North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Mark & Helen Angermayer" <hangermayer@isp.com>]

Hi Karen,

I think those are some insightful thoughts.  I have just a few comments to
add.  I think organic fits much better with backyard orchardists, or small
growers who market their own product.  Small growers, particularly those
with supplemental off-farm income can afford to experiment and may have less
pest pressure.  The situation is different for someone trying to make a
living full-time farming.

It's great that new techniques may offer some promise for organic
orcharding, but there is a caveat.  I used to be a pig farmer and received
lots of monthly trade magazines (National Hog Farmer, Pork magazine, etc.)
Practically every issue there were new and trendy ideas on raising pork.
The ideas sounded great, but actually implementing them and making them work
was another thing.  98% of them went in the graveyard of "great ideas."  It
looks to me a lot of the organic ideas fall into the same category (from a
commercial perspective).  For instance, there are more disease resistant
apples, but can they be successfully marketed on a large scale?  Some time
back there was a survey on this list-serve asking folks their favorite
apples.  I don't recall a single disease resistant apple (with the exception
of Goldrush, and it's very susceptible to CAR) that made any list of
favorite apple.  So is the consumer willing to accept a less flavorful
apple?  Maybe some will, but I suspect most won't.

There may be people using unique farming practices, but in farming one can
always find someone doing something different, and claiming it works.  The
key is making it work in your climate and circumstances.  Pigs in the
orchard may work for some, but there would be a lot involved implementing
it.  Good fence, waterers, some medications, wormer.  One would probably
want feeder pigs (50 lb. pigs).  Large hogs have a built in pry-bar that
would probably do considerable orchard damage.  If the pigs have to be kept
through cold weather to fatten up, then some minimal facilities would be
needed for shelter.  Labor and/or equipment would be needed for manure
removal from the barn.  Heated waterers.  A bulk feed bin and feed system
would be required (bagged feed is way too expensive to feed market hogs.)
Marketing the pigs would be an obstacle in many areas.  Sale barns for hogs
are pretty much non-existent anymore unless you want to give them away.  And
packers require pigs within a certain weight range and dock significantly if
they're out of sort.  If they are too far out, they won't buy them.  For
someone with 50 hogs, would require several trips to the packer to market
hogs in sort (they don't all grow at the same rate.)  This is not a problem
for commercial hog farmers, as they handle such large numbers, they can
nearly always fill a semi with sorted hogs.  I'm not saying the pigs
wouldn't earn their keep by keeping pest populations down, and there may be
some "free" weight gain from fallen drops, but the 50 pigs (as a profit
center themselves) would probably lose money.

Again, some organic techniques may work for orchards in certain locales, or
backyard orchards (particularly bagging fruit, which probably the only way
to grow organic fruit in my area) but would not be cost effective for many
commercial orchards.

Mark
KS


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Karen Tillou
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 2:59 PM
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Organic vs Standard Spray Programs


i have so many questions and sidelines that pertain to this/these subjects,
i don't even know where to begin:


disclaimer: i live in oregon; no curculio, little fireblight, no summer
humidity, etc.  i've never grown fruit back east, though i grew up in
buffalo NY.  i also believe oil is just going to get scarcer and scarcer.


the thing i love about nafex is that it is a group for commercial and
backyard growers alike.  this is an issue that to me comes down amidst those
professional/amateur lines: who out there in the east is successfully
growing organic fruit? are you in your backyard, or big-time commercial, or
inbetween, taking fruit to a farmer's market or restaurant when you have
it...


what is successful fruit?  does it mean no bugs, or does it mean enough bug
free fruit to have some for storage and eating out of hand, enough wormy
but ok fruit for canning/drying, and enough wormy/scabby fruit to juice with
and make cider with too?  does it mean some years are boom and some are
bust?


what are the bug tolerances for you smaller commercial growers - can/do you
sell buggy/scabby seconds to home canners at the farmers markets? is it
legal to sell juice made with a wormy apple (wormy but sound; not rotting,
of course...)?


i like a lot what rivka said the economics of organic growers, and what the
cornell study did (or did not) assume with regards to spray programs.  i
think the universities and extensions are somewhat locked into the
conventional model of spray regimes, and don't always take into account the
multi-pronged approach of good organic growing. i think it invites me as an
organic grower to look very critically at a university study saying it isn't
cost effective. maybe it isn't cost effective from a conventional
standpoint, selling to the middleman who ships it to place X, 2000 miles
away, but is it cost effective when you are selling direct to your
customers, integrating a lot of techniques for pest/disease control, and not
putting all your hopes into one basket (apples), but managing a diverse
farm/multiple crops?


so many of the old-time cultural and mechanical ways of controlling
bugs/diseases from pre-WWII are really labor intensive, but are they worth
it on the small scale?  someone mentioned bagging as totally worth their
labor dollars (was it jim?) - is anyone doing the wacky knocking curculio
out onto tarps? is that worth the time?  running animals under trees for
june drop control, windfalls, larvae overwinterers?  we bag here for scab
and the codling moth and apple maggot, but i have yet to introduce animals
(poultry or pigs) into the orchard as it is on public proerty, i don't live
there, i'm not there every day, etc.  someday, i hope to work that concept
into an orchard.
thinking out loud,
karen


oregon city, OR - zone 8a and wet


On Apr 13, 2008, at 2:48 PM, Road's End Farm wrote:

Hi Dennis,

I downloaded the actual study, which was linked to in the link you sent. I
don't grow apples, so I'm not the best person to comment on this (again, I'd
suggest you contact people actually growing organic apples in your state; if
I remember a previous discussion on this correctly I found several by
googling); but I did notice the following:

First of all, this is not actually a comparison of an organically maintained
orchard to a conventionally maintained orchard. The entire orchard was
conventionally maintained in the use of fertilizers and herbicides. A number
of trees within the block were then, for one year only, given a partially
organic spray program as far as insecticides and thinning were concerned
(even some of the "organic" insecticide sprays were substances not approved
for organic production), while other trees within the same orchard were
conventionally sprayed with insecticides and thinners.

