> If people don't want organic food, I could generally care less except for one thing: efforts to put legal roadblocks in the way of locally grown food.
How do you know that locally grown food is organic unless someone checks? Local grown and sold food doesn't necessarily mean "organic" it just means locally grown. Pesticides and chemicals are available for local growers too.
Unless you grow it or personally know where, who and how they grow the food you will not know what are you getting.
A lot of "farmers" I know (not in this country but in a country with a non-functioning FDA or USDA) have 2 lots. One lot to grow the food to sell and one to grow for themselves. The pesticide the shit out of one they sell. Nobody checks. Still looks good and pretty and people buy it and sellers make money.
As a farmer myself, I find something intriguing in your comment. I take away visions of someone using way more chemical than necessary when reading this, but that stuff is expensive. There is no reason to use more. It's always considered a blessing when you don't have to use any, even if we assume the environmental/health impact is zero. Judicious use of pesticides can improve plant health and increase yields, but that happens in every country.
I guess I'm curious about what you are trying to say? A those "farmers" you referred to really that reckless with their incomes (never mind anything else that goes along with it) in a business that has incredibly slim margins?
He means "They use pesticides responsibly but I am passionate about hating pesticides"
My gramps had a vinyard and an orchard. Pesticides are a bitch to use. Windy the next day? A bit of rain? Dew too strong? Well screw you buddy, you get to re-do everything because it's as if you didn't spray at all. Ha ha.
And those stupid grapes wouldn't even grow without pesticides. They're so bloody fragile and finnicky. Sometimes the whole thing would go belly-up because gramps would miss the spraying window by a few days (due to weather).
Seriously, anyone who is passionately against pesticides has never tried to make money off of food production. And anyone who's worried about pesticides having residual effects on them (and doesn't get in direct contact with the stuff) has never tried to make pesticides stay on those god damned plants long enough to work.
> anyone who's worried about pesticides having residual effects on them (and doesn't get in direct contact with the stuff) has never tried to make pesticides stay on those god damned plants long enough to work.
Well, if we're going to be fair about it, the fact that it washes off the surface of plants so easily doesn't mean it's just gone and not causing residual effects elsewhere.
> doesn't mean it's just gone and not causing residual effects elsewhere
True, but I have better things to worry about than this health food craze americans seem to be going through. I've been living here for several months and I honestly think most people here are insane. So much worrying about everything! Live a little, sheesh.[1]
Maybe SF is especially bad.
In my country we have a saying: "You keep the nice apples for yourself, you sell the rotten ones to city slickers as organic."
[1] my main gripe with the organic anti-chemical food craze is that we simply don't have enough arable land to feed everyone if we stop using GMO's and pesticides and all that stuff. We were actually supposed to all have been starving by some 20 years ago, but then we invented cool things. But I guess we can always get rid of all the rainforests to compensate and we're all gonna be so super healthy and chemical free. Hoofuckingray.
> my main gripe with the organic anti-chemical food craze is that we simply don't have enough arable land to feed everyone
I think the same people who prefer organic food might also be wise enough not to eat three large servings of beef every day, which is what is killing the rain forests right now. And how many % of good food are being thrown away nowadays? Something like 30%? Simply because supermarkets want to have everything on the shelves all the time, and people buy without planning. There is still a lot of room for experimentation before we starve.
At least here in the UK - and I believe the US is the same - our major supermarkets won't buy fruit that isn't visually flawless, even when it doesn't affect the flavor. They charge the farmers for disposing of it too. So a lot of effort - and spraying - goes into keeping as much of the fruit flawless-looking as possible.
> I take away visions of someone using way more chemical than necessary when reading this
The vision is spraying with the deadliest and sometimes illegal pesticides (DDT and other things).
The "shit of out" is comparing to "0 pesticides". That means plucking bugs by hand in the evening from potatoes, weeding by hand, watering by hand.
> Judicious use of pesticides can improve plant health and increase yields, but that happens in every country.
Nobody is arguing with that, but given that these particular people I know (friend of relatives and so on) don't have time or language skills to read scientific literature what "judicious" amounts are.
> A those "farmers" you referred to really that reckless with their incomes
That is usually seasonal they have other business. They are not reckless they are just capitalists. They are maximizing the profit. The vegetables that look bigger, shiner and of which they can have a greater yield will maximize their profit.
