Episode 314: Just Because It�s Organic

Watch:http://www.growingagreenerworld.com/episode314/

"The label says it�s organic� so does that automatically make it the best choice when it comes to selecting what we use in our lawns and gardens?

Diatomaceous Earth for Natural Slug Control
Surveys show that Americans want to live a more environmentally responsible lifestyle, but words and actions show we aren�t always "walking the talk." As many strive to be better stewards of the earth, reaching for the organic option seems to be the most eco-friendly thing we can do. So what�s the problem?
There are several disconnects. Organic choices typically cost more, sometimes a lot more. Secondly, change is not always easy, especially with inconsistent messaging and confusion over what�s considered reliable information. Homebrew pest solutions abound, some of which practically amount to folklore and don�t work, and are frustrating to the gardener trying to move over to organic solutions.
Even when trying to "go organic," are we? "Natural" products may come to us after being harvested in habitat-destroying or non-sustainable methods. And natural doesn�t automatically mean safe. Natural pesticides, insecticides and poisons are still poisonous � at the very least they may kill indiscriminately, doing just as much damage as their synthetic counterparts in the home garden. At worst, we may become complacent about our poisons and accidentally expose our children and pets, thinking that it�s ok because it�s natural.

Dr. Jeff Gillman shares the results of his rootball comparisons
And then there�s a level of expectation by those venturing into the uncharted waters of organic gardening. They assume these products will work the same as their non-organic replacement. Although the legitimate products do work, they often don�t function the same way. It leads to confusion, misunderstanding and consumers left wondering what to do.
So how can buyers really make educated choices with realistic expectations over the results of how and when these earth-friendly products work? Fortunately there are some well-known and respected leaders emerging to tell the truth about organic gardening�to reveal the benefits, drawbacks and the bottom line.
Jeff Gillman, Ph.D and Associate Professor in the Department of Horticulture at the University of Minnesota literally wrote the book on the subject. In this episode, Joe and Jeff walk the gardening aisles at the big box store examining labels, then spend some time in the yard and garden dispelling some very common gardening advice."
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So true! My heart says grow organic, but my head says it is way over rated and a lot of time more pollutive then conventional methods per pound of crop produced....

I also want everyone to check out Norman Borlaug and how he provided food for billions. Understand how these GMO protesters are stopping people from eating.

I know for a fact, some does not start to burn easily with a match so there is something in there to stop that.

I also know of the true cardboards that are colored, some of the inks burn in colors of the rainbow which means there are certain chemicals in there.

"become complacent about our poisons and accidentally expose our children and pets"
"They assume these products will work the same as their non-organic replacement."

Is the insinuation that uneducated consumers or just a few idiots constitute proof of something? I don't understand the general insinuation that the general public is smart enough to only find wrong info, use what they find incorrectly, or simply incapable of determining which info is correct and make a valid decision for themselves. I seriously doubt many pet owners would think it's OK for their pets to be exposed to any packaged gardening products, organic or otherwise. Many things can be poisonous to pets, like chocolate.

On this man's website, it says, "In 2004, I got fed up with some of the ridiculous suggestions that a certain TV personality was trying to pass off as garden cures and so I started to research those cures with my own experiments and a lot of time in the library."

It is helpful to know the author's agenda to look through the window of opinion that frames the info, and understand that the author collected this info to prove a point. I just don't think his thought process has matured into giving enough consideration to nature as a whole but in particular soil health and fertility. Once he quits thinking in terms of products and trying to be in complete control such minute facets of nature at all, he will have arrived in a truly organic place.

The first of few facts comes up just over 4 minutes into the video. Paraphrased: Pyrethrum is a natural insecticide but it kills bees and ladybugs. No alternatives are offered, just that vague notion that "in some cases" the synthetic can be better than the organic. The implication being that synthetic insecticides only kill "the bad guys."

Later, a comparison is made of vinegar to glyphosate based on 4 adjacent plots about 4 square feet each, (the only example offered in the video of an organic vs. synthetic comparison,) supposing the glyphosate is more environmentally responsible than vinegar. He completely fails to substantiate this and in fact his example seems to be the opposite of the point he's trying to make. He mentions that glyphosate can wash into the soil and beyond, and its' toxicity to aquatic life. He says that dousing a frog in vinegar could be fatal and this is why vinegar would be less environmentally responsible, but there is no mention that dousing a frog in glyphosate will probably end his day also.

