Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Aliza" <realfood@wonderfulfarm.com>]

I sure hope not Deiter.  Lots of slugs or other pests would only indicate soil imbalances.  Healthy well mineralized plants have very few pests - actually none of them are really pests.  They are there to get rid of the weak plants.  They are actually our friends if we choose to look at their real purpose. 

 

Aliza

----- Original Message -----

From: Dieter Brand

To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 12:38 AM

Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] certified organic

>... organic certification is about the process, not the product.

 

I guess in practical terms this means that the inspector from the

certification authority, who visits the organic farm at regular intervals,

has to use his/her experience and know-how to judge if a given

crop can have been obtained by the natural resources like manure,

green manuring, etc., available on that farm. I wonder, though,

do they count the number of slugs crawling between the salads

to ascertain the absence of pesticides?

 

Dieter Brand

Portugal

Dan Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com> wrote:

>
> Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:50:33 -0700
> From: "Tradingpost"
> Re: [Livingontheland] certified organic was: growing own food
>
> Not to be picky but to make a point - the organic standards don't actually
> allow a percentage of residuals or disallow them. Certification simply does
> not involve routine testing for banned substances. It's all about the
> paperwork, showing you got seeds, materials, etc. from approved sources,
> and claiming not to have used non-organic pesticides and fertilizers. They
> cannot test your produce for chemical fertilizers. There isn't any such
> test. Testing for various pesticides would be outrageously expensive and
> unreliable, and it just isn't part of organic certification.
>
> In addition, there are huge loopholes in the existing rules, as you point
> out with soy lecithin. All so the multinationals can make off with the
> profits from unsuspecting customers.
>
> paul
This is covered very well in this month's AcresUSA magazine. In a
sidebar on page 14, Mark Keating explains that organic certification is
about the process, not the product. In a way, it has to be, because
testing after the product is already grown would be the hard way to
eliminate pesticides, etc. In a perfect world, both the process and the
product would be monitored, but that would mean higher costs and a
change in philosophy from "always low prices"....
Testing after the fact is the way that corporations get away with
dumping 'x' amount of pollutants per year or per day. Eliminating the
pollutants up front means the intrusion of authority into the process.
Farmers can be forced to accept this, factories buy their way out of it.

Dan C.

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