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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Dennis Avery is confused

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  • From: Leigh Hauter <lh AT pressroom.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Dennis Avery is confused
  • Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003 16:10:44 -0500

I thought this was about manure use. not a vendetta against organic farmers.

I will agree. bad farming practices are bad for the environment, the farmer, and the people that eat the produce. For those using chemical pesticides and herbicides there are very strict guidelines that should be followed. And, I suspect, some people don't. For those using manure, there are guidelines too. It seems, though, that you haven't been around very many farms or you would know that many, many non-organic farmers, by an order of magnitude out numbering the organic ones, use manure on their fields. (I wonder if any farmer on the Delmarva Peninsula uses chemical fertilizers when all the chicken litter you could want is free for the hauling). This was one of the points that Avery was confused about.

So, if you are going to somehow use the poor handling of manure as an attack on organic farming you need to get your logic straight. Organic farmers are just a very small subset of farmers using manure. They are probably even a smaller subset of farmers who mishandled manure. I think a semantics person would say you have poorly defined classifications. In other words, Avery's logic is real fuzzy. He is either deliberately or by error misrepresenting reality.

And since we have brought up Stoessel here's an interesting fact. While there are generally accepted standards for journalism, Stoessel's employer does not hold him to these standards. They consider him a 'media personality' (apparently he has an extremely high Q-rating). It doesn't matter whether he tells the truth or lies, he's there for entertainment. (FAIR did a report about this).




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