Margaret

http://howtomakecompost.info

The box people have problems with early spring as most of the veg are getting tired and there is no new stuff available from the fields. But as you can see for the link I gave for riverford most is locally sourced.

Supermarkets here are cathing on to the waste problem. Plastic carrier bags either cost or you get “points” for reuse. Some products are being supplied in compostable plastic, Some trays are again made of card. But what I cannot understand is why it is cheaper to buy 6 carton of orange juice stuck togeter in a plasic wrapper than 6 singles. Slowly the uk is changing but, although you may disagree, has changed most since people became aware of GW!

Dang it! Left out the onions and garlic. how could I … A couple of caramelized onions and as much garlic as you like get added too…

“Without onions, there would be cooking but no cuisine.”

Thanks!

One other point about the “veggie box” system is packaging.

Good point. I hate waste, of any kind, and when I get a 4 ounce peach in a plastic bag, in a paper bag, in a bigger bag… GAK. Or when they want to put my milk jug in a plastic bag to be put in my grocery sack. Sheesh, it has a handle on it fer crying out loud!

A recipie leaflet is usually included for oddities (what do you do with chicory?)

My neighbors frequently give me some odd vegetable from their box with a comment that they don’t know what to do with it. One of my favorites was “We don’t know what to do with celery root” while being handed a bag of fennel stems… Nice folks, but not a lot of time in farm country…

The real downside is turnips and swede in winter!

Oh Man: Lamb Stew! Lamb cubes, potato, carrot, celery, TURNIP all cut in slices or cubes, maybe a few whole pea pods. Salt Pepper and let it braise at 350 F for about 3 hours. To die for!

And oven roasted swede with butter all over it! Yum!

And “mixed mashed roots” is one of my favorites from the old tradition. You take whatever roots you have (typically about 1/2 of carrot, potato, or turnip) boil and mash together like mashed potatoes! (The carrot / turnip is one of my favorites, though carrot / potato is darned good too. Haven’t tried potato turnip, but had potato / turnip / carrot once and loved it – with too much butter ;-)

Well, short of a replay of the last year or two worth of postings, it would be a bit hard to list it all. Please see the archives. A nice example to start with, that started as a posting here, would be:

http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/the-trouble-with-c12-c13-ratios/

A series of rambling anecdotes, some debatable, is a PROBLEM for scientists, not a help. That’s the type of ignorance that we are trying to fight.

Oh, I get it. Personal experience and field observations are Not Allowed. How convenient. And personal expertise is now “ignorance”. OK… And I guess you missed this link in the earlier post:

http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~christos/articles/cv_organic_farming.html

Let me help you with it. The “berkeley.edu” means it is from a University. In fact, a Big Name University. University of California at Berkeley. I graduated from the U.C. Berkeley Agricultural Extension (after it got renamed and expanded into more than just being an Ag School). They do Science at University…

If you had followed the link, you would have found it opens with the heading:

Can Organic Farming “Feed the World”?

University of California, Berkeley
ESPM-Division of Insect Biology
201 Wellman-3112
Berkeley, CA 94720-3112

Notice that it is written by a Ph.D. That’s a doctorate. Notice that his field is the “ESPM-Division of Insect Biology”. That is, the “Environmental Science and Policy Management – Division of Insect Biology”. Notice the title: Can Organic Farming “Feed the World”?

So we have an article, written by a Ph.D. specifically aimed at the question you raised, from a Very Name University, in the college directed at specifically those issues, with a specialty in insect biology.

Somehow I think this qualifies as a “contribution to science on this blog”. But I guess it was too much effort for you to read the link yourself.

Show me a valid reference that “An ‘organic’ farmer must know a great deal more about botany of all the different crops and weeds.”

It isn’t patently obvious? That it’s easier to just dump a load of roundup on a weed than it is to find a crop that out competes it or a strategy for controlling the persistent roots of dock or dandelion that are not destroyed by cultivation or burning the tops off? I have to explain that? Ok …

From the article:

Counter to the widely held belief that industrial agriculture is more efficient and productive, small farms produce far more per acre than large farms. Industrial agriculture relies heavily on monocultures, the planting of a single crop throughout the farm, because they simplify management and allow the use of heavy machinery. Larger farms in the third world also tend to grow export luxury crops instead of providing staple foods to their growing population. Small farmers, especially in the Third World have integrated farming systems where they plant a variety of crops maximizing the use of their land.