"If a frog were jumping around in there while you were applying the vinegar, the frog could be badly injured..." Seriously?! How did he keep a straight face? The other guy too. Either he's saying that someone's going to pour vinegar on a frog they can see, or he thinks frogs are jumping around under the soil. Either way, such ridiculous notions cast a pall on the potential veracity of any of his statements.

At the store, focusing on the fact that some organic products are produced with non-renewable resources is a separate point that is blurred with the organic vs. synthetic issue, or at least a proper segue is missing, IMO. Ironically, in the single example shown, the alternative offered is another organic product. This is a shame because giving this point its' proper attention would have lent more power and credence to both points.

"...the uncharted waters of organic gardening."

Comparing organic products and gadgets to non-organic products and gadgets is not the approach taken by most home organic gardeners. Gardening for me and many others is not about what product to choose, or "controlling pests." To put a blanket called "uncharted waters" over the broad term "organic gardening" is ridiculous. Purchased garden products for farms and/or home gardens are a new invention of the modern era.

So, even controls such as BT, DE, and insecticidal soaps are considered off limits as far as organic gardening is concerned??

Kevin

In many cases organic growers are merely aping everything that conventional growers do except with a non-synthetic product. This leads to generally the same situations and problems, not surprisingly, namely exhausted soils and severe infestations. I've seen it in action, at the ground level, so to speak. Just keep pounding that soil with the rotovator several times a year and using the dehydrated granulated organic fertilizer and hitting everything with bt and you'll have all the same problems.

It's always the same issue: there isn't enough permaculture involved. Row-cropping is always a race to the bottom to see who puts the least value on their labor (and indirectly on the value of the nutrients being mined out of the land), and that applies equally to organic as conventional growers. In any given organic food market the bottom line is the same, who will sell for the least? Nobody is thinking about value-per-bite in terms of nutrition, or the long-term value on labor inputs to a piece of land.

All this is why the only answer is for people to grow food for eating rather than selling. Then a person can afford to take the long view. For example I turned a lot of new ground last year, so OM and fungal activity in the soil was low, and as a result had some severe insect infestations. Rather than bring out all the "organic" poisons next year I will instead put the money into inoculants for legumes, purchased minerals, and maybe even buy the wasp that predates on MBB.

"grow food for eating rather than selling"

What a great statement!

We need to stop being so stupid and narrow about food. A lot of the "weeds" they're inundating with RU are EDIBLE. Most of those lawn weeds people are taught are a blight on their perfect grassy sward are what people used to eat. Why poison our environment to kill one food in favor of another? Some of these plants we call invasive exotics are edible. Instead of harvesting all this stuff, we've got government agencies formulating "eradication and control" programs, and universities teaching the public about "perfect lawn care." If "they" don't have machinery to make a plant into a mass-produced monoculture crop, it's a weed and they make sure to "educate" the public about it. Madness!

People need to closely monitor their food supply. When you put that responsibility in other people's hands and there is capitalism involved, they may not operate with your best interest as their goal. But if people keep buying it, they'll keep doing it, whatever "it" is. The only way to change the direction is with financial pressure. Lost profits will be the only motivator and that is why they fought so hard to defeat the CA labeling legislation. In the 61 other countries where labeling has been implemented, sales of items with GMO ingredients went way down. The only cash cow left for their frankenfood is the US.

If anyone is interested in learning more about "how they did it" before the invention of modern products, I highly recommend a book called 1491 by Charles C. Mann, the new 2011 version. It's very enlightening and if we can use the lessons of our ancestors, a lot of modern problems could be solved. If "these guys" are smart enough to come up with this GMO thing, surely they're smart enough to employ the info our ancestors learned over thousands of years. We have many more tools at our disposal, both mechanical and scientific, to mesh with their methods.

If we are not growing to preserve and improve the land as well as to create food, it's not sustainable, as we've already been shown with the dust bowl. There was no organic vs. GMO then and look what happened. Everyone (European settlers) just assumed that wonderful fertile soil had always been there, and they could do anything without consequences. The primary problem of trying to grow a significant portion of our food in an area prone to drought is ongoing. The ancients knew this and that is why they created a vast prairie of drought-tolerant grass for animal grazing in what we call the heartland.

