"gary davis" wrote in message
...
On 6/6/04 4:00 PM, in article ,
"David
Hill" wrote:

"......... lets say that we have a vegetable that is sprayed with
a
pesticide. The pesticide says that after 15 days it gets degraded
to non
toxic elements..............."

What this in fact means is that the pesticide will be inactive
within about
7 days, the rest of the time is the safety barrier that the
company has to
have to allow for people using it stronger than it should be, for
adverse
weather conditions etc that may slow down the plants metabolism.

As for washing the veg/fruit this does nothing for systemic
sprays, but
with the re introduction of old so called organic sprays then
washing is
good as most will remain on the surface.
Also a lot of fruit is either sprayed or dipped after picking to
maintain
condition in the box during transit and storage.

Finally...when it comes to buying from local "certified" organic
growers
(and many will say that anyone in the UK trying to make a living
from
growing Organic should be certified),

It is very tough to grow produce organically and especially to
be
certified. I quote what you wrote "(and many will say that anyone in
the UK
trying to make a living from growing Organic should be certified)".
Why do
you say that?

I think the main reason is that it is not particularly economic to
produce organic foods in the UK. That is why ours is imported from
countries with a poor underclass ripe for exploitation.

[snip]

Franz

"Nick Apostolakis" wrote in message
...
Nick Apostolakis wrote:

i do not know any water analysis test about pesticide traces in
water
but that is relevant with the type of the aquifer anyway so it may
or
may not be very important.


by the way i saw just today a water analysis for an area near my
own.
guess what. they found all the mainstream pollutants nitrates, Ar,
pesticide traces and all the good stuff.

Please quote the concentrations found and compare them with the
legally limiting concentrations.

as i say above everything depends from the aquifer type. if it is
under
pressure you may get away with it. if it is an open aquifer then you
have a problem.

Franz

Franz Heymann wrote:

If I remember correctly it was you who brought up the pollution of
water by pesticides. Are you now changing your mind?

Franz



no i mean that depending of the type of the aquifer the size of the
pollution may of may not show in water analysis.
i have not changed my mind
--



--------------------------------------------------------------
Nick Apostolakis
e-mail:
Web Site: http://agriroot.aua.gr/~nickapos
--------------------------------------------------------------

Franz Heymann wrote:


Please quote the concentrations found and compare them with the
legally limiting concentrations.


Franz



i will see if i can find the newspaper.
i saw the article by accident in a waiting rooms so i do not have the
newspaper right now. although the subject of the newspaper article was
exactly that the concentrations were higher than the allowed.

in any case these traces normally does not exist in drinking water (the
Ar and the pesticide traces) so the exact concentration is not that
important.

--



--------------------------------------------------------------
Nick Apostolakis
e-mail:
Web Site: http://agriroot.aua.gr/~nickapos
--------------------------------------------------------------

Nick Apostolakis wrote:
Franz Heymann wrote:

If I remember correctly it was you who brought up the pollution of
water by pesticides. Are you now changing your mind?

Franz



no i mean that depending of the type of the aquifer the size of the
pollution may of may not show in water analysis.
i have not changed my mind

change of with or


--



--------------------------------------------------------------
Nick Apostolakis
e-mail:
Web Site: http://agriroot.aua.gr/~nickapos
--------------------------------------------------------------

On 6/8/04 11:05 PM, in article , "Franz
Heymann" wrote:


"Nick Apostolakis" wrote in message
...
Nick Apostolakis wrote:

i do not know any water analysis test about pesticide traces in
water
but that is relevant with the type of the aquifer anyway so it may
or
may not be very important.


by the way i saw just today a water analysis for an area near my
own.
guess what. they found all the mainstream pollutants nitrates, Ar,
pesticide traces and all the good stuff.

Please quote the concentrations found and compare them with the
legally limiting concentrations.

Franz, I quote from your message above..."legally limiting
concentrations"???? So, just poison our water a little bit and that is OK?
That is what you are saying.
Certified organic farmers want zero, I repeat zero, contamination of the
water. That is why they will not/ do not use chemicals harmful to the
environment.
You say you are 80 years old, if you are, do you not remember drinking
water from a stream. Would you not like to do that again? That is what
certified organic farmers are striving to achieve.
In other words, I suggest to use no chemicals. Period! Well, except for
salt on your hard boiled eggs...



as i say above everything depends from the aquifer type. if it is
under
pressure you may get away with it. if it is an open aquifer then you
have a problem.