While it doesn’t specifically use the word “botany” I would hope you can make the “leap” from “simplify management” and “variety of crops” to see that it’s more complex and you must cover more intellectual turf when you have a large number of plants instead of just one.. If you can’t, I can’t help you. And if it isn’t patently obvious that adding animals to a farm increases the complexity geometrically, I suggest trying to raise a dozen animals and see what happens. Oh, also notice the “maximizing the use of their land”. The small guy optimizes for yield per acre, the large guy for dollars per year.

Show me an estimate of how the present world population could be sustanied with “organic farming” and I’ll show you how belief in “alternative” science can kill millions of people.

I have no idea what “alternative science” is. I do know that folks at Ag Colleges with degrees in the subject have published plenty on how to get the same or larger yields from organic farms as from conventional. All based on “normal” science. Another quote from the same article (there are plenty of other articles available, and the existence proof of organic farms, if you care to look…):

They are also more likely to have livestock on their farm, which provides a variety of animal products to the local economy and manure for improving soil fertility. In such farms, though the yield per acre of a single crop might be lower than a large farm, total production per acre of all the crops and various animal products is much higher than large conventional farms (Rosset, 1999). Figure 1 shows the relationship between total production per unit area to farm size in 15 countries. In all cases, the smaller farms are much more productive per unit area— 200 to 1000 percent higher — than larger ones (Rosset, 1999).

Even in the United States, the smallest farms, those 27 acres or less, have more than ten times greater dollar output per acre than larger farms (US Agricultural Census, 1992). Conversion to small organic farms therefore, would lead to sizeable increases of food production worldwide. Only organic methods can help small family farms survive, increase farm productivity, repair decades of environmental damage and knit communities into smaller, more sustainable distribution networks — all leading to improved food security around the world.

I added the bold so you could find the relevant parts. The bottom line is that there is no shortage of food, and we have an agricultural system aimed at making the most money, not the most food. Land is in surplus, so we don’t optimize for it, we optimize for simpler management and lower labor.

From:

http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/

(which is my article) we have:

From: The C.I.A. Factbook, We have for “world”

Arable land is the present use, not a limit on what can be used. So we have roughly 11.61% of the land used for crops. There is a lot still available… There are several agronomy systems for upgrading marginal land into productive arable land.

I would add here that the “organic” compost and manure method is one of the best ways to turn bare sand into soil in a hurry. I have a bit of “hard pan clay” I’ve turned into a very nice square foot garden that way. It’s all about the tilth…

The “problem” is not a shortage of farm land, it’s a shortage of labor and money. We have hit the point where, in a competitive economy, you “waste” some land on lower production to get lower costs. Folks starving has a whole lot more to do with stupid political decisions, wars, and religion than any limit on productivity (but that’s a topic for another thread).

I also gave you a link to the SRI page:

http://ciifad.cornell.edu/sri/

I’ll help you with that one too. Notice the “cornell.edu”. That’s a big name college. Cornell. Here is the link to the articles supporting it (that you could get from the top page by clicking on “articles”…):

http://ciifad.cornell.edu/sri/sripapers.html

In it, you will find things like:

http://ciifad.cornell.edu/sri/countries/nepal/nepalrptuprety04.pdf

System of Rice Intensification in the context of Nepalese rice production

Mr. Rajendra Uprety, Agriculture Extension Officer
District Agriculture Development Office, Biratnagar, Morang, Nepal.

One would hope that an “Agricultural Extension Officer” can make personal observations that you will consider “valid”, even if not Ph.D. peer reviewed… his style is a bit “rambling” though, so maybe not…

In the lead in, you will note that he disparages the traditional methods still in use in Nepal with low application of chemicals. The guy is not an “organic shill”… I’ve added bold to some bits.

Nepal is an agricultural country. Still more than 65% of its population is engaged in agriculture for their livelihood. Agriculture contributes 39% of GDP. Among agricultural crops, rice is main crop, cultivated on nearly 1.54 Million hectares of land. Total production of rice in 2002/2003 was 4.13 million tons, with average productivity of 2675 kg/ha. These data show that
the productivity of rice in Nepal is not high (the world average is about 4000 kg/ha), and there is lot of possibility for making increments in productivity and total production.

