Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

I've seen some claims that hybrids which grow larger don't actually have more 
nutrients, just bigger and less nutrient-dense. So all other things being 
equal you'd have to eat twice as much to get the same nutrition, more or less.

This all raises some bothersome questions.  We know that to some extent 
plants reseeding themselves do evolve over generations, through natural 
selection and in response to their environment.  Do chemically grown seeds 
over generations lose some of their ability to take up nutrients without 
chemical fertilizers? If so, wouldn't chemically grown seeds actually need 
chemicals and fare worse thrown suddenly into an organic program? We could 
ask the same questions of pesticides.  Do seeds from plants grown for 
generations with all the fungicides and pesticides gradually lose natural 
defenses against disease and pests? I've never seen these issues addressed 
anywhere. Are we sowing the seeds of our own destruction (literally)?

paul, tradingpost@riseup.net
---------------
The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our 
most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its 
renewal is our only hope.
   - Wendell Berry
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 3/29/2006 at 8:44 AM Pat Meadows wrote:

>On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:07:55 -0500, you wrote:
>
>>Laura wrote:
>>
>>> Organically raised seeds are adapted to organic practices. If you are
>>> organic, using organic seeds would probably be helpful.
>>
>>Laura, I can't remember who told us that, and that hybrid seeds do better
>>under a "conventional" regime, but it's something I would like to
>understand
>>better.  Exactly why is this so?
>>
>
>I don't believe it on an across-the-board level.  It's
>certainly not so in my experience.
>
>Hybrid eggplant and pepper seeds do better for me here
>because we have cool summers and neither peppers nor
>eggplants do well in cool summers.  Hybrid tomatoes do no
>better than O.P. tomatoes.
>
>Hybrid seeds make more money for the seed producer and
>seller.
>
>But I think you are confusing 'open-pollinated' and
>'organic'.  The two are not the same at all.