On Jul 30, dejure wrote:
Is it really
superior to petrochemical fertilizer, or is it
guilty conscience liberal feelgoodism?

No, the petrochemical producs are better. They sell better
and the market doesn't lie.

In support of your smile: *When farming, we would dump around seven
hundred tons of compost on a single one hundred acre unit. *This
reduced our dependence on [incomplete] chemical fertilizers (heck, it
was winter, we had nothing else to do). *The biggest "upside" was we
were not growing nutritionally hollow food. *People often commented on
the better taste of things grown with compost and mineral
supplements. *For example, try a garden fresh tomato with good soil,
then try one from a hot house supplier. *The only reason we turned to
chemical (e.g., thousands of gallons of nitrogen pumped through the
irrigations circles) was to survive/compete on the market and, in the
end, the corn looked damn good. *Still, just like us humans, plants
are more than just a little nitrogen, potassium, and ....... *On a
side note, go look at the soil on many of the farms. It's dead.
FungiCIDES, pestiCIDES and so forth kill everything. *Everything works
together, but we have a better way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/sc...v.html?_r=1&em

"If everyone switched to organic farming, we couldn't
support the earth's current population - maybe half."

--
Rich