Looking at the issue strictly through the window of "what seeds should be used for our monoculture crops?" is where we are stumbling.

"We need to stop being so stupid and narrow about food."

Yea I know. Anyone against GMO. Anyone that says we can feed the world with organics- "need to stop being so stupid and narrow about food"

Purple, if you haven't already check out a documentary called "the other side of immigration". Mexican peasants talk about watching their rural communities transition from self-sustaining agrarian to dysfunctional places sustained only by money from workers in the US. They explain clearly how it was NAFTA that was responsible. They don't blame the US or our farmers, they blame their own government.

Statements like that are meaningless without some qualifications.

A single pass through a field injecting or spreading "chemical" N vs. many passes through a field spreading organic N after having it hauled in adds to the cost of it all. In order to grow organic potatoes effectively a farmer in most areas would have to grow a soil N-feeding crop like alfalfa rather than a more profitable crop like a brassica or sugar beets (the usual rotation partner for a lot of potato farmers) in order to get a good balance of organic N in the soil to lessen external inputs.

Going all-organic on large cropping systems effects how you have to farm the land and the food supply. There's just not much high-N quality organics out there that aren't expensive, therefore you need a lot of bulk or a combination of sources that makes it work out. Luckily for the farmer, organic potatoes take in a higher price and the alfalfa can be harvested for animal feeds (though at a lower price than the brassicas/beets/etc).

That said, managing the home garden organically is usually something you can do without worrying about any of this unless you want a really large multi-acre home garden growing huge N feeders. Bringing in a truck load of manure and spreading it with your own labor (if you even need that much organic input) vs bringing in 100+ truck loads of manure and using your farm equipment + many people's labor...scale of economy, etc.

I grew 50-60 lb of jalapeno with just under 2 dollars worth of synthetic fertilizer just this year. I put very littel time into my crop and get a huge yield. It was not like that when I grew 'organic'

I live in a farming area, short growing season, where the farmers grow winter wheat, pinto beans, and alfalfa, some sunflower but not much. The ranchers grow hay and pasture. They rotate the beans and wheat, the beans fix the nitrogen for the wheat crop the next year.

Its low profit margin farming. The guys with irrigation go with alfalfa because they don't have to use their tractors as often for plowing, tilling, planting and spraying, just run through with the mowers, rakes, and bailers. The dry land farmers do the beans and wheat. The point I'm trying to make is that while they may not fit the strict description, they're pretty much organic farmers, avoiding pesticides and fertilizers because they cost too much.

I have an immediate neighbor who uses commercial fertilizers on his beef pasture. From our discussions, its slowly dawning on him that he may end up earning more money if he cuts down the number of cattle, goes into a pasture management with clover and other legumes, and quits fertilizing.

That pretty much describes my operation. And yeah, sourcing enough organic N is the constant problem. All the crops can be produced in a permaculture low-till fashion with little or no N inputs, but it gets really tiresome spending a lot of time harvesting small potatoes, for example (a low-N system suddenly makes the term "small potatoes" very real). The application of labor is far more effective and immediate by using lots of NPK, regardless of whether organically sourced or synthetic.

So anybody growing annual crops for selling rather than eating is going to use lots of NPK. So the solution is lots more eaters to be growers.

That is just your opinion.

" I try to help the poor as much as I can, but giving them poisoned food does'nt help them."

Here is a book you should read some time. :)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Truth-About-Organic-Foods/dp/0978895207

"Dr. Norman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize Winning Ag Scientist, says, "The Truth About Organic Foods gives consumers a through and straight-forward explanation of why organic foods offer no real health or safety bebefits. More importantly, Avery communicates why organic farming's lower yields and reliance on scarce organic fertilizers represents a potential threat to the world's forests, wetlands and grasslands. The book offers scientifically sound evidence that more-affordable conventional foods are healthy for families and also good stewardship of nature."

You want natural & what is good for our lands? Look at nature and what it does to build the soils & reproduce plants.
Chemicals are killing us, just slowly!

You might also want to take a look at the Rodale Farm Study results...30 yrs. comparrison of side-by-side sustainable/commerical farming.

