Subject: Re: Organic Food
From: Brian Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: 24 May 94 12:33 PDT
Newsgroups: alt.sustainable.agriculture

** On May 19, 1994 by [email-masked] in cdp:alt.sustainabl **
** responded to Brian Baker  <[email-masked]>: **
>>
>>Study this one carefully, folks. It's the classic logical fallacy of the "False
>>Dichotomy." To answer your parenthetical question, Lowell, "organic" has come to
>>mean food grown without most synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides. 

> IMHO, the real false dichotomy here is that "there exist two kinds of farmers:
> organic farmers and farmers who use nasty chemicals".  As far as I'm concerned,
> 7 applications of rotenone-pyrethrum are at least as nasty as two applications
> of imidan [ . . . ]

Another false dichotomy. What crop are you talking about? I don't know a single
organic farmer in California who uses seven sprays a year of rotenone/pyrethrum.
Given the high cost of such a program, a grower who is on such a treadmill wouldn't
last long in the competitive world of organic farming.  Most organic farmers in
California maintain a habitat of beneficial insects, sanitation, cultural control, codling
moth granulosis virus (now commercially available, I understand), and maybe one ryania
spray a season for a knockdown. 

> (NYSAES study comparing their effectiveness).  And,The data show that
> natural chemicals are just as carcinogenic as synthetic ones.  That's pretty
> nasty in my book.

1) What data? 2) Why add to the background levels of natural carcinogens by adding
synthetic ones? Organic farmers don't merely substitute natural nasties for synthetic
ones. See my longer response below.

-- 
                                                      
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*   Lou Hom                *    "All folks are family."            *
*   [email-masked]       *                -- John Saponara   * 
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