North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Douglas Hinds <cedecor@gmx.net>]

On 11/12/2012 4:58 PM, mark wessel wrote:
> I am very much interested in better understanding why you would only want 
> fruit from trees on there [their} own roots. I am assuming it is coming from 
> a nutrition standpoint. Maybe more?
Yes, it's a much larger concept than nutrition (which is kind of like 
chemical based agriculture), but not as easy to explain as "the soil is 
a densely populated environment in which myriad living organisms 
contribute to the health and growth of plants and the water retention 
capacity of the soil".  I know that phytohormones are produced by a 
number of soil microorganisms because soil ecology is a recognized field 
and far more people have their attention focused on it than was true 
before Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring".

How do explain the taste of a fruit to someone who hasn't ever eaten 
anything comparable?  (And this is even bigger, because a grafted fruit 
doesn't generate the same experience, which goes much farther and lasts 
a lot longer than taste - it's a whole different state of being.  (I say 
that with the full understanding that nafex includes at least on 
subscriber that apparently despises holistic concepts and is likely to 
attempt to denigrate that comment).
> It is a pretty big step to leave the country partly due to this reasoning. 
> Love to hear more Douglas.
Two separate but related issues are relevant and Seedling vs. Gmrafted 
Fruit isn't the main one, because in Southern California (my last home 
in the USA), more than a little seedling fruit was available at the time 
I left.  Seedling Fruit is secondary to Diet as a whole because as 
mentioned earlier, fruit from seedling trees is THE staple element of my 
diet (which makes it even more important), which does not normally 
include cooked food.
> On a side note, I see that Douglas is in Mexico. Diane Kennedy, in one of her 
> regional cookbooks from Mexico writes a bit about the importance of seedling 
> apples is [in] some of the very rural areas of the country.
But not anywhere I've lived (in Western Mexico, aside from a few years 
in the SouthEast (the Papaloapan Basin).

We have them here and I eat them occasionally (when they're brought in 
by a Tarascan Indian woman from the Patzcuaro Region, whose fruit has 
allowed me to remain in this overpopulated and large urban city to 
elaborate projects that have attracted the attention of participants in 
the next Federal Government (which will assume power on , December 1st).

In order to explain what drove me to do what I did (decide to move to 
Mexico almost 39 years ago), I'd have to present the events that led me 
to change my diet so radically in the first place: The (medically 
instigated) health problems that forced me to reconsider the assumptions 
that all of us were raised with, the experiments carried out in order to 
establish a working criteria that would hold up indefinitely and under 
scrutiny, provide for my physical needs and allow me to perform the 
tasks that my developed potential and experience allow (and the current 
local, national and international situations allow requires).

The unalterable conclusion is that things are what they are and if you 
know what to look for, the right decisions can be made.  And while these 
discussions are all good and valid, the fact of the matter is, if you 
want to try or eat high quality seedling fruit you can't get it, any 
more than you can drive your fuel cell power car into the gas station 
and ask them to fill it up with hydrogen.  The point being, this 
petroleum based gas stations weren't there either, a hundred years ago 
(and I can remember quite clearly when gasoline cost under 25 cents a 
gallon).

Forgive me if I seem to be evading the issue but if I'm going to explain 
why I uprooted myself from one language and culture and transplanted 
myself in another (an eminently reasonable question), it's going to take 
a little more time and effort that I was prepared to make when I decided 
to add a comment to this thread.  But I think it's worth doing and 
suspect that the time has come to begin doing just that.  And that's a 
commitment.

Meanwhile, I'd be happy to answer any specific questions regarding 
either the problems inherent to grafting and the potential of seedling 
trees.

As a point of departure however:  Anyone who thinks trees were put here 
for H. Sapiens to exploit them in ways that run counter to evolution 
(which grafting interrupts) and diversity (ditto) is unlikely to 
sympathize with the perspective I present: Fruit Trees can do things we 
can't!  And the availability and quality of the life-giving substances 
they (not us) produce depends on our understanding their very real needs 
and helping them fulfill their potential, so ALL of us can fulfill our 
own destiny.  (And if that sounds religious, so does permaculture and 
organic agriculture - both of which have ignored this issue).  Lastly, 
those that make those groundless accusations would benefit from 
acquiring a bit more respect for the work, rights and abilities of other 
living organisms - neither American Exceptionalism nor  Human Despotism 
is going to help resolve anyone's problems, on nafex or anywhere else.

Douglas Hinds