permaculture

["georg parlow" <georg@email-me.at>]

> > I have a friend who buys
> > non-organic olive-oil assuming  that there is no difference between
> > organic and "common" ways to grow olives.
>
> industry. Your friend is kidding him/herself.
>
> Also, organic olives are generally grown on small farms, while chemical
> olives come from industrial mega-farms.

while this might be true for california, in the traditional olive growing
countries like greece or italy olive growing is a usually a small family
business, often combined with goats and/or vegies, figs, raisins...  spain
is a bit different, but even there are no industrial olive mega farms like
you know them from the states. the huge oil producers buy most of their
olives from small growers and start mistreating the product from there on,
but the growin is for the most part quite o.k.. of course it isnt true that
there is NO difference, but the difference is not as big as with most other
organic versus non-organic products.

georg