Is Organic Farming Feasible??

[Michaelangelica]

Interesting article on how long it can take for soil to change

transect points: Rejuvenating Soil Life Requires Patience

 

another interesting grass roots movement

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Farmer power the key to green advance

On the environmental side, industrial farming damages our planet's life support systems in a number of ways:

 

* it is a major contributor to global warming through intensive use of fossil fuels for fertilisers, agrochemicals, production, transport, processing, refrigeration and retailing

* agrochemical nutrient pollution causes biological "dead zones" in areas as diverse as the Gulf of Mexico, the Baltic Sea and the coasts of India and China

* human activity now produces more nitrogen than all natural processes combined

* crop and livestock genetic diversity has been lost through the spread of industrial monocultures, reducing resilience in the face of climate and other changes

 

The progress of this growing food sovereignty movement could have profound implications for scientific research, politics, trade and the twin curses of poverty and environmental degradation.

 

Towards sustainable agriculture

 

Within the food sovereignty approach, the environmental ills outlined above are avoided by developing production systems that mimic the biodiversity levels and functioning of natural ecosystems.

 

 

Farmer in Cambodia

 

Eco-farming helps poor

These systems seek to combine the modern science of ecology with the experiential knowledge of farmers and indigenous peoples.

[Michaelangelica]

Organic farming 'no better for the environment'

By Cahal Milmo

Published: 19 February 2007

 

Organic food may be no better for the environment than conventional produce and in some cases is contributing more to global warming than intensive agriculture, according to a government report.

 

The first comprehensive study of the environmental impact of food production found there was "insufficient evidence" to say organic produce has fewer ecological side-effects than other farming methods.

 

The 200-page document will reignite the debate surrounding Britain's £1.6bn organic food industry which experienced a 30 per cent growth in sales last year.

No comment.

What do you think?

Complete article here:

Independent Online Edition > Environment

[Cedars]

No comment.

What do you think?

Complete article here:

Independent Online Edition > Environment

 

Without reading the whole report, I have some comments based on the news report.

 

First, they admit the study didnt encompass the whole of the process involved with conventional vs organics with soils, biodiversity, etc. This leaves out major aspects of the argument for increased organics.

 

They admit there are advantages for at least some of the organics:

 

"'many' organic products had lower ecological impacts than conventional methods using fertilisers and pesticides."

 

One negative example used was organic milk. Without having read much about the process to declare a milk product organic, if I remember right, part of the procedure requires the animals range for at least part of the day on lands that qualify as organic. This is one of the things about the declaration of organic that bothers me, in both the milk and meat aspect of organic. As long as the animal is fed organic foods it should qualify as organic. There is some legitimacy there in the report but the issues can be addressed via changes in what is organic milk/meat.

 

From the news report:

"Organic tomatoes grown in heated greenhouses in Britain generate one hundred times the amount of CO2 per kilogram produced by tomatoes in unheated greenhouses in southern Spain."

 

Not a valid comparison in my opinion. Its like comparing vegetables grown in Minnesota with Texas. Different climates will produce different costs and results. What I want to know is the comparision of greenhouse grown tomato vs conventional in Spain. That is the real question in organic vs conventional.

[Cedars]

Heres a short, good overview article on organic tomato growing, with crop rotation table (conventional vs organic side by side) and a pest management table at the end. Bummer is, the doc is from 97 and based on older info.

 

http://plant-materials.nrcs.usda.gov/pubs/capmctn480197.pdf

[Michaelangelica]

This is ingenious

 

 

I guess solutions are everywhere if you have enough imagination to "think outside the square"

 

 

WorldChanging has an interesting post on sustainable farming called Duck Rice.

 

We can learn a lot from the past about how we might develop sustainable practices for the future. After reading the Worldchanging article on terra preta, I was reminded of the story of Duck-Rice. The name might trigger associations with varieties like Golden Rice -- the high-nutrient concentration food developed a few years ago through genetic engineering. But this new rice is not a result of looking toward 21st century science and technology; it emerges from a thoughtful integration of tools long existing in the natural world.

