Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[John D'hondt <dhondt@eircom.net>]

The paperwork was so comprehensive that an inspector would get a good 
idea if any fiddling took place and then there was the annual inspection 
itself. The inspectors were ecologists/botanists with a lot of 
experience and they looked everywhere.
Not such a bad system here (except for the cost to us). Just as I myself 
would be able to detect what biocides had been used if any and when, so 
could these people. What weeds are there to be found and what sort of 
insects. They would look between the leaves of cabbages for slugs or 
caterpillars and they would pull up the odd carrot to look for carrot 
fly damage. They would taste a tomato or a leaf of certain crops. If you 
are any good, you know after that. Typically an inspection took half a day.
John

On 18/05/15 03:32, herb farmer wrote:
> I believe you. I'm not certified and grow organic anyway. But there's 
> more from where I see it. Here any certified grower can grow more of 
> the same certified crop somewhere else and sell that chemically grown 
> crop alongside their certified crop. Or just buy it and resell it. No 
> one would know. Of course no one would know if certified crops had 
> synthetic fertilizer and pesticides. Why? Because certification never 
> uses tests to verify it's organic. It can't. With so many chemicals in 
> use to test for, the cost would bankrupt any grower. So just how 
> organic is all of this stuff? Especially in the supermarket chains.
>
> On 5/17/2015 1:31 PM, John D'hondt wrote:
> > We have been eating organic for some 30 years so I know it is 
> > possible, especially if you should have your own farm.
> > However...I can only pity the poor people if they have to fill in as 
> > much paperwork as we had to when we were certified organic.. It cost 
> > us about 200 hours per year to keep the papers in order. It would 
> > have been more than two people full time would have been able to cope 
> > with if we had been a restaurant.
> > John
> >
> > On 16/05/15 22:32, herb farmer wrote:
> > > In 'Organic Life,' The Making Of America's First Certified Organic 
> > > Restaurant
> > >
> > > http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/05/12/404984547/in-organic-life-the-making-of-americas-first-organic-restaurant 
> > >
> > >
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