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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] ORGANIC NEWS - ROTATIONS RANT

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  • From: Emery Mitchamore <emitch@att.net>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] ORGANIC NEWS - ROTATIONS RANT
  • Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2011 14:25:34 -0600

John, didn't you say that you have been planting potatoes in the same area
for years, to develop a variety well suited to your location? I believe I
have read that potatoes should be planted in a different place every year to
prevent blight. If I've understood correctly, your experience refutes common
belief.

E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore
www.hillcountrynatives.net



On Jan 21, 2011, at 1:24 PM, John D'hondt wrote:

>
>> *ORGANIC NEWS - ROTATIONS RANT!! [big snips]
>> Over the years a great many dedicated and totally committed people have
>> spent most of their lives promoting and protecting the integrity of
>> organics, often at very great personal cost. Now a new breed of 'soft
>> organic' people seem to be emerging, who think it's more important to be
>> 'media friendly' than to defend long held basic organic principles. They
>> even consider some of us people to be 'organic fascists or extremists' -
>> (which I have often been called!). Organic pioneers like Lawrence Hills,
>> Lady Eve Balfour and many others must be turning in their graves!
>
> <<< I am probably getting a reputation of a devils advocate but I can't
> help it. I am somewhat in doubt that organic pioneers would mind much that
> rotations are not strictly adhered to if they understood the background for
> the reason of rotation as much as some of us do today.
>
> I just a few days ago received a long article about glyphosate/roundup by
> Jeffrey M. Smith in my inbox that might make some of these reasons clear.
> The title of the article is : "Monsanto's Roundup Triggers over 40 plant
> diseases and endangers human and animal health."
> The way roundup triggers disease is by chelating/binding to necessary trace
> elements in soil. Healthy plants need almost 40 different elements just as
> we do and if they can't get them they are open to attack by mostly fungal
> diseases.
> A nice experiment is described in the article of plants grown in completely
> sterile soil to which roundup is added and they are only slightly stunted
> compared to plants grown in normal soil without roundup. Plants grown in
> normal soil, full of soil organisms with roundup die almost instantaniously.
>
> Plants and especially vegetables are miners for minerals. Some groups will
> take up more copper and zink and leave manganese and molybdenum mostly
> alone. And that is the reason for rotation, if we plant vegetables of the
> same group in the same plot year after year we will get short of copper and
> zink and the vegetables will get diseased.
> Plant vegetables from another group and they may mine other minerals that
> are not yet exhausted. And if we have a very rich soil or subsoil the
> exhausted mineral supply may have become replenished after a few years.
>
> If we grow vegetables on the same land for a long time we run the risk of
> terminally exhausting all kinds of minerals and rotations of however long a
> period will no longer help. Vegetables grown today have on average 50-70%
> less minerals than 50 years ago, even organic vegetables grown in rotation.
>
> Things get really weird when chemicals have been applied. Seems that
> roundup is not at all as biodegradable as Monsanto has always told us. In
> some soils it has been found to have a half-life (when just half the
> original amount has been degraded) of 22 years. It has bound minerals and
> remains like that for a long time. Until for instance a well meaning grower
> applies phosphate fertilizer or an organic chicken manure when the
> glyphosate becomes active again and kills the whole new crop.
> Another unpleasant detail is that soil tests can indicate that there are
> plenty of trace elements in the soil while these are completely
> inaccessible where glyphosate has been applied even many years before.
>
> Organic pioneers might indeed turn around in their graves but perhaps for
> different reasons than that people don't adhere to rotations very strictly.
> john
>
>
>
>
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