Gordon Couger Wrote:
"ta" wrote in message
...
rick etter wrote:
And that means also not cruelty-free. Just what I've been saying...

"...some organic pesticides have mammalian toxicities that are far
higher than many synthetic pesticides..."
http://tinyurl.com/6a5y2

Wow, I can't *believe* CFGI, which is funded by the right-wing think
tank
Hudson Institute, could possibly be promoting information that
supports
their big agribusiness clients like Monsanto, ConAgra, and Archer
Daniels
Midland, who have everything to lose by the success of organic
farming.

But to be fair, I can't answer the specific charges as I'm not an
expert,
so
I'm expanding the thread to get a wider range of input.

Does the messenger make the message any less correct? What Alex fails
to
mention are the pest that organic pesticides won't touch. The boll
weevil,
alfalfa aphid and corn root worm to name a few. In the last 100 years
we
have made ever effort to make farming less invasive on the land and
going
back to organic farming would not only reduce yields and increase
erosion
but plunge the world into famine if it was the only way allowed as
many
want.
What everybody seems to be unaware of are plant extracts and
micro-organisms that have been tried and tested, work as well, if not
better, than chemical pesticides, cannot damage beneficial insects and
are harmless to animals, humans, plants and wildlife. Best of all, and
this is a trick that chemicals can't perform, it's impossible for
insect pests to develop resistance to them due to their mode of
action.

To take the three pests mentioned; Neem oil kills boll weevil and it's
been in use 4,000 years, alfalfa aphid is killed by BDB extract and
that goes gack to the mists of time as a traditional Chinese herbal
medicine and corn root worm is resoundingly eradicated by a fungus that
is responsible for green muscadine disease, first discovered in the
1830s in Europe. They are pesticides, Gordon, but not as we know it and
they just happen to be 100% organic. But don't worry, they won't be
appearing on the shelves of your local agricultural merchant to tempt
the weak; because they're completely natural they can't be patented so
no company is going to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds getting
them licenced and discovering they can't protect it. W.R. Grace
patented a method of extracting Azadarachtin from Neem oil to allow it
to last longer on the leaf surface but mother nature, for some perverse
reason, decreed that Neem oil works just as well with its main
ingredient removed. Any chemical pesticides spring to mind that can do
that?

As for conventional versus organic yields, Azotobacter will outperform
any amount of chemical fertiliser; it will never scorch plants, no
matter how much you use, it produces it's own organic matter to build
up soil fertility and it can't create nitrate run-off. As far as soil
erosion is concerned, planting through a permanent green manure crop is
helping to reverse years of soil erosion caused by conventional farming
in South America. I can also add Trichoderma; unlike methyl bromide,
you don't need to wear a gas mask, you can plant immediately and it
kills all pathogenic fungi. As a bonus it's also a plant growth
stimulant.

There is a lot of cutting edge bio-technology out there and if the
organic lobby stopped sniping at conventional farmers they might notice
that the world has moved on and it is they who may well be living in the
past.

If you want a glimpse into the future of organic growing, visit
http://www.gardenknowledge.co.uk


--
lammas