In article , sherwindu
wrote:

I am not going to let you have the last word on this.

I asked you for specific information on all these university reports about the
wonders
of fruit grown organically, and you ignore the issue. Give me a document
location on
the web that backs up your contention of superior tasting fruit from organic
orchards.

As point of fact I already named the universities that are doing these
studies on the Nortwest, the Great Lakes Region, & the Northeast, & if you
cared, you could've tracked down the specific sources -- you don't care,
so why should I do your footwork for you? Well, I will do it for you, not
that I expect you to change your attitude -- because what I reported is
not rare information from wayward loonies of the Green Party. They come
from conservative agricultural universities.

But then, you're the sort who only believes it if you see it on the web.
The idea of a library or a scientific journal or an experimental station
bulletin or even a PDF file not available for free is just too outre for
someone demanding a WEB PAGE before you'll believe it. Well, I can provide
you a WEB PAGE that proves Jesus was from Mars, I suppose you'll believe
that then -- but my citations are to the research stations.

ORGANIC APPLES HAVE *THE SAME OR HIGHER PRODUCTION* AND *BETTER TASTE*
than apples grown in orchards that do not adhere to organic methods. Such
were the findings of studies conducted by Washington State University.
Orchards using pesticides had either LOWER PRODUCTION or the SAME
PRODUCTION, but not higher; & in taste testings the fruit from pesticide
users lost out because fruit from organic orchards is superior fruit. LONG
GONE are the days when the organic section was a box of ugly fruit
shriveled & crusty.

The study is reported in NATURE April 18, 2001, & scores of other places;
the research is headed by John P. Reganold. The study showed that organic
orchards were furthermore more sustainable economically as well as
environmentally; that apples were easiest to test but the findings are
being found applicable to other orchard & vineyard settings in the midwest
& east as well. This study is presently in its Eighth Year (the NATURE
article was its sixth year); the Washington State University Cooperative
Extension Bulletin provides periodic updates on the ongoing research, &
growers magazines report on it reliably -- growers are definitely
following the techniques developed at WSU & MSU. There can't be anyone
left with a serious interest in orchards unaware of it.

They found some organic methods such as use of weed tarps to be costly or
difficult, so not everything organic was equally good. Their findings are
going into practical use every year -- doing away with organic methods
that are worthless, devising better time-tables & methods for what works
best organically. Research involves a great deal about the role of insect
life in a healthy organic orchard -- anyone using pesticides is just not
going to be even close, & morons who use NEEM oil & then complain organic
alternatives leave the fruit sticky are such profound morons it's
surprising they can use a computer to type such silliness on UseNet, since
that shows no knowledge of organic gardening beyond what can be read off a
bottle of whatever can be purchased at Home Depot.

There is an ongoing learning curve on what works best -- but already it's
working out way better than with chemicals. If you care about an orchard,
you will aprise yourself of it even if you must continue hate paghat's
guts for daring to be smarter than you are & impatient with you about it.
Some techniques such as hand-thinning were more labor intensive than the
chemical method, but the extra labor was STILL less expensive than
chemical methods so in final analysis organic was more profitable as well
as more effective.

Similiar research is ongoing at Michigan State University Agricultural
Experimental Station, who've gotten the same findings for the midwest. As
I already pointed out, apple maggot is VERY manageable without chemicals
-- it does require rigorous clean-up, but if there is no rotten fruit left
on the ground in which worms overwinter, there will be no first-generation
population to emerge in spring; further, sustaining meadowlands near
orchards increases the beneficial insect population, the predators such as
wasps being SIGNAL to a successful pest-free organic orchard, & anyone
boasting of killing all the wasps is of course much lower on the awareness
ladder than a baboon's handful of colon apples. The project is titled
"Ecology Research & Education in Production of Michigan Organic Apples"
with regular reports in FUTURES: MSU Agricultural Experiemental Station
Bulletin (some issues you can download as PDF files if you can't leave
your computer for anything). The organic orchards are coming out ahead in
the three major areas investigated: soil quality, fruit quality, &
marketability.

Plus MSU's project has established conclusively that chemicals are not
needed for apple storage. They have developed 100% organic means to
control apple scald, so that the three-million spent annually to treat
apples with DPA is money saved, besides that much smaller chemical-load in
what we eat.