OK, that’s a local production of 2.6 tons / ha and a global rate of 4 tons / ha as our benchmark. We need to beat that with a more intensive approach but without added chemicals (since they don’t have the money to buy them; a common problem with 3rd world agriculture…) So something like a 3 ton / ha rate for Nepal or (dream of dreams) a 4.5 ton / ha rate would be a stunning increase.

Behind the low production of rice there are various factors such as older-generation seeds (most farmers have used their own seed for decades), low doses of chemical fertilizer, little use of improved cultivation practices, less care for plant protection, etc. Still, most rice growers are depending on compost and FYM as fertilizer use is still very low.

I read an article of Dr. Norman Uphoff on SRI published by LEISA, a Dutch NGO. In this I found many things which might be useful in Nepalese context. So I contacted Norman for more information about SRI.

Notice that is Dr. Norman Uphoff. I’m sure you can find a bio on him. This is not some anti-science hippy thing. It is hard core crop science.

After collecting some good information, last year I started SRI in Morang district of Eastern Nepal. Last year there were two small plots less then 100 square meters with some practice of SRI (young seedlings, spaced planting, less water, and some weeding but no compost). We got more then 7 metric tons/ha yield with healthy plants (less diseases and pests).

Can you way “WOW!”… I knew you could… So these folks more than doubled their productivity and got a 50% increase over global averages. Without added chemicals. And with less diseases and pests.

Are you starting to see how this works now? Better understanding of the botany and needs of the rice plant, leading to changed and more active management of the crop, leading to higher crop yields.

That result encouraged us and we disseminated knowledge to farmers about SRI through training, a monthly newsletter, and personal and group contact.
This information created a sensation among the farmers, and we found many farmers wanted to try this technology. But still farmers didn’t fully believe in this technology. Most farmers wanted to visualize these results on another’s field to gain confidence. But some innovative farmers tried the methods on their early rice. Three farmers planted early rice using SRI methodology. Two among them got nearly 6 metric tons/ha productivity with some practice. One farmer, Mr. Udaya Narayan Nepal, planted 3 plots, with three different ages of seedling (8 days, 9 days, and 18 days). His land is upland with no irrigation facility, very low content of organic matter, and without compost. Despite these conditions, vegetative growth of his crop was very good. Tiller number reach up to 130/hill. All his neighbor who were teasing him initially become astonished to see his crop.

I generally don’t like quoting this much stuff in an article. They end up painfully long. That is why I put the links in, and then only add my personal views. That does not mean my posting lacks any science, it means it is in the links. I’d wager few comments here would qualify as peer reviewed science… it’s all about the links.

I think it is a complete waste of time to copy it all here so that folks who are too lazy to follow links burden everyone else, including the moderators, with the added volume. So please, lose the invective and read the links. Then if you still think “organic” is “ignorance” that you need to fight, take it up with Cornell, U.C. Berkeley, and the Agricultural Extension Officers of the world…

There are literally thousands of articles like the ones I’ve excerpted here, written by professionals in agriculture and agronomy, that all have the same message. Organic works. If you chose to ignore that, is is bigotry, nothing more. Chemical based agriculture also works ( I have nothing against it, in fact, I love hydroponics, the ultimate in chemical farming ;-) but they are different.

And the difference is that chemical based farming is simpler and uses less labor but at the cost of lower yields than can be had with “intensification”. Organic produces more production per unit of land, but at the cost of a lot more complexity and a lot more labor. Done at large scale, organic ends up costing about the same as chemical, but most is done at small scale and sold in niche markets so the costs and prices are higher.

Better? Neither one is “better” IMHO. If you have excess land and a labor shortage, go for the chemicals. If you have limited land and lots of labor, go for the organic with intensification. My personal preference is to aim at organic / intensification and be ready to add some chemical fertilizer or spray some pesticides if you gain by it. Unfortunately, BOTH political sides throw rocks at me for doing that … 8-}

“Your “monsoon” (e.g. sea breeze fronts and tropical moisture incited convection) has failed. Why has it failed? Lack of warmth to your north, combined with the fact that the ITCZ has failed to move poleward….”