Franz



Gary
Fort Langley BC
Canada

"gary davis" wrote in message
...
On 6/8/04 11:05 PM, in article ,
"Franz
Heymann" wrote:


"Nick Apostolakis" wrote in message
...
Nick Apostolakis wrote:

i do not know any water analysis test about pesticide traces in
water
but that is relevant with the type of the aquifer anyway so it
may
or
may not be very important.


by the way i saw just today a water analysis for an area near my
own.
guess what. they found all the mainstream pollutants nitrates,
Ar,
pesticide traces and all the good stuff.

Please quote the concentrations found and compare them with the
legally limiting concentrations.

Franz, I quote from your message above..."legally limiting
concentrations"???? So, just poison our water a little bit and that
is OK?
That is what you are saying.

Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. There is a level of
contamination which is so small that it may be neglected for practical
purposes. Even an organic farmer has radioactive carbon in his
vegetables. Do you think that means that the veggies are slightly
poisoned? Should we avoid eating organically grown veggies?

Certified organic farmers want zero, I repeat zero,
contamination of the
water.

That is complete and utter nonsense. It is not possible to farm with
deionosed or distilled water and still make a profit.

That is why they will not/ do not use chemicals harmful to the
environment.

I know.

You say you are 80 years old, if you are, do you not remember
drinking
water from a stream. Would you not like to do that again?

I still do.

That is what
certified organic farmers are striving to achieve.

I know. But they will not achieve it.

In other words, I suggest to use no chemicals.

I know you do. I also know that that is irrational.

Period! Well, except for
salt on your hard boiled eggs...

You seem to be unaware that by and large plants take in *only*
inorganic chemicals through their roots. They themselves convert them
into organic chemicals

as i say above everything depends from the aquifer type. if it is
under
pressure you may get away with it. if it is an open aquifer then
you
have a problem.

Franz

In message , gary davis
writes
On 6/8/04 11:05 PM, in article , "Franz
Heymann" wrote:


"Nick Apostolakis" wrote in message
...
Nick Apostolakis wrote:

i do not know any water analysis test about pesticide traces in
water
but that is relevant with the type of the aquifer anyway so it may
or
may not be very important.


by the way i saw just today a water analysis for an area near my
own.
guess what. they found all the mainstream pollutants nitrates, Ar,
pesticide traces and all the good stuff.

Please quote the concentrations found and compare them with the
legally limiting concentrations.

Franz, I quote from your message above..."legally limiting
concentrations"???? So, just poison our water a little bit and that is OK?

Essentially - yes. The dose makes the poison. Ultra pure water is itself
a rather corrosive chemical. They sell a low grade pure water to health
freaks in the USA it depletes the calcium in their bones (not a good
idea).

Water is fine once it has some dissolved impurities in it. Modern
analytical kit has no trouble at all detecting lead and uranium in
drinking water from most granite or limestone regions.

In other words, I suggest to use no chemicals. Period! Well, except for
salt on your hard boiled eggs...

Minimum inputs is a perfectly good strategy but you don't get the
Organic(TM) licence to print money with that. No point in over using
chemicals but no reason to have an irrational fear of them either.

Organic(TM) produce is a scam to take more money off the worried well.
Ever notice how massively over packaged their stuff is in supermarkets?

What we should all be fighting against is the supermarket (and
consumers) insistence on having cosmetically perfect uniformly shaped
identikit produce with zero taste and maximal shelf life.

I am all for supporting fresh local produce but provided it is grown
responsibly I don't care whether the farmer has an Organic
certification.

Regards,
--
Martin Brown

On Sun, 6 Jun 2004 09:28:54 +0100, Kay Easton
wrote:

In article , gary davis
writes

Worried about sprays? And so you should. We all should. Eliminate the
doubt and support your local certified organic farmer.

That's just our problem! In the UK we don't have that many certified
organic growers, and a lot of our organic produce comes from spain and
further afield - so we may not get a personal dose of pesticide, but
we're contributing overall to global warming and vehicle emissions.

But if I were a lobbyist for the non-organic farming industry, the
amount of travel involved for organic produce is just what I would be
talking about loud and wide ... so .. I don't know. Perhaps the demand
for organic produce, at present being fulfilled by imported stuff, will
encourage more organic producers in this country and in the longer run
reduce the need for imports.

Not to mention the fact that organic growers do use pesticides.
If Bordeaux mix isn't an artificial pesticide, gawd knows what is.

On Sun, 06 Jun 2004 22:29:45 +0300, Nick Apostolakis
wrote:

snip
In my country we have very few oraganic and a lot of traditional farmers
that do not even think of changing their way of producing.