 

Japanese farmer and entrepreneur, Takao Furuno, developed Duck-Rice as an integrated bio-system which eliminates the need for fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides by incorporating duck-raising into organic rice cultivation. The approach is now being replicated with substantial success all over South East Asia as an effective way to boost farmer incomes, reduce environmental impact and improve food security. It is a hybrid of the traditional farming practices of Japanese Rice Farmers and Furuno's own experimentation. The operations simultaneously raise Aigamo ducklings, Loaches (a species of fish), rice, and Azolla -- a nitrate-fixing species of aquatic fern. The Aigamo ducklings provide integrated pest management (IPM) services, replacing pesticides and herbicides by naturally controlling predaceous pest populations and digging up or eating competing weeds. The Loache and Aigamo duck waste, combined with the nitrate fixing properties of Azolla, increase soil nutrition, maintaining levels of productivity comparable to conventional farming operations without the need for costly synthetic fertilizers. The Azolla can later be harvested for animal feed.

 

A normal organic rice farm would require significant human labor to keep weeds down and maintain soil health, but the ducklings' natural movement aerates the soil and strengthens rice stalks, leaving the farmer with considerable time to invest in other income-producing activities. The alleviation of human effort supported by the process allows farmers to diversify their product base to include organic rice, fish, duck meat and eggs, thus reducing their vulnerability to external shocks such as price fluctuations, and potentially creating price premiums from attractive organic food markets.

 

Furuno himself rotates the duck-rice system with vegetable crops, allowing him to maintain a highly productive operation on a small plot of land in Japan. There is also some evidence that this form of rice cultivation neutralizes a significant amount of the green house gas emissions that rice paddies produce -- an estimated 12% of global anthropogenic methane output.

 

While Green Revolution methodologies have the potential to bring advantages to farmers whose traditional practices suffer in the fact of industrial agriculture, Duck-Rice demonstrates that through careful management of complementary species, farmers can gain a natural economic advantage and establish a more environmentally-responsible farming.

Peak Energy: A Billion Seeds Of Light

[Michaelangelica]

OUR PLANET EARTH

AGRI-WINDS OF CHANGE

Can 'organic' feed us all?

 

By STEPHEN HESSE

 

Having experienced firsthand the waste, power abuse and nepotism that malign the United Nations from within, I am not usually a fan of its conferences.

 

I am, however, a big fan of organic produce and composting, so my interest was piqued earlier this month by news that the International Conference on Organic Agriculture and Food Security was being held in Rome, in connection with a meeting of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Committee on Food Security.

 

More on composting later. First, I have to confess my delight at seeing organic farming attracting global attention as more than just an expensive predilection of guilt-driven urban greenies.

 

Besides helping to feed the world's mushrooming population, it has been confirmed that organic agriculture can offer a harvest of benefits, including safer food, less exposure of farmers to toxic chemicals, less use of costly fertilizers, more absorption and sequestration of carbon dioxide, and improved soil quality for future generations.

 

This comes as very good news to my family, since we buy organic and low-chemical foods whenever possible. While some shoppers go out of their way to find the cheapest produce available, we have the opposite affliction. We'll walk twice as far and, if necessary, pay twice as much, for organic products.

 

No, we can't be sure that the foods we buy are truly organic, nor do we believe that an "organic" label offers a magic potion for health and longevity. But we do believe that organic farming is the only approach to agriculture that can be truly sustainable over the long term.

 

We also believe that the best way for lowly consumers like us to bring about change is to vote with our cash. If we, and millions of like-minded people buy more organic produce, stores will stock more of those products and, in turn, more farmers will consider switching to soil- and health-friendly agricultural methods.

 

Apparently we're not the only ones spending more to get less chemicals.

 

"In 2006, the organic market was estimated at nearly $ 40 billion (2 percent of food retails) and is expected to reach $ 70 billion in 2012," according to the conference report released following the Rome meeting.

