sherwindu expounded:
Because it costs more to produce. Which is why you chemical heads use the chemicals, to avoid the work it takes to grow high-quality, organic, not poisonous in the least food. Sorry, sherwindu, but people are becoming more educated about how their food is grown. It's up to you food producers to figure out how to do it without poisoning us. The organic growers have figured it out, and I have no problem paying them for their labors.
Sherwin, Sherwin, Sherwin, don't be so timid. OK, OK, forget the metaphysical observation and just take a run at the first seven lines.
- Billy Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)
First of all, using language like 'chemical head' shows your stupidity and adolescence, although I think your age is well beyond that. Your whole premise is that organic methods can take over from chemical ones and do an adequate job. If they tried that today, millions of people would starve around the world. I don't think horse manure and other organic fertilizers cost any more than chemical ones. Your logic is flawed and the organic farmers just love the way you shop. The organic farmers are just now making some headway in their efforts, but they have a ways to go. I know that with apples, they are restricted to mostly average tasting varieties. They still have not come up with an apple that resists fungus and disease and yet tastes great. As for organic insect protection of apples, it's marginal, at best.
Sherw> sherwindu expounded:
Dumber than dirt. I'll try to expand on that tomorrow. Actually, that was an insult to dirt. Dirt's OK. I like dirt. But find out what Shirwin ate because he is really dumb.
- Billy Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)
Billy Rose expounded:
He's never going to give up the chemicals, and he rants on and on at anyone who suggests things can be grown without them. Makes me think he's a sill for Monsanto. Maybe he's the reincarnation of John Riley from Oz
sherwindu expounded:
Sticks and stones and all that. Unless the shoe fits....
That's not just my premise, that's my experience.
Oh, not that again. How did the world make it to the 40's, when your chemical pushing buddies took over commercial agriculture?
First of all it isn't just horse manure (that's actually pretty low quality manure, cow is better, whihch just goes to show that you don't know shit). And I'm glad they're happy with how I shop, that'll encourage them to grow even more. Do you understand economics? If they grow more, prices will come down. And they have. I've been buying organic ever since organic has been available (when I don't have my own organically-grown produce to pick out of my own garden) and I've seen the prices come down.
Sez you, Sherwindu, and you have little credibility with me, because my personal experience tells me otherwise..
they tried that
great. As for
I don't call people chemical heads, I call them nozzle heads. Ever bite into a 'Honey Crisp?' Oh, don't know what that is? Hmm, sorry. How's this, I don't any longer use any pesticides, synthetic OR organic. I've given up on killing anything at all.
Surprise!!!! My garden is in balance and I have tolerance for some damage. Subsequently, I have minimal damage. I use one of the largest producers of grapes for wine is Gallo in California. They've been organic for decades. Do you thing it would still be organic if no profit was made?
In article , Ann wrote:
I'm with you Ann. Too many posers in the NG claim that reality is the way they say it is and, they start disparaging you, if you disagree with them.
Well let's try to fill in this gaping hole of ignorance. Referring to Earthbound Farms (which Michael Pollan found to be one of the success stories in organic farming) in the Monterey Valley in California. If everyone will open their copy of Omnivore's Dilemma and turn to page
165, from the top read:into a mosaic of giant color blocks: dark green, burgundy, pale green, blue green. As you get closer you see that the blocks are divided into a series of eighty-inch-wide raised beds thickly planted with a single variety. Each weed-free strip is as smooth and flat as a tabletop, leveled with a laser so that the custom-built harvester can snip each leaf at precisely the same point. Earthbound's tabletop fields exemplify one of the most powerful industrial ideas: the tremendous gains in efficiency to be had when you can conform the irregularity of nature to the precision and control of a machine. Apart from the much. higher level of precision-time as well as space are scrupulously managed on this farm-the organic practices at Earthbound resemble those I saw at Greenways farm. Frequent tilling is used to control weeds, though crews of migrant workers, their heads wrapped in brightly colored cloths against the hot sun, do a last pass through each block before harvest, pulling weeds by hand. To provide fertility-the farm's biggest expense-compost is trucked in; some crops also receive fish emulsion along with their water and a side dressing of pelleted chicken manure. Over the winter a cover crop of legumes is planted to build up nitrogen in the soil. To control pests, every six or seven strips of lettuce is punctuated with a strip of flowers: sweet alyssum, which attracts the lacewings and syrphid flies that eat the aphids that can molest lettuces. Aside from some insecticidal soap to control insects in the cruciferous crops, pesticides are seldom sprayed. We prefer to practice resistance and avoidance," Drew Goodman explained. Or, as their farm manager put it, "You have to give up the macho idea that you can grow anything you want anywhere you want to." So they closely track insect or disease outbreaks in their many fields and keep vulnerab1e crops at a safe distance; they also search out varieties with a strong natural resistance. Occasionally they'll lose a block to a pest, but as a rule growing baby greens is less risky since, by definition, the crop stays in the ground for so short a period of time-usually thirty days or so. Indeed, baby lettuce is one crop that may well be easier to grow organically than conventionally: Harsh chemicals can scorch young leaves, and nitrogen fertilizers render lettuces more vulnerable to insects. It seems the bugs are attracted to the' free nitrogen in their leaves, and because of the more rapid growth of chemically nourished plants, insects find their leaves easier to pierce.
