Billy wrote:
....
The better for what? question about my organic meal can of
course be
answered in a much less selfish way: Is it better for the
environment?
Better for the farmers who grew it? Better for the public
health? For
the taxpayer? The answer to all three questions is an (almost)
unqualified yes. To grow the plants and animals that made up my
meal,
no pesti- cides found their way into any farmworker's
bloodstream, no
nitrogen runoff or growth hormones seeped into the watershed,
no
soils were poisoned, no antibiotics were squandered, no subsidy
checks were written. If the high price of my all-organic meal
is
weighed against the comparatively low price it exacted from the
larger world, as it should be, it begins to look, at least in
karmic
terms, like a real bargain.

i'd be sure that at least one of those farmer's
children were on birth control.

i love science, but we have a long ways to go
before we have the complete picture of this
understood.

i wouldn't be surprised to find out at how
much of what we consider good gardening
now will be proved false in the next 50 years.

i remain a wide-eyed optimist with cynically
rose colored glasses.


songbird