[Market-farming] Organic vs conventional agriculture production

Bill Shoemaker wshoemak at inil.com
Mon Sep 10 13:53:08 EDT 2007


Jay

That's a great vote of confidence Jay! Thanks.

I should say that there are actually many faculty involved in organic 
research or non-chemical methodology at land-grant Universities all over the 
US. The mood in these institutions has changed considerably in the last 20 
years. I have several colleagues who are making organic research the focus 
of their programs.

Plus, it looks like new sources of funding are emerging to support organic 
or sustainable production methodologies, the USDA being one source. In the 
state of Illinois, the state government is developing programs to support 
organic research and educational programming. So I think the research-based 
information you're interested in is coming.

Regarding the issue this thread has been discussing, I think Jim Riddle 
(Univ of Minn) addressed it quite well. Dennis Avery was politicking, 
nothing more. Expect it to continue, and expect consumers to drive more 
agriculture toward organic and sustainable methods. I think the base Mr. 
Avery stands on will continue to dwindle.

Just a note on projects we are working on. One of our primary vegetable 
crops in Illinois is pumpkins. One of the biggest challenges to pumpkin 
production is viruses, which are vectored by aphids primarily. We had a 
season several years ago which had yields reduced about 80% by viruses, so 
it's a major problem. Growers used to try to control the problem by spraying 
an insecticide for the aphids. But it didn't work because the aphids would 
transmit the virus before the insecticide could kill them.

So we needed a strategy that would prevent the aphids from landing on the 
crop, at least until the fruit were set and largely sized up, when the virus 
would have little impact. We began looking at reflective mulches as a 
deterrent to the aphids. It works pretty well, though not perfectly. Cloudy 
days  sometimes will reduce reflectivity. And you need to use a lot of 
reflective mulch for it to work. But, you get some increases in yield to 
compensate for the cost of the mulch. In a nutshell, it's promising, though 
not perfect. We're still working out the strategy.

We also just recieved notice for funding from USDA on a project to evaluate 
cover cropping systems and integrating them with vegetable planting 
schedules to optimize soil rejuvenation while cropping the fields. this is 
led by Dr. John Masiunas and a colleague from Cornell. It'll be several 
years of work before results are published but I think it'll be a promising 
project.

We are also planing on establishing a series of orchards next season that 
integrate the new disease-resistant varieties with non-chemical 
pest-management strategies for apple production in Illinois. This will be 
complicated as there are so many diseases and insect pests of apples. But 
there are a number of new strategies available that make this project 
promising.

Just a few of the projects we're working on at the UI. I think the younger 
generation of farmers has reason to be hopeful that they won't have to 
listen to folks like Dennis A. too much.

Bill Shoemaker, Sr Research Specialist, Food Crops
University of Illinois - St Charles Horticulture Research Center
www.nres.uiuc.edu/faculty/directory/shoemaker_wh.html







> Since many of us who support organic methods may feel a need to
> occasionally support our position, I would appreciate research Bill
> Shoemaker or his students might provide.
>
> Jay
> Palisade Garden
>>
>>
>>
>
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