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