At least in Greece the vegetables and salad taste of something.
Aren't Greeks amongst the healthiest people in Europe?

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 02:47:47 GMT, gary davis
wrote:

On 6/8/04 11:05 PM, in article , "Franz
Heymann" wrote:


"Nick Apostolakis" wrote in message
...
Nick Apostolakis wrote:

i do not know any water analysis test about pesticide traces in
water
but that is relevant with the type of the aquifer anyway so it may
or
may not be very important.


by the way i saw just today a water analysis for an area near my
own.
guess what. they found all the mainstream pollutants nitrates, Ar,
pesticide traces and all the good stuff.

Please quote the concentrations found and compare them with the
legally limiting concentrations.

Franz, I quote from your message above..."legally limiting
concentrations"???? So, just poison our water a little bit and that is OK?

The legal limit is set at a level that is not a poison.

That is what you are saying.
Certified organic farmers want zero, I repeat zero, contamination of the
water.

Unless they intend to use distilled water that is impossible.

That is why they will not/ do not use chemicals harmful to the
environment.

All water has chemicals in it naturally, some harmful to people some
not.

You say you are 80 years old, if you are, do you not remember drinking
water from a stream. Would you not like to do that again? That is what
certified organic farmers are striving to achieve.

perhaps these farmers should stop using copper sulphate mixed with
lime as a pesticide?

In other words, I suggest to use no chemicals. Period! Well, except for
salt on your hard boiled eggs...

Eliminating chemicals is the aim of the Henry Doubleday Soil Research
Association, but not that of organic farmers, organic farmers use
authorised chemicals.

See "Pesticides in organic farming"
http://www.pan-uk.org/pestnews/pn58/pn58p6.htm




as i say above everything depends from the aquifer type. if it is
under
pressure you may get away with it. if it is an open aquifer then you
have a problem.

The water you dream of doesn't exist anywhere in Western Europe.
I recall that after Chernobyl Greek farmers were obliged to plough
their tomato crops into the ground, because the tomatoes were heavily
contaminated with radioactive fall out. I guess that the chemicals
with a long half life are still their.

On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 00:00:59 +0100, "David Hill"
wrote:


Where Spain was one of these a few years ago, now the Spanish growers are
having to use imported labour (Mostly Moroccan) as the Spanish workers are
now to expensive to employ.
In the UK it is getting very hard to find British people to work on the land
and every year many thousands of foreign workers come here to harvest fruit
and veg.
This reminds me of the 50's when we brought in West Indians because the
British wouldn't do jobs like bus driving etc.

and the Dutch brought in Spaniards as horticultural cheap labour!
Some of them are still here running Spanish/Mexican restaurants.

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...
In message , gary davis
writes
On 6/8/04 11:05 PM, in article ,
"Franz
Heymann" wrote:


"Nick Apostolakis" wrote in message
...
Nick Apostolakis wrote:

i do not know any water analysis test about pesticide traces in
water
but that is relevant with the type of the aquifer anyway so it
may
or
may not be very important.


by the way i saw just today a water analysis for an area near my
own.
guess what. they found all the mainstream pollutants nitrates,
Ar,
pesticide traces and all the good stuff.

Please quote the concentrations found and compare them with the
legally limiting concentrations.

Franz, I quote from your message above..."legally limiting
concentrations"???? So, just poison our water a little bit and that
is OK?

Essentially - yes. The dose makes the poison. Ultra pure water is
itself
a rather corrosive chemical. They sell a low grade pure water to
health
freaks in the USA it depletes the calcium in their bones (not a good
idea).

Water is fine once it has some dissolved impurities in it. Modern
analytical kit has no trouble at all detecting lead and uranium in
drinking water from most granite or limestone regions.

In other words, I suggest to use no chemicals. Period! Well,
except for
salt on your hard boiled eggs...

Minimum inputs is a perfectly good strategy but you don't get the
Organic(TM) licence to print money with that. No point in over using
chemicals but no reason to have an irrational fear of them either.

Organic(TM) produce is a scam to take more money off the worried
well.
Ever notice how massively over packaged their stuff is in
supermarkets?

What we should all be fighting against is the supermarket (and
consumers) insistence on having cosmetically perfect uniformly
shaped
identikit produce with zero taste and maximal shelf life.

I am all for supporting fresh local produce but provided it is grown
responsibly I don't care whether the farmer has an Organic
certification.

Well summarised.

Franz

martin wrote:
On Sun, 06 Jun 2004 22:29:45 +0300, Nick Apostolakis
wrote:


In my country we have very few oraganic and a lot of traditional farmers
that do not even think of changing their way of producing.


