North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Dylan Ford" <dford@suffolk.lib.ny.us>]

Dennis - This organic-chemical discussion/disagreement that has arisen is
something I tried to avoid by putting a friendly boilerplate warning at the
front of the original post. The part that has caused the contention is one
paragraph lifted out of a long essay, a quotation from Hugh Lovel.

Mr. Lovel is a long time successful farmer who endured more than his share
of crop failures and disappointments in coming to his expertise. Now he has
moved to Australia and with some partners is running an agricultural
consultancy. Hugh works with biodynamic growers, organic growers,
conventional chemical growers - in fact he will work with anyone who has an
open mind. The reason he works with everyone, no matter where on the
spectrum they may be, is that he has learned from long hard experience that
it serves no good purpose to spout dogma at people who are trying to bring
in a crop and pay their bills. He is successfully wooing his farmers away
from chemicals with pest resistance, brix readings, soil tests, boon
harvests and premium market prices.

Only by demonstrating a better, more effective and cheaper way can farmers
be moved to change their strategy. I hope you will overlook the perceived
insult in that one paragraph and go back and read the entire essay. Perhaps
if you had had access to this explication of the Boron-Silica-Humate
relationship back when your trees were being decimated it might have made a
difference.

That was the point of my posting it, not to create friction, but to put
another awareness, another potential tool in the hands of growers, to
perhaps add a bit of resistance to their crop trees and plants - if - and
only if - it makes any sense to them to give it a trial. I have never seen
this Boron-silica-carbon relationship explained anywhere else before, and
Hugh was generous enough to give me permission to share it with some
friends.
Sincerely,  dylan


Dylan Ford is the author of the proposal at www.ideaforpresident.com , a
website devoted to an idea that could provide an avenue to address pollution
issues, food safety, social justice, prison reform and healthcare.

From: <dmnorton@
Subject: [NAFEX] Boron and other things


My point is that there are some apple growers that have no choice in using
chemicals because some pests are just too prolific in their geographic area
to sucessfully use organics.