Blight and remedies available to gardeners

Does anybody think that there is not enough work being done to help domestic growers when farmers are allowed to put anything available onto the land ? Farmer lash god know what amount of stuff onto their fields and yet someone with a fraction of their acreage is denied the use of the product. The other thing before there is a backlash about farmers knowing what they are doing some in fact most of the farmers I have met are not the sharpest tacks in the box but the have access to these products but because the allotment holder is an amateur they are of the list of users it does not mean they don't have the intellect to use a product HSE gone mad !

Spraying is no solution and I wouldn't directly blame the EU.  What we probably need is GMO crops and a move away from monoculture farming on a massive scale.  More likely the blame falls squarely on the Agri-chem giants who lobby against the introduction of resistant crops due to the resulting fall in their profits.  As though some non-existant mutant crop developed by a fictitious mad scientist is more risk to us than the millions of gallons of complex chemical compounds sprayed on our lands in the name of profit!

I don't fancy the stronger chemical sprays, nor do I want GM crops, thanks very much.
The Savari Trust has bred and is breeding more varieties that are resistant to blight - and I think this is the better way forward tbh

The point being missed here is that farmers will apply their sprays to huge areas of crops in some indifferent weather you can understand how there is a greater need for PPE the user is subject the the chemical for far longer than a small scale user would be. The veg plot gardener is applying his treatment to individual plants perhaps a dozen tomato plants or a row of potatoes in the weather that best suits the treatment. As to PPE these are available to the small scale user and because of the infinitesimally smaller amount of product used require the user to wear gloves, face mask, eye protection and perhaps a lightweight body suit. There is a great amount of hyperbol given to the farmers case purely down to the quantity he is using not the aggressiveness of the chemical. I have witnessed farmers spraying in strong winds blowing onto a public highway do the give a damn? Do they hell

With regards to potato blight, the answer exists already in the lab. Gene editing. Trouble is twofold - patents and money plus people screaming GMO crops. Incidentally, I'm very against some of the uses of GMO like plants being resistant to brands of herbicide but if we're going to feed 11 billion people with climate change hitting, we're going to need to seriously consider how.
Anyone for a grasshopper sandwich with added soldier fly protein?

Surely, the point is that we don't have to agree with your opinion.
It's a personal choice to spray or not, or to choose to grow resistant varieties, or not.

Pardon? I was not replying to you or questioning your opinion. I was replying to the fellow who was stating what a farmer has to do. I am not asking or expecting anybody to have to agree with me. My reply was in fact to the fellow who raise what farmers have to do. There are reasons why farmers have to do things not least because of H&S but the situation of a worker in a spraying tractor on a 20 acre field is not even nearly correlated to the humble gardener in his/her garden treating half a dozen tomato plants or a row of potatoes.
This is a forum people give opinions nobody is at all obliged to agree with anybody its a debate you take what you want from it ... and who are "we" or as a "moderator" do you carry some extra powers in the debate? You are of course right you or "we" don't have to agree with anything I post... I never asked you to!

With regards to potato blight, the answer exists already in the lab. Gene editing. Trouble is twofold - patents and money plus people screaming GMO crops. Incidentally, I'm very against some of the uses of GMO like plants being resistant to brands of herbicide but if we're going to feed 11 billion people with climate change hitting, we're going to need to seriously consider how.
Anyone for a grasshopper sandwich with added soldier fly protein?

I did gene manipulation for years in my working life and there will be inroads made  in many areas using this technique the problem that has to be over come are the naysayers who baulk at something they do not understand. I am not saying that we need ignore issues but gene editing has been going on naturally for many millions of years only we call that evolution 

I did gene manipulation for years in my working life and there will be inroads made  in many areas using this technique the problem that has to be over come are the naysayers who baulk at something they do not understand. I am not saying that we need ignore issues but gene editing has been going on naturally for many millions of years only we call that evolution 

I believe Rothamsted have already taken blight resistant genes from potato plants and inserted in other varieties - I think using CRISPR
On spraying, the problem is evolution. Blight is getting worse and some of the new strains are hardly bothered by the sprays. There's a similar problem with a disease of wheat apparently - shades of John Christopher's Death of Grass

Luckily we have the internet, so you can’t uninvent stuff, just tell people you shouldn’t use it while organic farmers get a pass for some reason.

You are not wrong! Bordeaux mix is a banned substance in the UK an yet it is sanctioned for used by the Organic growers association? Really in the grand scheme of things how significant is the tiny amounts of substances people could be allowed to use on their garden compared to the tonnages of pollutants pumped into the air we breathe and the water we drink ?

I believe Rothamsted have already taken blight resistant genes from potato plants and inserted in other varieties - I think using CRISPR
On spraying, the problem is evolution. Blight is getting worse and some of the new strains are hardly bothered by the sprays. There's a similar problem with a disease of wheat apparently - shades of John Christopher's Death of Grass

Yes I think these are short DNA enzymic sequences which have the desired effect that can be inserted in the gene.
With regard to blight strains and so on, we see this throughout biology where organisms develop a resistance to the treatment. That means further research is required to develop alternatives, which is crucial in the field of antibiotics. New antibiotics are being urgently sought... the genesis of which is found in microorganisms found in the soil