Everyone read again from Harsh Chemicals. This should give pause to chemical heads that grow produce (in situ or in vitro).
--------
OK. That was the tease.
Open you Omnivore's Dilemma again to page 179 and read from the top:
"The organic label is a marketing tool," Secretary Glickman said. "It is not a statement about food safety. Nor is 'organic' a value judgment about nutrition or quality." Some intriguing recent research suggests otherwise. A study by University of California-Davis researchers published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry in 2003 described an experiment in which identical varieties of corn, strawberries, and blackberries grown in neighboring plots using different methods (including organically and conventionally) were compared for levels of vitamins and polyphenols. Polyphenols are a group of secondary metabolites manufactured by plants that we've recently learned play an important role in human health and nutrition. Many are potent antioxidants; some play a role in preventing or fighting cancer; others exhibit antimicrobial properties. The Davis researchers found that organic and otherwise sustainably grown fruits and vegetables contained significantly higher levels of both ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and a wide range of polyphenols. The recent discovery of these secondary metabolites in plants has ought our understanding of the biological and chemical complexity of foods to a deeper level of refinement; history suggests we haven't gotten anywhere near the bottom of this question, either. The first level was reached early in the nineteenth century with the identification of the macronutrients-protein, carbohydrate, and fat. Having isolated these compounds, chemists thought they'd unlocked the key to human nutrition. Yet some people (such as sailors) living on diets rich in macronutrients nevertheless got sick. The mystery was solved when scientists discovered the major vitamins-a second key to human nutrition. Now it's the polyphenols in plants that we're learning play a critical role in keeping us healthy. (And which might explain why diets heavy in processed food fortified with vitamins still aren't as nutritious as fresh foods.) You wonder what else is going on in these plants, what other undiscovered qualities in them we've evolved to depend on. In many ways the mysteries of nutrition at the eating end of the food chain closely mirror the mysteries of fertility at the growing end: The two realms are like wildernesses that we keep convincing ourselves our chemistry has mapped, at least until the next level of complexity comes into view. Curiously, Justus von Liebig, the nineteenth-century German chemist with the spectacularly ironic surname, bears responsibility for science's overly reductive understanding of both ends of the food chain. It was Liebig, you'll recall, who thought he had found the chemical key to soil fertility with the discovery of NPK, and it was the same Liebig who thought he had found the key to human nutrition when identified the macronutrients in food. Liebig wasn't wrong on either count, yet in both instances he made the fatal mistake of thinking that what we knew about nourishing plants and people was all we need to know to keep them healthy. It's a mistake we'll probably keep repeating until we develop a deeper respect for the complexity of food a soil and, perhaps, the links between the two. But back to the polyphenols, which may him' at the nature of that link. Why in the world should organically grown blackberries or corn contain significantly more of these compounds? The authors of Davis study haven't settled the question, but they offer two suggest theories. The reason plants produce these compounds in the first place is to defend themselves against pests and diseases; the more press from pathogens, the more polyphenols a plant will produce. These compounds, then, are the products of natural selection and, more specifically, the coevolutionary relationship between plants and the species that prey on them. Who would have guessed that humans evolved to profit from a diet of these plant pesticides? Or that we would invent an agriculture that then deprived us of them? The Davis authors hypothesize that plants being defended by man-made pesticides don't need to work as hard to make their own polyphenol pesticides. Coddled by us and our chemicals, the plants see no reason to invest their sources in mounting a strong defense. (Sort of like European nations during the cold war.) A second explanation (one that subsequent research seems to suppport) may be that the radically simplified soils in which chemically fertilized plants grow don't supply all the raw ingredients needed to synthesize these compounds, leaving the plants more vulnerable to attack, as we know conventionally grown plants tend to be. NPK might be sufficient for plant growth yet still might not give a plant everything it needs to manufacture ascorbic acid or lycopene or resveratrol in quantity. As it happens, many of the polyphenols (and especially a sublet called the flavonols) contribute to the characteristic taste of a fruit or vegetable. Qualities we can't yet identify, in soil may contribute qualities we've only just begun to identify in our foods and our bodies. Reading the Davis study I couldn't help thinking about the early proponents of organic agriculture, people like Sir Albert Howard and J. I. Rodale, who would have been cheered, if unsurprised, by the findings. Both men were ridiculed for their unscientific conviction that a reductive approach to soil fertility-the NPK mentality-would diminish the nutritional quality of the food grown in it and, in turn, the health of the people who lived on that food. All carrots are not created equal, they believed; how we grow it, the soil we grow it in, what we feed that soil all contribute qualities to a carrot, qualities that may yet escape the explanatory net of our chemistry. Sooner or later the soil scientists and nutritionists will catch up to Sir Howard, heed his admonition that we begin "treating the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal and man as one great subject."
