flyes, wasp, flowerflyes, bumbblebees.

In Finland typical spring rape yield is 1500-1700 kg/ha. Uk has double yield with same cost.
In UK yield has been 2000 - 2008 tonnes 2.9 - 2.6 - 3.4 - 3.3 - 2.9 - 3.2 - 3.3 - 3.2 - 3.3

One guy let blow the field and put seed in it. But he does not use fertilizer or insectisides. So he got 800 kg yield/ 6 hectares. He just takes the EU money.

 

[Frederick]

Had fight with a vegan once, over leather shoes, not talking in to acount that leather is biodegradeable where as his "green hippy crap" synthetic shoes where from petro based compounds, no, he could'nt see that shoes that will rot being better than his, as his didn't involve MURDER!!!!..... in the short term I said... vegans don't see the bigger picture, and end up being hypocritical, ethicaly bankrupt winers.

How many vegans does it take to change a lightbulb?
-Two, one to change it and one to check for animal ingredients.

 

[Finman]

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To learn

Book: The Earth Care Manual: A Permaculture Handbook for Britain and Other Temperate Countries

2) Plants for a Future: Edible and Useful Plants for a Healthier World

 

[PaleoPerson]

Potatos are BRED by cross pollination of the flowers, how do you think new varieties are created?

I never said bees do not pollinate OSR. I know they do. I said OSR pollination is mainly wind or self polinated. The crop would exist if insects were absent.

RAB

It is my understanding that OSR is an Entomophilous species (pollen disribution by insects), this, by design has a number of attributes that make the plant attractive to insects such as Flowers that are brightly coloured, scented and provides nectar. Anemophilous species such as most grasses and conifers plus others, are designed for wind pollination, and as a generalisation have a different design for the distribution and capture of pollen and is not as attractive to insects.

I think that the reason OSR can successfully wind pollinate is more an accident than by design. The volume of pollen made by the plant plus the high densities that they are sown compared to wild varieties means that 'accidental' pollination may occur. But I would suggest that the bulk of the plants are pollinated by insects other than honey bees, I noticed this year that the centre of a field of OSR held its flowers slightly longer than the edges. I thought that this was caused by the insects venturing into the field (as most single crop fields are barren as permanant habitats) visited the nearest flowers first. If wind pollination was the primary method, then this may not have occured.

 

[Finman]

I think... that the reason OSR can successfully wind pollinate .

It is not wind. It is self pollinated. There is a huge number of cultivated plants which is SELF pollinated.

Rape pollen has 7 % oil.

Domestication of plants has produced much self-pollination in plants and more are coming. It is advantage that you get crop without cross pollination or under mercy of weather.

 

[PaleoPerson]

It is not wind. It is self pollinated. There is a huge number of cultivated plants which is SELF pollinated.

Rape pollen has 7 % oil.

Domestication of plants has produced much self-pollination in plants and more are coming. It is advantage that you get crop without cross pollination or under mercy of weather.

Noted

 

[oliver90owner]

Well now, the assumed short range cross pollination of OSR crops in the recent past years yielded results which indicated that the pollen could be carried on the wind (and cross pollinate non-GE crops up to about, or perhaps in excess of, 3 miles. One reason why Government was forced, at one stage, to back down on GE OSR experimental cropping.

Not a pollen expert by any means, so perhaps someone might offer the relevant size ranges, weights, surface type, etc which may influence the wind transport of pollen both for wind and insect pollinated flowers and compare OSR sizes?

Not really bothered. Still only one out of four is a fail mark.

RAB

 

[Finman]

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The biggest problem is that fields are full of Cruciferae weeds. The danger is that the antiRoundUp gene goes into wild weeds and then farming is in trouble.

It is known that viruses can transmit DNA chains to another inviduals.

Round Up is very important in modern farming. It has been used 30 years.

 

[DrNick]

How do they produce sexed semen?

They put a maze between the egg and the sperm, the sperm that get lost and don't ask for directions are male and so are discarded