North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[mangodance <bmn@iglou.com>]

Alan Haigh wrote:
> Good, now we can get serious.  The advocates of organic agriculture 
> don't always convey to me a complex and moderate embrace of the shades 
> of grey.    An absolute rejection of the use of a single manmade 
> molecule on soil or plant has a definate black or white ring to it.  
> There aren't just two camps in this discussion.  I don't align myself 
> with the profiteers of unsustainable agriculture. 

<grin> And to others, the advocates of what seems to be standard 
practice in ag today also seem polarized.  I'll agree in theory that 
with ANY topic of dicussion these days (not just fruit) it seems de 
rigeur to align onesself before real scholarship, and that it tends to 
cloud communication with a certain predetermination and dismissal. 
Basically, all subjects have their zealots.  NO camp is best judged by 
its zealots.  Zealots are usually loud, vocal, and determined.  The 
message gets lost and you end up with the poles lashing out at each 
other.  Most of us in the middle just scrath our heads.

> Agriculture is deadly.  It consumes wilderness and the habitat of the 
> thousands of disappearing species we read about every day.  It destroys 
> the forests that help regulate the climate.  The more effiecient it is 
> the less land it consumes.  It's a very complex issue, I understand that 
> and organic agriculture produces far more calories in ratio to those put 
> into it than conventional agriculture.  But conventional agriculture 
> produces more food in a land use to food quantity ratio.

This isn't always the case...conventional ag just has more study money 
and a longer history of making it available for directed studies.  I'll 
agree for the sake of discussion however that conventional ag has 
figured out how to produce a lot of food.  I wonder how efficient it 
would be without all the subsidy, reinforced structure, and agrichem 
corporate power it enjoys.  Clearly, the double-digit surge in 
alternatives year after year is a sign something is amiss.  Since 
petroleum is a finite resource, and we seem to act like we believe it to 
be renewable in a generation, what does that mean for a world propped up 
by petrochems?

> My argument is that the existential challenges to the human species 
> right now are far too serious to throw away any of the arrows in our 
> quiver of survival tactics including chemicals that may make the land 
> more productive.  That doesn't mean agricultural strip-mining by 
> corporate farms should not be regulated and converted to more 
> sustainable methods.  

However, it is the almost total lack of sustainable thinking and lack of 
real action (in many countries) that many believe put us squarely in the 
midst of such challenges.  I don't think mankind's challenge is 
producing enough food (not yet anyway).  It seems to be one of waste and 
distribution of food along with overpopulation, poor settlement, and 
squandering of resources. Add to that an almost total lack of 
responsibility for our own actions and an inability to look at moderate 
to long range issues, shortsighted politics and politicians, and I'm not 
sure more tonnage will do much.  Those folks on this list, those who 
grow and toil, are commended for not following what has unfortunately 
become the norm.