-------
I think I'll go pet my earthworms now.
- Billy Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)
You rant and rave about chemicals, but give no examples of how good your apples, etc. taste when grown purely organic. I will stick with chemicals when I need them to allow me to grow the kinds of fruit I like. Really, I'm not interested in establishing credibility with you. By the way Annbal, the name is sherwin, not sherwindu, or chemical head.
they tried that
farmers are just
great. As for
OK, I give up. What's a nozzle head?
You must think you are talking to a novice. I have been growing a Honey Crisp tree for several years now, along with many other heritage apples and other fruits. You won't find organic orchardists growing these varieties because they haven't come up with an adequate organic substitute to protect them. They are growing apple varieties like Liberty and Williams Pride, which I consider adequate tasting apples. However, I like the older heritage apples, and those grown more for taste than for disease resistance. Maybe you can tolerate some rotten apples. I can't, and I feel that they can be grown safely with chemicals, if used properly. There are some abuses of chemicals, and I believe that like all other environmental problems they should be addressed. At his time, I don't think banning chemicals is the right solution. I practice a combination of organic and chemical fruit growing trying to minimize my chemical spraying. I'm not ready to give up the use of chemicals, yet.
Sherwin
I never said there was no profit in it. In light of the prices they are charging for organically labeled produce, there must be a big profit in it. You don't specify what kinds of things you grow. There are certain varieties of fruit that are less likely to be attacked by fungus or insects.
Never said that.
Wrong again.
Go back and read the thread and see who started using the dispariging language like 'chemical head', etc.
Seems like you have done a lot of research, but you can't convince me that if we leave plants alone, they will find a way to defend themselves, so we are retarding their own efforts by substituting chemicals to do it for them. If what you say is true, I will just continue to drink lot's of orange juice and take my daily multi-vitamin, and grow the kinds of things I like.
Sherwin
Ok.....sherwin.......what does du stand for ........depleted uranium? Now *there* is a good chemical, eh? Lots of good uses for it. All designed to kill.
It's all about taste, eh? I hope you enjoy the *taste* of your apples as you , and others of your ilk, are poisoning my unborn grandchildren.
And your own.
Most people are ignorant of what poison does to developing fetuses, many people are aware of what it does, that's why we decry the use of poisons. It is despicable that you will advocate for the use of poison, simply for a better tasting apple, screw the unborn and the children and the rest of us. This shows that you don't care about anything other than your own pleasure. You don't care about my grandson, my grandson about to be born, and my granddaughter to be born this fall.
Charlie
In article , sherwindu wrote:
Hence forth it shall be Mud.