 

The FAO defines organic agriculture as "a holistic production management system that avoids use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified organisms, minimizes pollution of air, soil and water, and optimizes the health and productivity of interdependent communities of plants, animals and people."

Consider the paradoxes

 

So what's there not to like?

 

Unfortunately, most of the industrial farming systems that dominate agriculture worldwide promote practices that do just the opposite. And with the world's population expected to increase from today's 6.2 billion to 9 billion by 2050, we're going to need a lot more food produced in a much more environmentally sustainable way.

 

The purpose of the Rome meeting was to consider the role organic agriculture is playing, and can play, in global food production, and to consider the paradoxes that now stand in the way of achieving global food security.

 

According to the conference report, our global food supply is sufficient to feed us all, and yet 850 million people still go hungry. In addition, even as the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has increased, grain productivity has declined. The costs of these agricultural inputs have risen as well, but the prices farmers get for their commodities continue to drop.

 

The report also notes that despite an abundance of easily accessible information on health and eating, nutrition-related diseases are increasing.

 

But perhaps the most challenging paradox is that "industrialized food systems have environmental and social costs that threaten food security, e.g., occupational deaths through pesticide poisoning, farmers' suicides due to debts, and loss of millions of jobs in rural areas," according to the report.

 

Concern over these challenges has now spread worldwide. The Rome meeting attracted 350 participants from more than 80 countries, as well as representatives from 15 international nongovernmental organizations, 30 national NGOs, 24 research institutions, 31 universities, eight private companies and nine farmer associations.

 

Reading through the issue papers that came out of the meeting (available at: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) it is clear that today's mass-production, industrial agriculture focuses too much on quantity and too little on quality. Time to bring farming back to the Earth.

 

"Current food models are creating problems for the future and the new environmental and macro-economic challenges will mostly hurt vulnerable populations," warns the report, adding that organic management can mitigate some of these problems, including climate change and industrialized food systems.

 

Regarding the most vulnerable, the report notes that because organic agriculture requires 30 percent more labor input per hectare, organic management offers greater employment opportunities than industrial approaches to agriculture. It also helps to alleviate poverty by contributing to rural development and revitalization, and by generating more equitable trade, through fairer wages and non-exploitative work that increases local people's control over local resources.

 

Organically managed farms also offer greater environmental sustainability. More careful husbandry of the soil means less erosion, which means less carbon is lost into the atmosphere. "The carbon sequestration efficiency of organic systems in temperate climates is almost double compared to conventional ones, when the total of above and below ground biomass of cash and catch crops and weeds is calculated," according to one of the issue reports.

 

Another major advantage of organic agriculture is that fossil-fuel-based nitrogen fertilizers are not used. In contrast, a nonorganic, 100-hectare stockless arable farm in the United Kingdom "consumes 17,000 liters of fossil fuel annually through fertilizer inputs," notes the same report.

 

By not using chemicals, organic farming also increases water security, ensuring better-quality drinking water from both ground and surface sources. As well, organic management reduces the need for irrigation, because organic matter in soil helps retain water.

 

In addition, since organic farming depends on crop rotation and the use of diverse species, it plays a key role in conserving a broader range of plant species (or agrobiodiversity), for future generations.

 

No doubt petrochemical companies and major agro-business firms will insist it isn't possible for organic farming to produce enough food to feed the world. But models cited at the conference suggest otherwise. "Organic agriculture has the potential to secure a global food supply, just as conventional agriculture does today, but with reduced environmental impact," the report maintains.

 

As the report notes, however, the crux of the issue is political will.

 

Unless governments worldwide make a concerted effort to subsidize and educate farmers, multinational agrobusiness firms will continue to seduce farmers into dependence on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Given the latter, a few corporations will be the richer, but our air, water and soil, and our rural communities and meals, will be all the poorer.

Plastic and misplaced silverware

 

Unfortunately, I'm not (yet!) a farmer, so for now I'll continue to vote with my wallet.

 

But being a big fan of Earth, there is one other thing I can do: I can compost.

