[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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