Omnivore's Dilemma BIG ORGANIC p.165 into a mosaic of giant color blocks: dark green, burgundy, pale green, blue green. As you get closer you see that the blocks are divided into a series of eighty-inch-wide raised beds thickly planted with a single variety. Each weed-free strip is as smooth and flat as a tabletop, leveled with a laser so that the custom-built harvester can snip each leaf at precisely the same point. Earthbound's tabletop fields exemplify one of the most powerful industrial ideas: the tremendous gains in efficiency to be had when you can conform the irregularity of nature to the precision and control of a machine. Apart from the much. higher level of precision-time as well as space are scrupulously managed on this farm-the organic practices at Earthbound resemble those I saw at Greenways farm. Frequent tilling is used to control weeds, though crews of migrant workers, their heads wrapped in brightly colored cloths against the hot sun, do a last pass through each block before harvest, pulling weeds by hand. To provide fertility-the farm's biggest expense-compost is trucked in; some crops also receive fish emulsion along with their water and a side dressing of pelleted chicken manure. Over the winter a cover crop of legumes is planted to build up nitrogen in the soil. To control pests, every six or seven strips of lettuce is punctuated with a strip of flowers: sweet alyssum, which attracts the lacewings and syrphid flies that eat the aphids that can molest lettuces. Aside from some insecticidal soap to control insects in the cruciferous crops, pesticides are seldom sprayed. We prefer to practice resistance and avoidance," Drew Goodman explained. Or, as their farm manager put it, "You have to give up the macho idea that you can grow anything you want anywhere you want to." So they closely track insect or disease outbreaks in their many fields and keep vulnerab1e crops at a safe distance; they also search out varieties with a strong natural resistance. Occasionally they'll lose a block to a pest, but as a rule growing baby greens is less risky since, by definition, the crop stays in the ground for so short a period of time-usually thirty days or so. Indeed, baby lettuce is one crop that may well be easier to grow organically than conventionally: Harsh chemicals can scorch young leaves, and nitrogen fertilizers render lettuces more vulnerable to insects. It seems the bugs are attracted to the' free nitrogen in their leaves, and because of the more rapid growth of chemically nourished plants, insects find their leaves easier to pierce.
--------
Omnivore's Dilemma BIG ORGANIC* 179
"The organic label is a marketing tool," Secretary Glickman said. "It is not a statement about food safety. Nor is 'organic' a value judgment about nutrition or quality." Some intriguing recent research suggests otherwise. A study by University of California-Davis researchers published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry in 2003 described an experiment in which identical varieties of corn, strawberries, and blackberries grown in neighboring plots using different methods (including organically and conventionally) were compared for levels of vitamins and polyphenols. Polyphenols are a group of secondary metabolites manufactured by plants that we've recently learned play an important role in human health and nutrition. Many are potent antioxidants; some play a role in preventing or fighting cancer; others exhibit antimicrobial properties. The Davis researchers found that organic and otherwise sustainably grown fruits and vegetables contained significantly higher levels of both ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and a wide range of polyphenols. The recent discovery of these secondary metabolites in plants has ought our understanding of the biological and chemical complexity of foods to a deeper level of refinement; history suggests we haven't gotten anywhere near the bottom of this question, either. The first level was reached early in the nineteenth century with the identification of the macronutrients-protein, carbohydrate, and fat. Having isolated these compounds, chemists thought they'd unlocked the key to human nutrition. Yet some people (such as sailors) living on diets rich in macronutrients nevertheless got sick. The mystery was solved when scientists discovered the major vitamins-a second key to human nutrition. Now it's the polyphenols in plants that we're learning play a critical role in keeping us healthy. (And which might explain why diets heavy in processed food fortified with vitamins still aren't as nutritious as fresh foods.) You wonder what else is going on in these plants, what other undiscovered qualities in them we've evolved to depend on. In many ways the mysteries of nutrition at the eating end of the food chain closely mirror the mysteries of fertility at the growing end: The two realms are like wildernesses that we keep convincing ourselves our chemistry has mapped, at least until the next level of complexity comes into view. Curiously, Justus von Liebig, the nineteenth-century German chemist with the spectacularly ironic surname, bears responsibility for science's overly reductive understanding of both ends of the food chain. It was Liebig, you'll recall, who thought he had found the chemical key to soil fertility with the discovery of NPK, and it was the same Liebig who thought he had found the key to human nutrition when identified the macronutrients in food. Liebig wasn't wrong on either count, yet in both instances he made the fatal mistake of thinking that what we knew about nourishing plants and people was all we need to know to keep them healthy. It's a mistake we'll probably keep repeating until we develop a deeper respect for the complexity of food a soil and, perhaps, the links between the two. But back to the polyphenols, which may him' at the nature of that link. Why in the world should organically grown blackberries or corn contain significantly more of these compounds? The authors of Davis study haven't settled the question, but they offer two suggest theories. The reason plants produce these compounds in the first place is to defend themselves against pests and diseases; the more press from pathogens, the more polyphenols a plant will produce. These compounds, then, are the products of natural selection and, more specifically, the coevolutionary relationship between plants and the species that prey on them. Who would have guessed that humans evolved to profit from a diet of these plant pesticides? Or that we would invent an agriculture that then deprived us of them? The Davis authors hypothesize that plants being defended by man-made pesticides don't need to work as hard to make their own polyphenol pesticides. Coddled by us and our chemicals, the plants see no reason to invest their sources in mounting a strong defense. (Sort of like European nations during the cold war.) A second explanation (one that subsequent research seems to suppport) may be that the radically simplified soils in which chemically fertilized plants grow don't supply all the raw ingredients needed to synthesize these compounds, leaving the plants more vulnerable to attack, as we know conventionally grown plants tend to be. NPK might be sufficient for plant growth yet still might not give a plant everything it needs to manufacture ascorbic acid or lycopene or resveratrol in quantity. As it happens, many of the polyphenols (and especially a sublet called the flavonols) contribute to the characteristic taste of a fruit or vegetable. Qualities we can't yet identify, in soil may contribute qualities we've only just begun to identify in our foods and our bodies. Reading the Davis study I couldn't help thinking about the early proponents of organic agriculture, people like Sir Albert Howard and J. I. Rodale, who would have been cheered, if unsurprised, by the findings. Both men were ridiculed for their unscientific conviction that a reductive approach to soil fertility-the NPK mentality-would diminish the nutritional quality of the food grown in it and, in turn, the health of the people who lived on that food. All carrots are not created equal, they believed; how we grow it, the soil we grow it in, what we feed that soil all contribute qualities to a carrot, qualities that may yet escape the explanatory net of our chemistry. Sooner or later the soil scientists and nutritionists will catch up to Sir Howard, heed his admonition that we begin "treating the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal and man as one great subject."
