Genetically Engineered Sugar Beets Destroyed in Southern Oregon
June 27th, 2013Via: Oregon Live:
Federal investigators are asking the public to help solve middle-of-the-night crimes that left ruined fields of genetically engineered sugar beets in rural Jackson County.
The crop destruction took place over the course of two separate nights in early June, when an unknown individual or group destroyed about 6,500 sugar beet plants genetically engineered to stand up to the herbicide Roundup on a pair of privately-owned plots of land leased and managed by Syngenta.
The first act of what the FBI considers “economic sabotage and a violation of federal law involving damage to commercial agricultural enterprises,” took place during the night of June 8, when about 1,000 sugar beet plants on one property were destroyed. Three nights later, the destruction continued on another property, where another 5,500 plants were ruined.
“It doesn’t look like a vehicle was used. It looks like people entered the field and destroyed the plants by hand,” said Paul Minehart, head of corporate communications in North America for Syngenta, a global agriculture corporation based in Basel, Switzerland.
I don’t know why we must assume this a human who destroyed these sugar beets. As any food grower knows there are all kind of varmints out there ready to eat the foods and seeds we sow. That the FBI is looking into this is such a comedy. Oh, yes, I went to my Aunt’s house today to set her animal trap and I had some netting to put over her garden until I can build her a fence. I never considered calling the FBI for them to investigate who ate the lettuce. My DUMB.
I just HAD to the cost calculation on 6500 beet plants. I did a search on buying roundup ready sugar beets and that was a no go. Its a mystery how much these seeds actually cost.
On Amazon, I found that sugar beet seed packets of 500 count cost $2.75. So I figured if you had 6500 plants you had to have planted 13 packets of 500 hundred seeds. For the seeds alone you’d have spent $2.75 X 13 = $35.75 for your sugar beet seed. I don’t have the time to spend searching for what Roundup Ready sugar beet seed costs (from the search results that information may be classified), but um, lets add $2.00 to the cost of the seed. You therefore now have a cost of $4.75 x 13 = $61.75 as seed cost to plant 6,500 sugar beets.
Labor costs are also most likely classified information because you don’t want your competitors to know how much your labor costs are (actually that is considered Business Sensitive Information on government grant) but lets say you pay your workers, Hmm… $13 an hour (in their dreeams) under the table (thats a high estimate).If you divide 6500 seeds by 60 minutes (giving you one minute per seed for rowing, howing, whatever to get the soil ready) that equals 108 hours to plant times .
Cost for seed = 61.75
Cost to plant = 108 x 13 = 1,404
Okay so we assume the lowest cost estimate ever imaginablt to plant 6,500 sugar beet plants. My math say it cost $61.75+ 1,404 = $1,465.75. Of course I don’t figure in all of those things like cost of depreciation on equipment, etc. and whatever!
So go figure out how much an FBI agent costs per hour? What do you think? I’d say a fulled loaded before all tax deductions an FBI agents pay is about $50.62 per hour.
The total cost of planting the beet crop was $1,457. If the agent more than 28 hours on this case he should shoot me for spending so much time figuring out what a waste it is to cry about 6500 beet plants. Who counts 6,500 what a bizarro situation. Correct me please if my assumptions in the math are incorrect. And thank you. OMM