One field will make it!

[Hopperbin]

Fran your being quite oblivious to the fact your putting a poison onto your crop and you think that it is the same as one grown organically. It is not the same.
Think about it will you pour any of them pesticides you use onto your skin or drink them? not likely and that is what organic consumers are or think they are purchasing. If I had a choice I would purchase bread grown not sprayed with insecticide for midge in my opinion if of same quality and specs.

[Hopperbin]

http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/agentorange032102.cfm

[Hopperbin]

To read from the last link.
Vietnam wants US help performing research and obtaining compensation.
It blames Agent Orange for tens of thousands of birth defects. The US
and Vietnam did sign an agreement during the meeting to carry out
joint research studies. But US ambassador Raymond Burghardt noted that
developing research studies "that are definitive and address the
underlying causes of disease in Vietnam" will be a "difficult task."

Reporting on the conference, Reuters pointed out, "Observers say
conclusive research could have far-reaching and expensive consequences
in terms of compensation claims for the US and Agent Orange makers,
Dow Chemical and Monsanto."

[checking]

Hopper, they can find a little bit of something in everything. It's only become measureable due to the increased sensitivity of instruments. Nobody is talking about mixing chemicals with their arms, swimming in a tote, or downing a one ounce shot of reglone. Zero chemical tolerance is not a tolerance and could not be achieved even with pure organics grown in a bubble. So what you are really concerned about is that you can't accept that the scientific community has deemed that a certain level of something (indeed everything) isn't going to measureably affect your health. Something else will get you first, so eat the damn bread!

[Fransisco]

Hopper, you are forgetting the number one rule of toxicology(maybe you've never heard of it). It is the dose that makes the poison.

Simply put one aspirin your headache goes away, one bottle of aspirin and you go away.

The organic argument is that one aspirin is the same as a whole bottle. Or that one aspirin taken once a month for a number of years will lead to the same result as taking a whole bottle at once. It just doesn't work that way, but lots of people buy into it with the whole "I just don't want to take the chance" attitude.

You can find traces of pesticides and toxins on both organic and conventionally grown crops. The reason I say they are identical is that the levels(doses) are so low or so small as to not be an actual factor. And the slight difference in levels amounts to little more than splitting hairs.

So yes as far as I'm concerned there really is no difference. If other people think there is, that's fine, it's there life, they can do what they want with what they decide to put in their bodies. It doesn't really bother me till they start thinking they have the right to make decisions for myself and everyone else.

[parsley]

Well checking, I can't ignore your comments.

"isn't going to measurably affect your health"

After all Canadian Food Inspection Agency deemed that it was safe for meat packing plants to grind up dead and diseased cows and feed them to other cows.

Now, some will shudder at the bad optics I pose, but I'm not a squeamish eater, so it's not the THOUGHT of it that bothers me. You know, raw cow sliced thinly and dipped in another cow's ground flesh freshly flavored with raw ginger and hot red pepper.

It's the long term, wide-viewed results that grates me.

Mad cow.

Thousands of cows were ground up, (the ones not well enough to minute-fry), made into feed, and then fed to other cows, who in turn were butchered, ground up in huge vats, packaged into hamburger, and distributed nationally and internationally.

Yes they were.

To put a stop to this fiasco meant admitting fault. Admitting a mistake.

So it continued on and on.

Scientists were aware of the disastrous implications for victims, most yet to be diagnosed, but their defense was well rehearsed......'there will always be a number of unfortunate people exposed to this kind of mass processing, this is but a handful who will unfortunately develop mad cow disease.'

In other words, low numbers of presently-diagnosed victims warrant continuation.

The point is, by not feeding cows to cows, NO ONE has to develop mad cow from a manufacturing process.

It's quite a massive experiment on North Americans, isn't it?

Now, I realize, most are flippant about their response until it's their kid. A bunch of us on our Sunday morning conference call, quite a few years ago, weren't as cocky when one participant said the neighbor. living on a farm, died of mad cow. A University professor, father of an aquaintance, died last year, restrained and mad.

Made me pause. As should it you.

So-called scientific processes do not have the tools or capability to yet understand the big picture. Cause and effect. All of us know the effect of low potassium on the body.( Eat a banana) Or lack of iodine. But what is the effect of too much, or the wrong proportions, or of combinations in the wrong sequence, or the wrong combinations?

We don't know.

Companies have a mandate to make money. To research. There is nothing wrong with what they do and how they do it.

But ours is to provide good wholesome food for our family and friends and neighbors and for fellow citizens.

We must do it well.

We also have a responsibility to ourselves to open our eyes, and use our common sense, and see that food that is being manufactured and distributed, meets our expectations as farmers.

Growing food should not become simply a price consideration, or we'll see ourselves eliminated and watch shoppers supplied with one nutrient pill (It will be deficient and incomplete) per day per person.

I won't be satisfied with a food pill, (I'm the ultimate eater, lol) although it would probably be the cheapest way to eat if you don't mind dying early.

I don't think man is smart enough yet, to know how many nutrients to put into the pill, some yet undiscovered, OR to know how much of each nutrient to add.

Science has a difficult time balancing just the ONE thyroid hormone in patients let alone invent and prescribe the entire nutritional needs of a human.

Humans are so perfect and yet so complicated; we don't appear complex though, and it doesn't seem complex for us to fit into the world, either.

But it is complex.

Pars

[parsley]

Hopper, if I made organic beer, I would bring out the cases and serve frozen frothing glasses full of beer to AVers, compliments of Pars, until they screetched, "Uncle" LOL Pars

[Choice2U]

500 net bushels in a B train....50% drop in production on same land. If we all go organic tommorrow, I wonder how countries will feed 6 billion today and 10 billion in 2025. Let's have some government agency decide on who starves and we'll all make big bucks. Science has led us to where we are today...the high opportunity costs of conventional cross breeding resulted in slower discoveries. Organics is a profitable niche for the true believer like Pars and a short term fix for the many hypocrites that do it because they can't get financing for inputs.

[parsley]

choice2U,

I agree that SOME entrants to organics join because they have little alternative. They cannot get an operating loan.

Just as some conventional farmers beg to government for subsidies, because, although they grow more and more bushels, they make less and less money. I don't consider them stupid,or less, just trying to make it the best way they know how for them and their families.

Certainly technology is good. And varietal improvement is good. I have never disputed that.

But I do say this. If you think growing more and more will solve the problem of low farmgate prices/income, (and there definitely is a problem amongst large and small producers alike), you are obviously not able to separate your wish from the basic parent thought, which is this:

...growing still more and more to sell to countries that cannot afford to buy, spells financial disaster for Western farmers. It's good for the banks, and governments and chemical companies, and corporations,and fertilizer dealers, and feed mills, and futures markets, but farmers have not progressed well.

Not when you look at NET income. Not when you look at debt. And not when you look at comparative industries.

imho, of course. Pars

[parsley]

btw, Choice 2u, I am very well aware that the 'shaker and the mover farmers' who make presentations, and lobby, and write, and are listened to with bated breath by many, are committed to telling farmers to grow more and more, to produce yet more bushels, and all will be well, and the water shall part so farmers can walk through the waves.

They are probably well paid for giving such advice.

But it is advice I think is folly. Pars