Exactly. You’ve hit the nail on the head. It’s always pretty hot here this time of year. The problem this year is we’re not getting the heavy afternoon rains which tend to moderate things for us here. Pretty unusual, although not unprecedented.

Thanks for the apple guidance! I only have 2 very small trees, so it’s not a big deal to me (and the bunnies are happy, so it’s not a waste.)

The Soil survey book shows over 2 feet of the best topsoil in NC. In actual fact the soil is now pure clay (98% inorganic) thanks to “modern farming practices”

That is the often ignored downside to chemical farming. You basically end up running a once through hydroponic system with a poor root media. Over time, the biological component is lost (plant matter oxidizes and rots, worms die, bacteria die) and you end up with a mineral soil (sand, clay, whatever was in the original soil). The “tilth” is gone.

I’m all in favor of hydroponic gardening (even bought a small table top kit once to play with it). It can give great yields, and hydroponic greenhouse production of salad greens gives the best product and the highest production you can get. I’m just not so much in favor of backing into it in a less thought out way by destruction of soil tilth…

As a chemist I am not against the intelligent use of petro-chemicals but “organic Farming methods” with recourse to petro-chemicals as a last resort makes more sense if you want to keep the land productive.

And that is exactly the way I garden. One of my major complaints about the “organic certification” plans is that they prohibit that “last resort” to chemicals. If you get an uncontrolled pest on a crop, you can’t just go nuke that corner and then sell that produce as “conventional”, you lose the organic certification for some number of years for the whole place… Way over the top, IMHO.

Unfortunately Obama, the USDA and the FDA will be outlawing the use of manure etc.

What?! If manuring is outlawed, I’m joining the “Freedom of Religion” lawsuit that will follow. Amish tradition depends on manuring the land and forbids the use of technologies not found in the Bible. If they “go there” the majority of America that does believe in religion will be lined up against them. Religious persecution of a quaint minority does not sit well with the public…

While my line of the family moved to the city and embraced technology, some stayed behind. They have every right to live as their religion tells them.

BTW, the Cow Poo E.Coli “problem” could be easily solved by taking a butt wipe of the nations cows and culling those with the particular mutant that causes illness. That everyone is all ‘panties in a bunch’ about the risk of E. Coli, but only AFTER the cows are turned into bulk ground beef, says a great deal about where focus is in the process. Why do a “one shot” simple and permanent ‘cure’ when you can let all the cows be sold to the meat processor first then let it be his problem… It is MUCH easier to find the E. Coli O157:H7 when it is concentrated in one single colon than it is after it has been mixed into a few thousand cows worth of ground beef…

But somehow the understanding that this is one rare odd mutant of E. Coli and it is not just “all E. Coli” that are the problem, gets lost. And with it, the most effective solution: Wipe out the mutants at their source (Shades of X Men!)

Your “monsoon” (e.g. sea breeze fronts and tropical moisture incited convection) has failed. Why has it failed? Lack of warmth to your north, combined with the fact that the ITCZ has failed to move poleward. These are consequences of global cooling.

BTW – this is not limited to Texas. A number of northern hemisphere places in similar settings are afflicted.

So where is your contribution to science on this science blog?

A series of rambling anecdotes, some debatable, is a PROBLEM for scientists, not a help. That’s the type of ignorance that we are trying to fight. Ignorance is why so many innocents are being led like lambs to the slaughter by the warmist zealots.

Show me a valid reference that “An ‘organic’ farmer must know a great deal more about botany of all the different crops and weeds.” (In an odd way you are right, because weed abundance on organic farms is a problem for clean neighbours and you will need an armoury of pseudo-scientific excuses to plead your innocence.)

Show me an estimate of how the present world population could be sustanied with “organic farming” and I’ll show you how belief in “alternative” science can kill millions of people. In part of my professional career I studied problems just like this, so I’m talking from personal experience from a number of countries, China in particular. I’m not playing some silly little propaganda exercise and I’m not in the pay of Big anything.