 

Composting is a tangible thing I can do to reduce garbage and recycle, and it's one of the most satisfying eco-efforts available, because it's 100-percent effective: Everything you put in the compost, except bits of plastic and misplaced silverware, becomes useful output.

 

Until recently, though, we lived for two years in a place where we couldn't compost, and each garbage day I felt twinges of guilt and frustration, seeing perfectly good compost go out with the "burnable rubbish," as kitchen waste is classified here in Japan.

 

Then last month we moved to a place with a small garden. Hallelujah!

 

One of the first things I did was to set a compost bucket into the ground next to the back wall. Now, instead of sending off several kilos of kitchen waste each week to be incinerated, we pass it all to the worms, molds and microbes that will, within a year, turn our coffee grounds and fruit skins into rich, black soil.

 

All we need now is a coffee bush and an apple tree, and we'll have a zero-waste breakfast loop.

Stephen Hesse welcomes readers' comments at: [email protected]

 

 

We welcome your opinions. Click to send a message to the editor.

Can 'organic' feed us all? | The Japan Times Online

 

Anyone want to reply to them?

This is a Japanese article.

 

It seems the Chinese are going in the opposite direction.

[Michaelangelica]

This is a nice little article.

Gardening starts with kids..

If you grow carrots in very fertile rocky soil you get twisted contorted shapes.

So garden books advise against this.

But a gardening book for kids I read suggested doing just that in a pot so the kids could have "funny" shaped carrots.

It just takes a change of perspective! Green Family Values: 10 Tips for Organic Gardening with Children | Green Options

Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water-bugs, tadpoles, frogs, and mud-turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in, water-lillies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries, and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of his education.

[Michaelangelica]

This was an interesting take on organic farming and global warming, I thought

Sean has give me permission to reproduce it here

We already make and use 150 million tons of industrial fertilizer a year worldwide. It is made primarily from natural gas, cracked into hydrogen (H2) from off-gassed copious amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, then ammonia (NH4) is synthesized from nitrogen in air with the hydrogen (H2). The ammonia made this way is the main constituent in all industrially synthesized nitrogen based fertilizers.

Some of these fertilizers are pure anhydrous ammonia (NH4 liquid/gas), ammonium nitrate (NH4HNO3) of ANFO explosive fame, ammonium carbonate ((NH4)2HCO3), ammonium bicarbonate (NH4HCO3), and ammonium sulfate ((NH4)2HSO4), ammonium phospate ((NH4)2HPO4), and etc. Also there are many industrially synthesized pesticide and herbicide chemicals that are made directly a petroleum products.

 

All of the fertilizers are necessarily very water soluble (gas and salts) and many of them give off ammonia gas and nitrous oxide gas (N2O) when dissolved in water (e.g. NH4NO3 -> N2O(gas) + 2H2O(liquid) + heat). These salts dissolve into gases and free ions in water.

They pollute water flowing over the fields, leaching free oxidizing (acidic) ions into ground water, streams, rivers, and lakes. They pollute the atmosphere with nitrous oxide and ammonia off gassing.

 

N2O is a terrible green house gas, with 296 times more potent deleterious global warming effect on the atmosphere than that per mass unit of CO2! This means 150 million tons of NH4NO3 ((14+14+16)/(14+1+1+1+1+14+16+16+16) = 55% NO3 in NH4NO3, weight basis, or 82.5 Mt) would have the same effect on the atmosphere as ~24 billion tons of CO2 (296*0.55*150E6 = 24.4E9)! CO2 contains 12/(12+16+16) = ~27% carbon, so 24 Gt of CO2 is the same as ~6.7 Gt of carbon!

 

. .. If only half of the nitrous oxide (N2O) in the fertilizers is emitted, then I just proved that the nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from the worldwide annual use of industrial fertilizer could potentially be as bad as half the carbon dioxide problem! 150 Mt of industrially produced petroleum based fertilizer is as bad as 3 Gt of carbon emissions.

 

Our attempts a making soil amendments, actually directly from oil, is, in my opinion, way NOT something we want to continue doing! It is something we maybe better ought to stop as soon as possible.

