Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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   "What happened this year is the worst case scenario only possible in an 
industrialized food system. "

from 2009 - a lesson on industrial farming
excerpt

Tomato Disappointment: A Farmer’s Perspective on Late Blight in the Northeast
July 28th, 2009  By MK Wyle
http://civileats.com/2009/07/28/battling-late-blight-in-the-north-east/

Earlier this summer, tomato transplants sold in Lowes, Walmart, and Home 
Depot carried the spores of Phytophthora infestans (literally “plant 
destroyer” in Latin) into the Northeast, where a cool, wet summer provided 
ideal conditions for an epidemic.  Phytophthora infestans, more commonly 
referred to as late blight, is an incredibly contagious plant disease, which 
can knock out entire fields of tomatoes and potatoes in a matter of days.  
Late blight was the cause of the infamous Irish Potato Famine of the 
nineteenth century—this is a plant disease which means business.

Normally, late blight does not affect the Northeast, as cold winters prevent 
any spores from wintering over.  In the south, where late blight can survive 
winter, the high heat of summer holds the blight in check and prevents the 
total crop loss that Northeastern farmers now dread.  What happened this year 
is the worst case scenario only possible in an industrialized food system.  
The disease overwintered in an Alabama nursery, which then shipped infected 
plants to the Northeast and spread the blight far more quickly and 
ubiquitously than the disease ever could have traveled on its own.

At the farm where I am working, late blight has been creeping ever nearer for 
the last two weeks: first it was in all the states surrounding Massachusetts, 
then it was in nearby counties, then it was here, in Berkshire county, until 
Friday, when my boss, Don, found the first blighted tomato on our farm.  We 
had eaten our first cherry tomatoes on Monday.