From my contact that you should read. From my own research its exactly the same in lincolnshire!
Diet anyone? M.
What they did at the weekend was cut the top off the dead potato
plants which left all the poisoned vegetation lying on top of the soil
to rot down. (Note it was 2 weeks after spraying!) I have lived here
since 2007 and this is the first time that I've seen them put weedkiller
(glyphosate) on the potato crops just before harvest, they normally
just let them die back. There is a terrible smell when you walk by the
field - a rotten smell. To add to that, the potato crops are sprayed
every 10 days after they pop their weary heads up - goodness knows with
what. We live in an area susceptible to blight but we don't do anything
to our potatoes and the plants are all beautifully healthy because we
grow in wood chip which protects the plants. When they prepared that
field for planting potatoes, it took 5 large tractors and various other
machinery to get it to a point where they could put the seed potatoes
in. The soil is so depleted here it smells disgusting and they have to
either plough in tons of cow muck (they ran out this year) or commercial
fertilisers. Our potato plants were up several weeks before this field
showed any sign of life and we don't use any chemicals at all.
Interestingly, whilst they were preparing this field there was a
noticeable absence of any wildlife - no birds following the ploughs.
This suggests to me that the soil is dead. We have a local farmer here
who has pots of money so rents his land out to other farmers. This year
they planted acres of rapeseed - another crop repeatedly sprayed
throughout summer. After harvest the soil was ploughed, left for a
couple of weeks by which time weeds were growing, Then the guy with the
giant poison spreader arrived and sprayed acres of land to death - the
overspray went everywhere. I asked this farmer what they were spraying
and he casually said Roundup. He moans his wife has been ill for a few
years now, he also has young children yet is happy for this stuff to be
sprayed all around his very large, posh house. Laughably he buys an
organic veg box once a week! These guys are I swear being paid huge EU
subsidies and that's why they turn a blind eye to this madness. By the
way, they are spraying grain crops too before harvest because it weakens
the plants and makes it easier for the combines to process the crop.
This is utter idiocracy but it will slowly kill us. When you live in an
agricultural area, it really opens your eyes to what is going on in the
food chain. They spend more time cutting hedges, grass verges and making
those giant bales of hay (that is then eaten by cattle) around here
than growing food crops. The farmer at the back of me lost his son in
his very early 20's to cancer (brain tumour), his wife in her 40's to
breast cancer and has just buried his 47 year old daughter. They aren't
making the link.........