One other point about the “veggie box” system is packaging.
The box is reused (52 times over a year and havent seen an unusable one yet)
Packaging is just about non existent
paper bags,
compressed compostable mulch for small boxes (tomatoes, mushrooms),
Any plastic bag is collected with the return box at the time of delivery of the new box.
A recipie leaflet is usually included for oddities (what do you do with chicory?)
The real downside is turnips and swede in winter!

If you check out packaging on supermarket organic produce you will most often find plastic is compostable and trays are compressed paper. The extra cost is included in the higher price you pay for the organics.

Yes “organic apples” are the pits to grow. Thats why fruit was eaten with a knife. For apples the Plum Cucurio is the big problem, takes 98% of our crop. A sray with mineral oil while the trees are dorment and chickens to pick off the bugs and pigs to eat the drops would be a real help, but that was illegal in our town. “Composing” the drops (a super bug incubator) was practiced by our neighbor so we gave up.

I am now sitting on 100Ac of old tobacco farm in NC. The Soil survey book shows over 2 feet of the best topsoil in NC. In actual fact the soil is now pure clay (98% inorganic) thanks to “modern farming practices” As a chemist I am not against the intelligent use of petro-chemicals but “organic Farming methods” with recourse to petro-chemicals as a last resort makes more sense if you want to keep the land productive. Unfortunately Obama, the USDA and the FDA will be outlawing the use of manure etc. US citizens cause such an uproar about the food (un)safety bills, Obama decided to side step the issue according to American Vegetable Growers http://www.growingproduce.com/news/avg/?storyid=2146

History of the corporate food monopoly strategy http://yupfarming.blogspot.com/2009/05/food-safety-bills-more-dangerous-than_08.html

Meanwhile here in NC it is 68F and we have yet to hit 100F this year. I have noticed the “reported” highs and lows for my area are ALWAYS 2 to 5F higher than the actual real time temps!

Rain washes away tourism dollars in Northeast
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Rain-washes-away-tourism-apf-1837983148.html?x=0

I see a lot of change but no hope!

Mike

You are astoundingly wrong here. Clearly your have strong biases that are preventing you from seeing the science in farming without chemicals.

(Technically, it’s not ‘without chemicals’ so much as it is ‘with a reduced list of chemicals’ since things like nicotine and copper are approved, and you get ammonia from pee and poo rather than from DOW, but it’s still a chemical, but I digress… The bottom line is that it takes more understanding, not less, to work with a smaller pallet of chemicals and a broader pallet of biological properties and interactions.)

An “organic” farmer must know a great deal more about botany of all the different crops and weeds. They must know a great deal more about the life cycle and preferences of insect pests. They must know a great deal more about the life cycle and weaknesses of infections and a broad pallet of ways to treat them. They must know a great deal more about the interactions of different plants (what can be planted together and what can not, and how this impacts pests). The science involved is much more complicated than the conventional approach. That is why most farmers don’t do it, it’s just a pain in the arse to learn all the methods.

In conventional farming I can just dump on “the usual” amount of fertilizers and “the usual” amount of pesticide on “the usual” schedule. Heck, I remember when “integrated pest management” first came out and folks just ignored it. It was easier to just spray on “spray day” and not bother to even look and see if you had pests to spray. (Yes, folks did that, and some still do it.) It is much more a “by rote” business where “organic” is much more adaptive and with a much more subtile understanding of the science of how all these things interact. Just focused a lot more on biology and a little less on chemistry.

Is Organic Farming Sustainable?

The question is silly. My Amish relatives have been running traditional farming for hundreds of years. ALL farming was “organic” for several thousand years and only recently did we start using synthetic chemicals. We have a several thousand year long global existence proof that “organic” farming is sustainable.

Then you cite some folks who do a poor job of it and call that science?
Sheesh. See the links up thread for folks doing it right and out producing conventional (that really ought to be called “chemical tech”, since for most of history the “convention” was “organic” in every way but a certification) with steady increases in yields over time.

Within these references are scientific statements like “Losses in New Zealand have been reported at 42% for organic barley and 32% for organic wheat”. (2 references).

And they just had a near 60% loss in South Africa with Monsanto GM seeds that were bogus. A “lab problem” in fertility. ANY farming method will have times and places that have losses. That isn’t science, that’s just tabloid “my number is bigger than your number”.