The MSU Fruit School is now producing a generation of midwest
agriculturalists who will be MUCH smarter than the previous generation.
These aren't just ****wad liberals & commies as the anti-organic brigade
of chemical-swilling loons promulgates. Agricultural schools are
notoriously conservative & difficult to move from old positions. This
position, however, was just too unquestionably the better direction, &
even a way to stop farms from failing. The only ones fighting against
organic orchards right now are the manufacturers of all those unnecessary
toxins.

Similar studies are being undertaken by Cornell University for vineyards,
with once again the same findings. A vast array of articles in ORGANIC
GRAPE & WINE PRODUCTION SYMPOSIUM (Cornell University, 1995), & many more
vagrant articles in numerous agricultural journals.

There are more such studies up the wazoo. If I seem to be impatient with
chemical sucking DORKS who're constitutionally incapable of hearing the
facts, it's because this is not rare information. It takes no special
brilliance to figure it out, but it takes a special kind of idiot to
refuse to figure it out. It doesn't even take concern for the environment
since it's ultimately all self-serving & useful to Numero Uno: Man. I
posted all the above early in this thread, & yet you had the audacity to
ask that I provide information I already provided, because your ilk are
essentially self-blinded & will never stop coming back at the truth with
your prove-it-dipwad-greeny mindset -- it IS proven, if you can neither
follow nor tolerate the science that's not my fault, & if you really can't
find your way to organic research articles without me mailing them to you,
you're hopeless.

When someone starts from a position of disbelief that organic is better
for humanity & for the environment, when quite obviously it is better, no
amount of validating science as to the IMPROVED value of the fruits will
ever change what simply started out, & will end as demented thinking. But
these are the facts about organic orchards: The SOIL is better maintained
by organic principles (chiefly organic composts instead of chemical
fertilizers); pest insects & diseases decrease in significance year by
year in an orchard organically maintained; fruit improves in flavor in the
better-maintained soil of an organic orchard; & harvests are more
profitable in the marketplace.

Those are not opinions, that is what the science sustains in study after
study. What is now known to be true of orchards in general may or may not
be equally true of annual crops on a case by case situation; it is true,
as it turns out, for potatoes; but most annual crops do not have the
dramatic gains orchards acquire from organic methods. So what I've been
saying is RADICALLY factual for orchards which exclusively gain by organic
methods, even if perhaps less often definitely the case for annual crops.

Beyond that, it is also important to not have the chemicals in the food we
eat or sprayed all over effecting all life. To me it seems that even the
chemical-swilling jerkwads who don't care about the planet should even so
want the most flavorful & best fruits & the highest yields for the highest
profits -- just being selfish jackasses should be enough to want to do the
organic thing because it pays off in every way. But I guess I will just
never comprehend the agenda of chemical-swillers, & know only that no one
will ever reason people out of positions they never reasoned themselves
into.

So I post what is good news & merely fact, & a couple complete asses post
baseless unutterable nonsense about killing beneficial insects being a
good thing & chemicals being absolutely NECESSARY or the bugs will destroy
all the apples on earth. The "excuses" against organic orchards have been
all been red herrings. The demand that I provide citations (when I've been
the only one all along who provided any) come from jackasses who have none
of their own. If I'm not endlessly gentlehearted toward dumbasses it's
because I see close-to-hand the sorry effects of what chemical-swillers
destroy. Not just as a statistical fact, not just as a theory or
possibility for a destroyed future world. I live near Hood Canal, a DEAD
waterway, dead TODAY, dead for NO OTHER REASON than gardening chemicals
used by waterfront homeowners on their lawns & gardens, so that chemical
fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, & all manner of chemistry
washes into the water right off the lawns & gardens of waterfront homes.

I am old enough to remember there was good fishing in the Hood Canal, & it
was also home to giant octopi, & sea otters. My aunt owned a cabin on the
Hood before it became a hundred miles of mansions, & what beauty it was.
Now, DEAD. Just de-oxygenated depths of sal****er that cannot sustain an
ecosystem.

People who live on the Hood Canal demand the government do something about
it -- but this is one thing that can't be placed on the WHite House stoop
as one more evil deed of a sucky president. If chemical gardening was
banned along the Hood Canal it would recover. Alas, that simple response
will never happen. Because assholes are incapable of acting even in their
own self-interest, since they'd first & foremost have to stop being
assholes. Such assholes always have an excuse why it doesn't apply to you;
or they in particular can't do it for this or that imaginary-sound reason;
& when each excuse turns out to be provably false, you come up with
another equally fraudulant excuse. I've known people intent on suicide who
thought exactly the same way -- for every good reason to live they have a
not-so reply.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com