Organic growers spent years arguing with Cornell about such "trials" in
their vegetable plots.
Cornell finally agreed, and set up a separate organically managed farm. (I
don't know whether they have any apples there or not.) The setup used in the
study you quoted is the proper setup for experiments involving single-item
variables; but organic management is not a single-item variable, it's a
whole-field technique, and not just because organic growers are being
nitpicky. Much of organic pest management is provided by naturally occurring
beneficial organisms. The field as a whole needs to be hospitable to
beneficials, and it can take several years for the populations to build up.
Beneficials can be affected by soil conditions as well as by the presence or
absence of sprays applied above ground in the general area, and so may be
affected by growing techniques that do not involve obvious insecticides.
Attractiveness of fruit to pests can also be affected by fertilization and
other growing techniques.

Another couple of points, less major than the above, but they did occur to
me:

-- The size difference in organic fruit was attributed by the study to the
use of a thinning spray. I don't know how many organic growers actually use
this spray to thin. This would have affected the yield results. (They also
may have used too much of it, as they say the organic thinning spray reduced
the number of fruit per tree to fewer than the number on the conventionally
thinned trees.)

-- I don't know how many organic apple growers actually use this many sprays
overall. Because something is listed as permissible doesn't mean that all
growers are using it. (Of course, I also don't know whether most
conventional apple growers actually use this many sprays, either.) If
growers who do have high levels of beneficial insects in practice use fewer
sprays, this would affect their cost comparisons. (I bring this up because
my experience with vegetable crops is that most organic growers use far less
in the way of insecticides than someone looking at a list of possible-use
materials might conclude; and because I have seen comparisons of cost or
environmental impact which assumed that it was common for organic growers to
use repeated applications of materials that in fact many didn't use at all,
and most of those who did used less often. Again, I don't do apples, and
don't know how the situation compares.)

-- There were clearly varietal differences in results, though I couldn't
figure out from the study to what extent this affected the overall results,
as varietal differences, as near as I could tell, were given for organic and
conventional treatments combined, rather than separately. Choosing the right
varieties for the specific farm is an important part of organic technique.
There are certainly varieties that can't be successfully grown organically,
in any given climate; a fair answer to the question of whether apples can be
grown organically in the Northeast, and if so at what cost, would require
specifying what varietes were being discussed.

As I understand it, apples are one of the hardest crops to grow organically
in this area. However, I don't think this particular study actually proves
much of anything on the subject.

--Rivka
Finger Lakes NY; zone 5 mostly


On Apr 9, 2008, at 6:46 PM, <dmnorton@royaloakfarmorchard.com> wrote:


Here is a excerpt from the latest Scaffolds IPM newsletter from Cornell that
I though everyone might find interesting:


"In summary, pesticides plus application costs totaled $650/A for the
standard program as compared with $1,173/A for the organic program. Total
yield per acre (including fruit damaged by pests) was 209, 409, and 861
bushels per acre for the unsprayed, organic, and standard treatments,
respectively. Pest control costs per bushel were $2.98 for fruit from the
organic block compared with $0.76 for the standard. Results from this trial
show that pest-free apples can be produced organically in New York, but
organic producers will likely need at least a 400% sales premium compared
with standard growers, due to the high costs and reduced yields associated
with organic pest control. Further research may lead to cost reductions and
improved productivity for organic systems, but farmers currently considering
a switch to organic apple production should verify that their prospective
buyers will be willing to pay a signifi cant premium for organic fruit."

To read the complete article go to
http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/ent/scaffolds/2008/080331.html




_______________________________________________
nafex mailing list
nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Reproduction of list messages or archives is not allowed.
This includes distribution on other email lists or reproduction on web
sites.
Permission to reproduce is NEVER granted, so don't claim you have
permission!

**YOU MUST BE SUBSCRIBED TO POST!**
Posts from email addresses that are not subscribed are discarded.
No exceptions.
----
To subscribe or unsubscribe, go to the bottom of this page (also can be used
to change other email options):
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/nafex

File attachments are NOT stripped by this list.
TAKE STEPS TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM COMPUTER VIRUSES!
Please do not send binary files.
Use plain text ONLY in emails!

NAFEX web site:   http://www.nafex.org/





_______________________________________________
nafex mailing list
nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Reproduction of list messages or archives is not allowed.
This includes distribution on other email lists or reproduction on web
sites.
Permission to reproduce is NEVER granted, so don't claim you have
permission!

**YOU MUST BE SUBSCRIBED TO POST!**
Posts from email addresses that are not subscribed are discarded.
No exceptions.
----
To subscribe or unsubscribe, go to the bottom of this page (also can be used
to change other email options):
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/nafex

File attachments are NOT stripped by this list.
TAKE STEPS TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM COMPUTER VIRUSES!
Please do not send binary files.
Use plain text ONLY in emails!

NAFEX web site:   http://www.nafex.org/



No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG.
Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.13/1377 - Release Date: 4/14/08
9:26 AM