As someone who's done university research on a variety of food crops you really can't apply that umbrella. It's very unfair to look at a school that gets some money in a broad-reaching grant and apply that to everything a school pushes out. Stanford is being totally crapped upon for this lately and it's not only unfair, it's ignorant. A lot of these people also seem to not notice UC-Davis exists, which has studies which are a lot more directly linked to chemical company money with some researchers. Even then, to assume everyone doing a study is being bought is extremely unfair to the people doing the studies no matter what results they find.

You know who's studies you really need to watch out for? ...independent studies. That is where you're going to find your corruption, though some think these independent studies are way more trust-worthy even though the degrees they hold are comparable, if not the same, as those with university resources.

A majority of university based studies are untainted. If it's something you really feel on the fence about it's best to investigate the body of work of the researchers, themselves, and not place a blanket judgement on everyone at a university because some other unrelated researcher took some money or the school itself used some money to fund a department building.

The pull companies have over university researchers is less political and less "real" than some would assume. A majority of these people didn't spend a decade in school looking to hook up to a chemical lobby. They did it because they love what they do and there's a genuine interest in the work.

Also, fwiw, many of these companies people fear spend a lot of talent doing their own research in-house. They don't need universities to produce political fodder.

However, I think over long periods of time powerful industries with a specific agenda do project a lot of influence - overwhelming, in some cases. For example, the chemical industry post WWII vs Albrecht and his school of research. Still today there are many soil experts saying that there is no evidence at all that maintaining a certain mineral balance in soil creates healthier plants that do not require poisons to control weeds and pests. And yet every grower who can afford to do so finds it to be the case, and Albrecht had reams of trials showing it to be so.

I think it's not so much that industry money directly corrupts researchers, it's that industry money determines what gets studied. In the Albrecht case, the chemical industry threw tons of money to land-grants to study how to control weeds and pests with poisons and how to use synthesized fertilizer, so that Albrecht's kind of research gradually stopped and eventually was forgotten.

You dont understand the big picture. 2% of our food is grown organically for good reason. If we grew 100% organic we would need to farm half the earth land surface.

Potatoes that are grown conventionally produce 2.5x as much as an organic field.

Organic farming is a threat to our land and resources.

Please stop destroying the environment evil organic market? Please? :)

I was part of a study years ago at a university that had money shifted from a general fund from a GMO company. Not only did the GMO company have zero influence...it's a crop they wouldn't even have a desire to work with even if they had all the raw genetic material in the world to work with (which they had 0 rights to anyway unless they wanted to license it). The school, itself, moved the money to a project that needed more financial support. If anyone wanted to use that fact to dismiss the work that was being done it would be a huge shame.

Most work universities do can benefit industry, but mostly because they're the ones ready to pick up the baton and run with the findings of the research (many times paying a fee the university for the intellectual property they're using).

That said, most of this work benefits society. Variety/cultivar production for climates where a plant cannot usually be grown, disease/pest pressure tolerant plant development, research for best ways to use less inputs to manage a plant, researching assumptions and comparing old/new methods for accuracy, checking other's work/research, innovating new methods of production of plant breeding, etc.

Much research is done to reduce inputs, not put more into the ground. Much research is put into reducing farming costs and provide more variety for the farmer...which rarely benefits a chemical company unless they want to license the plant from the university to sell in a non-chemical division they may own.

One of my favorite projects going on locally right now is an intensive breeding/development project for broccoli that can be grown on the East coast in mountain areas so we don't have to ship so much of it from 1000s of miles away.

I worked on a project (that's decades old) that is working to develop raspberry/blackberry cultivars that can be grown in warmer climates. There's many lines developed before I was part of it, and more coming out now and later, which are expanding the food supply. This lessens the amount of time it needs to travel...and ultimately, it's cost. Even on the West coast these cultivars are pushing the price of berries down because there's a lot more land availability to put these crops in production.

Long story short, most of this university research has very little to do with satisfying the concerns of chemical companies compared to expanding food availability and giving the farmer options for less inputs.

Most chemical companies employ an army of in-house research/development (myself included) that need little to no university input. It's much easier to control your own intellectual property and the speed of it's development rather than relying on the university process...which can be quite erratic in both focus and funding. Very few university researches want to tie their entire career down to a single study/focus serving a single entity. Sure, there's some out there who constantly hit the funding well up of a single industry/company to do their research, but there's few of them compared to the pool of talent on whole.

