HFCS and YOU

[HiPointDem]

91. lol. you don't know much about agave. small producers are being pushed out & they use lots

of chemicals. blue agave is grown in plantations and has been devastated by disease this last decade or so.

not surprised that people who can't tolerate any criticism of the illogic of their position would wish to ban the critics from juries.

Today's blue agave crop is a genetic monoculture. While wild agave is naturally pollinated by bats - now imperiled by habitat loss, tourism, dwindling food supply and harvesting agave - and germinates from seed, the agaves also reproduce asexually, through shoots (hijuelos) from the mother plant. Today these shoots are the source of more than 95 cent of all cultivated blue agave crops - and there are an estimated 200 million blue agave plants under cultivation in 2007.

During the growing cycle, the plants will be weeded, sprayed with fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, and some of their leaves trimmed. Most growers use farm hands to meticulously control the weeds by hand. Fields are not irrigated; the plants depend entirely on the rainy season for moisture. Experiments with irrigation showed the larger plants that resulted did not produce any more agave sugars.

Like any other crop or plant, agaves are threatened by a variety of insects, fungi and other natural predators. Included among these are the larvae of several butterflies, and beetles (some, like the black weevil, attack several species).

Modern agave production is basically the same as cloning. This has led to some problems with genetic issues. Without the genetic diversity provided by natural, sexual pollination, the crops are widely vulnerable to pests or diseases that can adapt to take advantage of their similarity. Such has been the problem of the various plagues and diseases which have swept the agave fields since the 19th century (including the fusarium epidemic of the mid 1990s).

http://www.ianchadwick.com/tequila/agave_growing.htm