My mom has a small garden (and I helped her around when I was little), it takes a LOT of time to pluck all insects from just potatoes. That is time just for that can easily be 4-6 hours. Also plucking in the evenings is like reading a book on dark side of Mars, in a barrel.
You can't spot the fuckers in low light, you need best light available so only morning and in the afternoon will do.
What this comes to is this, if you use 0 pesticide that means you have to pay workers to do so which means lower efficiency and higher prices. Price for organics should (under given circumstances) be between 4-10 times more expensive.
Also, before chemical fertilizer there were several wars fought over bird extrement. Unfortunately the anti-synthetics fads are putting pressure on this resource again
People in this thread seem to be under the misapprehension that organic farming doesn't use pesticides or 'chemicals'. Everything is a chemical, and organic farming in particular uses some nasty ones (rotenone, copper sulfate, pyrethrins). Pesticides are not automatically bad - in fact some of them are almost unbelievably benign to humans and/or to the environment.
In WA some apple orchards are sprayed with kaolin (a fine white clay). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaolin_spray. Diatomaceous earth is also used on some crops. Both of these are like... mechanical insecticides.
The replies in this thread from people claiming to be farmers are odd -- what crop? It seems pretty important. It sounds like it's hard to grow certain wine grapes some places, ok, but why do we have lists of the 'best' and 'worst' fruits/veggies to buy organic? They have less pest problems to begin with is my assumption, but I'm not really a farmer [beyond 10'x10' of herbs and veggies in the backyard].
herbicides: pelargonic acid (Scythe) and acetic acid are famous examples, but glyphosate (Roundup) and imazaquin (Image) have higher LD50s than table salt.
insecticides: Bacillus thuringiensis Cry proteins (used both in organic agriculture and in Monsanto's Bt lines), RNAi
no, I didn't say it did. But there's also no convincing evidence that either of the synthetics I mentioned does cause negative long-term effects (let alone serious ones).
However, the statement in question was explicitly regarding pesticides, not herbicides. And, implicitly, the context is those pesticides which are in use at scale on non-organic crops.
Nicotine would classify as insecticide that, while perhaps not completely benign, is considered to have minimal impact on human health (smoking it notwithstanding). A synthetically derived form of nicotine is the primary insecticide in use these days, although it's incredible success with the insect population is starting to give us second thoughts about using it.
Yes. But going back to my original question, it was in response to the statement that there are "almost unbelievably benign" pesticides with regard to human and environmental impact.
So, while there was also an implication that we're talking about pesticides that might see practical use, I'm really not even holding out that requirement. I'm just inquiring into the names of those pesticides that are benign to both humans and the environment.
For more information about 'particle films' (like kaolin spray) see this document. There are numerous compounds mentioned and very interesting references too. These techniques also can be mixed with conventional pesticides and achieve the same efficacy as pure pesticide.
"At the present time, a commercial particle film material, Surround crop protectant, is being used in about 90% of the Pacific Northwest pear market for the early season control of pear psylla and approximately 20% of the Washington State apple market to reduce sunburn damage."
Um no. It is taking about this one specific usage which is exclusive. Other usages are inclusive, but some usages refer only to artificial concoctions. (Like when people use the word "animal" to refer to non-human animals).
Is routine use of pesticides on 'organic' farms an american thing? I'm not familiar with the US organic standards / regulations.
In the UK, the Soil Association (organic standards body) claims [1] that pesticides are used "Very rarely" on organic farms. So it strikes me as quite odd that there's all this discussion about organic pesticides as if their use is on par (or even greater than) non-organic pesticide use.
How do you know that locally grown food is organic unless someone checks? Local grown and sold food doesn't necessarily mean "organic" it just means locally grown. Pesticides and chemicals are available for local growers too.
Unless you grow it or personally know where, who and how they grow the food you will not know what are you getting.
A lot of "farmers" I know (not in this country but in a country with a non-functioning FDA or USDA) have 2 lots. One lot to grow the food to sell and one to grow for themselves. The pesticide the shit out of one they sell. Nobody checks. Still looks good and pretty and people buy it and sellers make money.