Organic Farming Beats No-Till?

[debnchas]

[Charlie]

Good. Thanks, friends.

Hey.......wait a minute.......this is a USDA website? ;-)

Charlie.....waiting for the naysayers to arrive.

[Ann]

"debnchas" expounded:

And how many hundreds of thousands were spent to prove the obvious? Oh, that's right, it's only obvious to us 'armchair organic gardeners'. Ya.

[Charlie]

Ann, you sound rather.....militant! ;-)

This shows we "armchair organics" *are* having an impact!

keep on Charlie

[Steve]

I think I like that about her. As with familiarity, complacency breeds contempt.

From both sides.

[Steve]

this as evidence that they occasionally provide brilliant flashes of the obvious.

[George.com]

the approach used by people such as Masanobu Fukuoka priveliges both organic and no till techniques. A no till approach can be very organic, organic farming can be absolutely no till. He always claimed his yeilds matched that of any contemporary farm in Japan. No till & organic are not necessarily opposing regimes.

rob

[George.com]

yes, I realise you were not necessarily talking about opposing paradigms. If anything it was probably the original source article that differentiated between organic & no-till, with the latter denoted as chemical spray & synthetic fertiliser dependant. Fukuoka absolutely practised organic based no-till. In his view the ultimate way to grow, 'natural farming' or 'do nothing' farming.

The matter of crop selection is also interested, and makes some sense as to how our forebears selectively bred crops. Perennials are still chosen by backyard gardeners though. Asparagus for example.

rob

[Charlie]

Hmmmmm......I like that, Steve.

[George.com]

indeed, just thought I could significantly enrich the discussion by pointing out the bleedin obvious. In addition I wanted to announce to everyone that I have read Fukuokas work, being the know all that I am. Of a more serious note mind, those who haven't read his stuff may be interested & can have a look at

yahoo group has a downloadable copy of his book One Straw Revolution which is worth a read. There is also some stuff by Jared Diamond that looks worthwhile. Diamond wrote "Collapse-How societeies choose to succeed or fail". I read that earlier this year & found it a good read.

rob

[George.com]

the one straw revolution will only take a few evenings read, it is quite a simple book.

[Charlie]

Want to test this out? Sounds on the up and up.

[Charlie]

It's just that I'm always hesitant to enter any of my information on any line, paper or electron.

It actually looks like a good deal. They claim that they will remove any publication that proves to be in or back in print.

Take a chance, man. I wanna see if it works for you. If you show back up with a bandage on your head, I'll know it wasn't ok!

Hell, I wasn't about to give yoohoo me information.

g'luck Charlie