There are also non-science statements like “Biodynamic preparations

Please don’t try to confound “organic” with the biodynamic mumbo jumbo. Makes about as much sense as confounding conventional production with the rate of cancer from under power lines crossing a farm. Yes, there are some dope smoking hippies who believe in biodynamics and want to grown an organic product. That does not say a thing about the bulk of the organic farming done in the world. Nor does the racist redneck who owned a farm in my home town say anything about other conventional farmers.

I was not having a go at the EU. I was specifically ridiculing

Yes, you certainly were ridiculing… I was asking you to consider that ridicule says a great deal about you and not so much about organic farming methods and I was suggesting that you might find it more productive to aim at the thing that is really causing grief, that the EU has a one size fits all policy that is broken. You seem to wish to wallow in ridicule. OK, but I won’t join you there.

those misguided people who believe in organic farming. What quackery!

Clearly you have a closed mind filled with errors of understanding and little desire to change. “Non-organic” farming has existed for about 100 years maximum (roughly the era of synthetic chemicals in agriculture, as a guess based on when the Haber process first started) and only really got going about 60 years ago with widespread use of synthetic pesticides. So your statement is a statement that for all of history farming was ‘quackery’ and there were no effective nor efficient farms, until just now, and only done one way. Riiiight…

June 21st I was on an organic farm. Toured the whole place (spread over a few hundred acres near Monterey) and it was a marvel. The farmer who ran it knew more about his crops and processes and ran a more involved operation than any I’ve ever seen in the ‘conventional’ world. He runs a mixed truck vegetable and fruit operation. Most farmers work hard to master one crop. This guy had a couple of dozen going. His wheat field was ready to harvest and looked spectacular. I’ve got a tub of great garlic we hand braided in the field. The strawberry patch was in mid-production and was identical to the ‘conventional’ fields in layout (with black plastic mulch on ridges so the berries never touch dirt) with good yield and great quality. We got to eat them strait from the plant. He was able to identify a particular weed that I’ve been trying to get identified and even told me how to get rid of it without herbicides. Frankly, his operation put to shame the folks in my home town who would farm one of rice, or peaches, or cattle, but that was all the complexity they could, or would handle. If I had to pick a “master farmer” it would be the organic guy.

I rest my case.

I’m sure you do… but perhaps you could stop resting just long enough to go visit a farm and see what actually happens on one. I grew up in farm country raising rabbits, cows, the odd chicken, and some field crops along with a garden. I have a family tradition of farmers for as far back as we have history. I went to an “Ag School” for my college education. I love plants and growing them (and have bacteriology and upper division genetics classes under my belt too) and I’ve developed a few of my own varieties of various garden vegetables. (a large robust cocozelle squash, a sturdy potato, and an oversized purple pod green bean).
You have an opinion…

Dinner tonight was ‘from the garden’: yellow & green squash, sauteed with onions and shallots and a bit of tomato in olive oil & garlic. All the vegetables grown without synthetic chemicals. Just bunny poo. And a lasagna made with commercial organic noodles. But you claim that can’t work. I say existence proof.

Might I suggest that an informed opinion based on practical experience would be more useful.

BTW, I still use “lemon juice and honey” as a “cure”. The acidity with the osmotic pressure from the honey pretty much busts up a wide range of bacteria. The vitamin C helps nuke some viruses too. That is why sugar and acid, like vinegar, are used as food preservatives. So it’s my first step when the throat gets scratchy. (I pick the citrus from the tree by my front door, so total time it takes is about 2 minutes). Works very well and for well understood scientific reasons. In the one case in 10 or more when it’s not enough, well, I’m happy to then waste a day at the doctors getting antibiotics. They also work, but they tend to screw up my gut bacteria, so when I’m done with the course of antibiotics, I need to eat some yogurt to get the plumbing back in order (and less gassy / irritated). FWIW, rabbits have the same problem, only more so. You can kill a rabbit with antibiotics by killing off their gut bacteria that are essential to their lives. Any rabbit farmer needs to know that… so having both antibiotic based “cures” and non-antibiotic based cures is of great benefit.

Why you want to limit yourself to a single small straight jacket is, well, a mystery… but one no longer worth pursuing…