 

Again, if anybody wants to review my analysis above and would like to differ, then I would, again, enjoy the rapport.

send any comments to ([email protected])

[freeztar]

Here's a little project my girlfriend's dad just finished. It sounds pretty cool!

(I couldn't figure out where to post this, but this seems a good fit)

I have just completed an automatic tea feeder today.

 

I have 24 plant containers arranged in vertical arrays of 3 or 4 joined by a central pvc tube. They are automatically irrigated with manure tea day and night according to demand. The tea maker is made out of 3 discarded 20 l cans of oil and inexpensive valves, such as used to flush toilets or maintain water level in washed air coolers. This valves maintain levels in the three tanks {or plastic buckets}. The top one has a tea bag filled with manure and drains freely to the middle one through a piece of gross henequen. The middle one feeds the bottom one on demand through a finer piece of cloth. The bottom bucket feeds the vertical arrays by maintaing a low water level in the bottom of the central tube that joins the plant containers. Water is transported upwards by capillary action on the sphagnum rich dirt.

Besides enjoying the process, I intend to revert enthropy and time by turning brown sheet into green medicinal plants, green plants into green dollars, and busy time into leisure time to become a child again.

 

 

I'm not quite sure what he means by "on demand", so I'll ask him next time we talk.

[Michaelangelica]

Here's a little project my girlfriend's dad just finished. It sounds pretty cool!

(I couldn't figure out where to post this, but this seems a good fit)

 

 

:hyper:

 

I'm not quite sure what he means by "on demand", so I'll ask him next time we talk.

I am finding it a bit hard to imagine.

Can you take and post a couple of pictures please?

Is he just using manure as fertiliser?

What type?

What "soil"/potting mix is in the pots?

Tar

[freeztar]

I am finding it a bit hard to imagine.

Can you take and post a couple of pictures please?

Is he just using manure as fertiliser?

What type?

What "soil"/potting mix is in the pots?

Tar

 

 

I'll try to get my girlfriend to snap some photos when she goes to Mexico a week from now. Unfortunately, I can't go.

 

The idea is definitely a manure fertilizer. I suppose the "tea" is a watery form of the sh*t.

I'm pretty intrigued by the capillary action and the mysterious words, "on-demand".

 

More to come...

[Michaelangelica]

i have read research that shows organic gardening/farming surpassing "chemical" gardening in 3-5 years in terms of costs and yields

 

But I just came across this article which is even more optimistic

Organic Farming Yields as Good or Better - Study

Mail this story to a friend | Printer friendly version

 

US: July 11, 2007

 

 

WASHINGTON - Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food as conventional farming in developing countries, and holds its own against standard methods in rich countries, US researchers said on Tuesday.

 

 

They said their findings contradict arguments that organic farming -- which excludes the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides -- is not as efficient as conventional techniques.

 

"My hope is that we can finally put a nail in the coffin of the idea that you can't produce enough food through organic agriculture," Ivette Perfecto, a professor at the University of Michigan's school of Natural Resources and Environment, said in a statement.

 

She and colleagues analyzed published studies on yields from organic farming. They looked at 293 different examples.

 

"Model estimates indicate that organic methods could produce enough food on a global per capita basis to sustain the current human population, and potentially an even larger population, without increasing the agricultural land base," they wrote in their report, published in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems.

 

"We were struck by how much food the organic farmers would produce," Perfecto said.

 

"Corporate interest in agriculture and the way agriculture research has been conducted in land grant institutions, with a lot of influence by the chemical companies and pesticide companies as well as fertilizer companies, all have been playing an important role in convincing the public that you need to have these inputs to produce food," she added.

 

 

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE.

Planet Ark : Organic Farming Yields as Good or Better - Study

[Michaelangelica]

So now that we appreciate the incredibly huge and complex micro organism population of soil and its role in providing plants with food ; reports like this become explainable.