------
Of course you could just be one of those types to whom reality is as unimportant as himself.
Please make your response cogent.
- Billy Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)
I'd suggest that you reread this at least twice more. I only say that because when I was a college student, it took three times to get all the ramifications. Fast is good. Thorough is better.
An ignorant person is someone who doesn't know what you just learned.
- Will Rogers
- Billy Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)
Gallo is huge. They can give their wine away and make money on their glass bottles. Organic for a decade maybe, on the tiniest fraction of their wine. IMHO a marketing ploy. They are having an identity crisis ever since their label designer told them that the main problem with their label was the name, "Gallo".
Don't get locked into a label. Every year the wine changes. Last year's great wine is this year's ho-hum. There are lots of good cheap wines out there. Cheap is where Gallo came in but they have ambition$. If I buy a wine for $5 and it's bad, I'll either add Canada Dry to it for a cooler or cook with it. If I spend $20 for a bottle of wine and it's bad, I'm inconsolable. Find a good cheap wine and buy as many cases as you can. Spending more than $10/bottle just shows you have more money than sense.
Chateau Ausone sells for $750/bottle. It would just be your luck that your bottle was "corked".
So if you find that, indeed, you are an idiot for buying an expensive wine that is bad, don't feel bad. There are lots of others out there with you.
- Billy Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)
Gee, Charlie; who shit in your Berkies?
Shame on you, Sherwin, for poising his / her (haven't been here long enough to study biographies) grandchildren. How did you ever find out where they lived?
And you don't care about anything other than your own pleasure. Bad, bad Sherwin. You don't care about whether the Patriots have a chance this year, or if Paris Hilton will survive jail, or if Hillary uses spray or stick deodorant. I'll bet you don't even care about your own kids and grandkids, that all your talk about your gardens is just a way to weasel your way into this ever so tolerant group and participate in a discussion -- how insensitive.
shame, shame
oz, admiring the inclusiveness herein
Now ain't you an odd duck?
Uhhhh......ok
Seems like this could go a coupla ways...not sure about yer intent. Not even sure what you mean.
Let's go thisaway......I will assume that you are comin' down on the side of sustainable and organic and heirlooms all that fine thing. I will assume that someone who is a pickin' and a grinnin' at Jere's Place would feel that way.
Charlie
I will type really slowly.........
I am coming down (in an apparently unsuccessful attempt at humor) on the hysteria directed at anyone who fails to spout the party line. What I think about organic (and I go that way when I can) is not germane. I just think people foaming at the mouth -- about anything, even something I espouse -- are either damaged in some fundamental way, or are part of the tin helmet brigade. It is my sacred duty to point and laugh.
cheers
oz
Now the problem, as I see it, is that while the the level of passion for one's point of view, may at times be intense enough to inspire mockery, satirization, or derision, the currency for admittance among the adults at the table is the assertion of a point of view supported by the presentation of studies, records, or at the very least, an inference arrived at through a premise and a chain of logic, that support a particular point of view. Which Charlie has done on numerous occassions. If you would care to join the adult conversation, please state your position and the facts that you have to support it. Maybe you'd prefer to be a Socratic gadfly, fine, make your observation and justify how you arrived at it. If you just want to be disruptive by putting walnuts in your cheeks and rolling around on the floor making shrieking sounds or babbling like a fool, you can go sit in the corner with the other trolls. Now shuss.
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