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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Former inspector lifts lid on the murky world oforganic food

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Former inspector lifts lid on the murky world oforganic food
  • Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2011 22:02:02 +0100


All inspectors can inspect is the record keeping. They can't tell if I put some 10-20-10 NPK on my bean beds. Or if I used some methyl iodide on my strawberries. Or Roundup on all the weeds. There's no way without specific and costly testing for those things and a hundred other things that violate organic standards.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

I don't agree Paul. At least here inspectors are walking the land. If they are any way good they know from the variety of "weeds" and the variety of insects and other small critters what has been done to the land as would I at least in a hundred and fifty mile radius from here. With knowledge of local conditions such as natural soil and past weather you know how high bean plants should be at what time of the year. What shade of green to expect from their leaves and how their root development should be. If for instance the root development is much larger than expected then you know that P has been added in a soil that is normally P deficient. If the farmer has no receipt for allowed rock phosphate then he has added something else. Over here most of the rock phosphate comes from the Spanish Sahara and consists of little bits of fossilized fish with a good number of small shark teeth visible. That does not disappear in a few weeks or even months. You see how much organic amendments such as compost have been applied simply from the color of the ground. Without compost or mulch that color would be reddish here or if the subsoil is exposed grey. And if you see beans twice as lush as in the previous farm or the next farm you inspect you know something is not right and that NPK is likely.

Also, I do not think it would be that expensive necessarily to test for pesticides and fungicides. What university with a science department does not at least have one gas chromatograph? These machines are extremely sensitive and it only needs an experienced operator half an hour to sniff out any man made chemical in even the lowest concentration. If there were a serious demand for it this would not have to be that expensive.

That this is not done is imo a sign of the times. It is well known that governments, really instruments of the big corporations, in many countries, at least the US and in Ireland as well have done their best to systematically reduce the requirements for organic certification. And that the people who originally started the "organic" movement were not at all pleased with this. This was for the benefit of the industry corporations, to allow them to get rid of original organic, small producers.

john






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