“The results of this study demonstrate that one of the environmental impacts of pesticides and contaminants in the soil environment is disruption of chemical signaling between the host plants and N-fixing Rhiz(obia) necessary for efficient SNF and optimal plant yield.�?

 

Drawing on their recent work and other published studies, the team projected that pesticides and other contaminants are reducing plant yield by one-third as a result of impaired SNF. This remarkable conclusion suggests one mechanism, or explanation of the yield-enhancing benefits of well-managed, long-term organic farming systems.

 

Source: “Pesticides reduce symbiotic efficiency of nitrogen-fixing rhizobia and host plants�?

 

Authors: Jennifer E. Fox, Jay Gulledge, Erika Engelhaupt, Matthew E. Burrow, and John A. McLachlan.

 

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 104, No. 24, June 12, 2007.

Scientists Estimate That Pesticides are Reducing Crop Yields by ONE-THIRD

[Michaelangelica]

Organics - Useful Links

Organic Food Chain (OFC)

Australia's leading certification body: http://www.organicfoodchain.com.auYou are now leaving our site. DPIWE is not responsible for the content of the web site to which you are going. The link does not constitute any form of endorsement.

 

 

Organic Coalition of Tasmania (OCT)

Formed to address Tasmanian organic industry issues: http://www.oct.org.auYou are now leaving our site. DPIWE is not responsible for the content of the web site to which you are going. The link does not constitute any form of endorsement.

 

 

Biological Farmers of Australia (BFA)

An Australian organic certifier: http://www.bfa.com.auYou are now leaving our site. DPIWE is not responsible for the content of the web site to which you are going. The link does not constitute any form of endorsement

 

 

National Standard for Organic and Biodynamic Produce

See the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry website: http://www.daff.gov.auYou are now leaving our site. DPIWE is not responsible for the content of the web site to which you are going. The link does not constitute any form of endorsement

 

 

Australian Certified Organic

An Australian certifier of organic and biodynamic produce: http://www.australianorganic.com.auYou are now leaving our site. DPIWE is not responsible for the content of the web site to which you are going. The link does not constitute any form of endorsement.

 

 

National Association for Sustainable Agriculture Australia Limited (NASAA)

An Australian organic certifier: http://www.nasaa.com.auYou are now leaving our site. DPIWE is not responsible for the content of the web site to which you are going. The link does not constitute any form of endorsement.

 

 

Organic Growers of Australia (OGA)

An Australian organic certifier: http://www.organicgrowers.org.auYou are now leaving our site. DPIWE is not responsible for the content of the web site to which you are going. The link does not constitute any form of endorsement.

 

 

Safe Food Queensland

A Queensland Government initiative: http://www.safefood.qld.gov.au/home.htmlYou are now leaving our site. DPIWE is not responsible for the content of the web site to which you are going. The link does not constitute any form of endorsement.

 

 

For Further Information:

Contact: Organics Industry Development Officer

Alexandra Mitchell

Organic Industry Development Officer

13 St Johns Avenue NEW TOWN TAS 7008

Phone: 03 6233 2404

Fax: 03 6228 5123

Email: [email protected]

 

DPIW - Useful Links - Organics

[Tarantism]

i have been purchasing and eating organic only for months now. i usually get a very good selection of locally grown, fresh organic foods at the local farmers market every wednesday :thumbs_up. eating organic seems to feel cleaner to me....and supporting farmers who do not use pestisides is a good thing, at it is the only way that those farmers can keep selling crops.

 

reading the wiki page in organic farming is very enlightening, particularly this section:

 

Healthy soils equals healthy food equals healthy people is a basic tenet of many organic farming systems. But the claims of nutritional superiority of food grown by organic methods over conventional grown food is the subject of much controversy. Without conclusive evidence either way[15][16], some organic supporters believe that the overall nutritional and health-promoting value of food is compromised by chemical-farming methods. This involves areas like micronutrients and trace elements, plant physiology, the way plants grow and the process of human nutrition. The common sense appeal is that food grown in unnatural, sheltered, chemically assisted ways isn't as "good" for people as "naturally grown" food, as some things are different or missing[citation needed]. The counter-argument is that, by currently accepted standards of food science, there has been no demonstration of a functional difference between organically and conventionally produced food. Further, there is some concern that due to the limited methods available to organic farmers for combating quality problems while adhering to organic standards, some organic food does not generally achieve comparable safety and quality standards as "conventionally" grown products[citation needed]. Preliminary data from a UN study based in the UK shows that although organic dairy may have higher somatic cell counts, conventional dairy cows may be treated more often with antibiotics than organic dairy.[17]