Here's a bit on that East coast broccoli project I referred to...

http://www.hort.cornell.edu/bjorkman/lab/broccoli/eparticipants.php

This is a huge muti-university effort to bring a viable East coast broccoli industry back to this part of the country by developing varieties that can produce market quality broc. that can withstand temperature flux which ordinarily scare farmers from even wanting to touch this crop.

This kind of research could cut 15-25% of the broc. currently being shipped from 1000s of miles away while giving these farmers a "new" cash crop to consider.

I would say most people would have a hard time demonizing or being skeptical of the work these people are doing.

Yes, you're going to see industry co-operation along with the developers. You'll notice Sygenta and Monsanto as companies trialing these varieties. It's worth mentioning that they neither own, directly guide, and (most importantly) are not injecting GMO influence into the process. These companies own many traditional hybrid breeding units outside of the GMO work they do.

It would be very unfair to notice these 2 companies and dismiss the work being done on this project solely because of that connection...especially since their input is very minor and they are mostly providing trial planting/monitoring data. What's in it for them? ...if successful they own traditional seed units which would gladly license and sell them to traditional farmers in bulk without having to do a huge amount of research developing this on their own.

"I read somewhere that conventional potatoes yield 2.5X as much as organic grown potatoes."
Statements like that are meaningless without some qualifications."

pnbrown,

That is like saying dont listen to any scientist until you run the test! ;)

Using consistent logic to evaluate results.

No, but really, my yield has increased a lot now that I use synthetics. The time any money I spend doing it has decreased and my harvest has increased. Well, My yield has gone up so I spend WAY more time, harvesting!

Your argument about there not being enough organic fertilizer goes down the figurative toilet if the nutrients going into actual toilets were recovered. Plenty to produce all the food in the world.

I see what you mean. I agree.

Some cities treat it as waste, some minimally process and make it available for large field plantings, some process it heavily with sawdust/wood and market their own compost with it, etc...

Baltimore has been selling theirs as ORGRO, Eckology, and Biocom...mostly to sod producers and nurseries in the North-East US.

Potatoes, unlike corn, do not "get better" with heavy applications of fertilizer.

The only problem is the organic crop IS lacking in nutrition. If it was not, it would really cost A LOT to grow.

The crop yield and nutrition levels would make a particular crop 'better'.

TASTE

Water is the number one item to make things better.

That said, there's a lot of high brix/low acid testing brix advocates that want people to put a foolish amount of micronutrients in their soil rather than building a soil structure/quality that can better hold and exchange micronutrients. There's a big industry building around selling people extremely expensive bags of micronutrients the past decade which wash their way through the soil profile and/or are over-amended to make up for poor soil.

Build your soil quality (holding/exchange capability), apply less, benefit more. They're micronutrients...you don't need a lot, you just need them to hang around.

You can raise brix values of some crops simply by withholding moisture (or precisely controlling minimum water requirements) during fruiting, therefore concentrating the sugars/solids without nutrients even entering the equation.

The most important part of getting a high brix product, of course, is the genetics of the crop you choose. A lot of stuff in the supermarket selected for growth by a farmer based on it's storage/shipping quality tends to be of lower taste/brix quality than most stuff we can grow at home.

And I certainly agree, just adding expensive minerals to a soil without knowing whether it's going to leach right out again isn't smart.

The main reason why supermarkets have a lower brix score is because the food is picked too soon.

pnbrown,

"However you slice it, higher brix is more nutrition per bite."

Can you prove that?

We could ash-test a 2-brix tomato (not uncommon these days in stores) vs an 8-brix one, if we had the necessary equipment. Are you claiming that a 2-brix tomato could have equal nutrition to an 8-brix one? Which would mean that the only difference between them would be taste. Which would mean that eons of evolution gave us an exquisite sense of taste to tell us basically nothing about food.

This then begs the question, Just what is smart?...sitting on your hands?

Here is another question: which is more nutritious, long-chain sugars or short-chain? A teaspoon of molasses, or of refined corn syrup (hint: the latter was not used as a health tonic for cattle)?

Related: why, when one looks at a solution of molasses at a given brix concentration, is the field very hazy, but at the same concentration of simple sugar the field is very clear?