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Re: Home gardener chemical use



Ribes60@aol.com wrote:
> 
> >In a reply to Patricia Dines, and to the group, you wrote that
> >you work exclusively with home gardeners, who use more
> >chemicals per capita than the agricultural community, and that
> >you can not imagine any criteria that make the use of chemical
> >pest solutions acceptable in home gardens.
> 
> I doubt your conclusion that home gardeners use more chemicals
> per capita, it is not logical.

I've seen the above statistic quoted in other places and I think
that the quote is really: 
  "home gardeners use more chemicals per acre than the 
     agricultural community".
Which makes perfect sense, the agricultural community is 
applying chemicals to increase profit, chemicals are
expensive so the agricultural community is a lot better about
mixing and applying chemicals in precise amounts and not applying
more than neccessary, whereas home gardeners tend to not be so
precise (as Bill Scheider explained in his followup).  Home gardners
are not profit motivated, so they tend to apply more chemicals 
than are neccessary, and more often fall into the "if a little is
good, then a lot is better" syndrome.  If you are paying $2.99 to
spray your crop, you probably won't think much about applying a 
second treatment if things don't improve as quick as you'd like?

This is not to say that you can't find any instances of either 
home gardeners or professional farmers that are counter to the 
norm.
FWIW
Matt
-- 
| Matt Baney          Boeing Commercial Space Company
| Resouce21           (206)-393-0148                      
 "Whenever you find yourself at the bottom of a deep  
  hole the first thing you should do is stop digging" 
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