There is extensive scientific research being carried out in Switzerland at over 200 farms to determine differences in the quality of organic food products vry conventional in addition to other tests. [22] The FiBL scientific research institute states that "organic products stand out as having higher levels of secondary plant compounds and vitamin C. In the case of milk and meat, the fatty acid profile is often better from a nutritional point of view. As regards carbohydrates and minerals, organic products are no different from conventional products. As regards undesirable substances such as nitrate and pesticide residues, organic products have a clear advantage. A "Conventional" apple for example could be geneticaly modified, grown in an enviroment with toxic pesticides that absord into it, hit with gamma radiation to kill bacteria at the expense of enzymes, the end product would be something that has very little nutrition and taste requiring that it actualy be injected with chemicals to make it taste like an apple again. [23][18]

 

full article: Organic farming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Michaelangelica]

Very interesting segment on ABC Gardening show tonight about Biological Pest Control.

:eek: :( :eek:

You may be able to download the excellent video next week but in the meantime here is the info sheet:-

Gardening Australia - Fact Sheet: Biological Pest Control

 

Video will be here?I'm not sure for how long

Gardening Australia - Video

 

I thought I knew most bugs but most of these "good guys" were new to me.

:( :doh: :fly:

PS Where to buy bugs

Biological Services - insect and mite producers at Loxton, Australia

:fly: :fly: :fly:

The episode of Gardening Australia that aired last weekend 29/09/07 is now available to download via our website

Gardening Australia - Video

:fly: :fly: :fly:

[Michaelangelica]

I just found a stack of articles on organic growing if anyone is still interested

HERE

ScienceDaily: Organic Farming News

Organic Farming Beats No-Till? (July 24, 2007) -- Organic farming can build up soil organic matter better than conventional no-till farming can, according to a long-term study. Organic farming, despite its emphasis on building organic matter, was ... > full story

 

Alternative Farming Cleans Up Water (July 20, 2007) -- In light of growing concern over agricultural pollution, producers are looking for ways to improve their farming practices without sacrificing crop production. New evidence suggests alternative ... > full story

 

Healthful Compounds In Tomatoes Increase Over Time In Organic Fields (July 16, 2007) -- Levels of flavonoids increase over time in crops grown in organically farmed fields, according to a rare long-term study scheduled for publication in the July 18 issue of ACS' Journal of Agricultural ... > full story

 

Routine Feeding Of Antibiotics To Livestock May Be Contaminating The Environment (July 13, 2007) -- It is estimated that between 9 and 13 million kilograms of antibiotics are used annually in the United States for raising livestock, with the majority being used for growth advancement and disease ... > full story

 

Organic Farming Can Feed The World, Study Suggests (July 13, 2007) -- Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food as conventional farming on the same amount of land -- according to new findings which refute the long-standing assumption that organic farming ... > full story

 

New Findings On Sour Taste (July 11, 2007) -- Food manufacturers may soon have more control over the amount of sour taste that comes through in a variety of acidified food ... > full story

 

Oxygen Trick Could See Organic Costs Tumble (June 11, 2007) -- A simple, cheap treatment using just oxygen could allow growers to store organic produce for longer and go a long way towards reducing the price of organic fruit and vegetables. One of the major ... > full story

 

Recycled Garden Compost Reduces Build-up Of Phosphorus In Soils (June 4, 2007) -- Broccoli, eggplant, cabbage and capsicum grown with compost made from recycled garden offcuts have produced equivalent yields to those cultivated by conventional farm practice, but without the ... > full story