At least in Greece the vegetables and salad taste of something.
Aren't Greeks amongst the healthiest people in Europe?
obviously you saw that i am greek and you alluded Greece twice in your
posts.
that is nice.
well i am greek and perfectly healthy.
greek people and particularly southern greek people (such as my self)
once had the today called mediteranean diet and indeed were very
healthy.that diet was base mostly to vegetables, herbs (mostly wild
ones) and olive oil.

that was about 50 years ago.
our today diet has not changed much but it has changed in some basic
principles.
we eat a lot more meat and not so many wild vegetables. we still eat a
lot of olive oil.

the reason of not having many organic farmers in my area is because
we have 2 type of farmers: the greenshouse farmers and the open field
farmers.
the first type is one of very heavy use of pesticides, fertilisers and
water because as you all know the greenhouse is a very intensive type o
cultivation.

in the second type we have another distinction. there are intensive
cultivations and non-intensive cultivations. the first one is just like
the greenhouse cultivation.
the second one has very few fertilisers, very few watering and is almost
organic. it could not be classified as an organic as those people
propably do not know what organing farming is.
the products from such cultivations are of great value because the
products are almost wild.
almost every one on my area has gardens of this last type with almost no
agrochemicals but such that cannot be classified as organic. that is why
we have very few organic farmers in crete.

to tell the absolute truth i know that there are organised proffesional
organic farmers but they are too few.

now the reason that crete or peloponisos or other mediterranean areas
have so many indigenous plants and in many cases high quality products
is the micro-environment of each area. the diet that consists of such
products is the mediterranean diet and is believed to be one of the best.
of course all these apply to the animal products as well: egg, milk,
meat etc when the animals are free to feed themselves from the fields.

--



--------------------------------------------------------------
Nick Apostolakis
e-mail:
Web Site: http://agriroot.aua.gr/~nickapos
--------------------------------------------------------------

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 22:33:12 +0300, Nick Apostolakis
wrote:

martin wrote:
On Sun, 06 Jun 2004 22:29:45 +0300, Nick Apostolakis
wrote:


In my country we have very few oraganic and a lot of traditional farmers
that do not even think of changing their way of producing.


At least in Greece the vegetables and salad taste of something.
Aren't Greeks amongst the healthiest people in Europe?
obviously you saw that i am greek and you alluded Greece twice in your
posts.

I saw the .gr in your e-mail address.
We've had holidays in Greece many times mainly Peloponese, near Pylos,
Cyclades, also Crete, Rhodes and Karpathos.

that is nice.
well i am greek and perfectly healthy.
greek people and particularly southern greek people (such as my self)
once had the today called mediteranean diet and indeed were very
healthy.that diet was base mostly to vegetables, herbs (mostly wild
ones) and olive oil.

It's the same sort of food a tourist gets in Greece. I am not sure why
Greek restaurants outside Greece serve something so different.


that was about 50 years ago.
our today diet has not changed much but it has changed in some basic
principles.
we eat a lot more meat and not so many wild vegetables. we still eat a
lot of olive oil.

and less fish because there are none left, except in fish farms like
the big one near Gialova.


the reason of not having many organic farmers in my area is because
we have 2 type of farmers: the greenshouse farmers and the open field
farmers.

In the big plastic tunnels? I remember seeing a large plain full of
them in southern Crete.

the first type is one of very heavy use of pesticides, fertilisers and
water because as you all know the greenhouse is a very intensive type o
cultivation.

in the second type we have another distinction. there are intensive
cultivations and non-intensive cultivations. the first one is just like
the greenhouse cultivation.
the second one has very few fertilisers, very few watering and is almost
organic. it could not be classified as an organic as those people
propably do not know what organing farming is.

How are all the tomatoes grown that we used to see in hundreds of
trailers near Patras?

Their farming is probably more organic than "Organic" :-)

the products from such cultivations are of great value because the
products are almost wild.
almost every one on my area has gardens of this last type with almost no
agrochemicals but such that cannot be classified as organic. that is why
we have very few organic farmers in crete.

to tell the absolute truth i know that there are organised proffesional
organic farmers but they are too few.

now the reason that crete or peloponisos or other mediterranean areas
have so many indigenous plants and in many cases high quality products
is the micro-environment of each area. the diet that consists of such
products is the mediterranean diet and is believed to be one of the best.
of course all these apply to the animal products as well: egg, milk,
meat etc when the animals are free to feed themselves from the fields.