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Re: [compost_tea] permits and disease claims
The information you can state about disease suppression and compost tea is that the compost tea organisms use the foods that the disease-causing organisms would otherwise use in order to grow. Say nothing about the disease, just the disease-causing organisms.
The compost tea organisms occupy all the space on the leaves. If there is no space for any other organism, then disease-causing organisms have no space to grow either. If all the infection sites for the diseases are occupied, how can disease-organisms cause any problems?
Protozoa and nematodes consume bacteria and fungi, and they will consume the disease-causing organisms too. Cat and mice mechanisms, and the EPA will not and cannot regulate these MECHANICAL interactions. That's the case we have to make to the regulators. Do they want to regulate cats, dogs, birds and beneficial insects? Compost tea falls in that same category.
But, let us NOT push it, all right? The International Compost Tea Council is working on the regulatory verbiage. Give them time. Give them your support. No other group is making any effort to deal with the regulatory issue. What I can't believe is compost tea machine makers that keep working with people who are trying to say that compost tea machines grow E. coli.
BUT, don't emphasize the disease-control aspects of compost tea in the commercial world, ok? When you present things at meetings, you should not make that claim. When I talk at meetings, I show data that prove that compost tea has that potential. But I don't sell tea. I make no commercial claims. If you happen to be selling a compost tea maker, or compost tea, or happen to have a copy of my book at your booth when I am at a meeting giving a talk, you are not the making any claims for tea. and neither am I. I'm just showing data that says, look, this can happen. If you make tea correctly, we see these effects. It is up to the client to make sure they make the tea correctly.
When someone asks about whether compost tea has disease control ability, YOU HAVE TO SAY THAT EVIDENCE ABOUT DISEASE CONTROL HAS NOT BEEN ACCEPTED BY THE EPA, THE USDA, OR OTHER FEDERAL REGULATORY AGENCIES. You have to say that there are some interesting research projects that are going on in the US and other coutnries, but nothing absolute to show yes or no across the board yet. Certainly there have been people who have not understood how to make good compost tea that have failed to obtain disease control.
But people who make compost tea, then transport it for 10 to 15 hours without aeration and then claim that the tea killed their plants clearly do not know what they are doing.
Researchers that apply compost tea to fields with less than 0.5% organic matter, plow the field, and then wait three weeks before planting their seeds are doing everything possible to make certain they will see no benefit from adding tea. Bacteria and fungi are organisms that have to have something to eat in order to do their job. If we didn't feed you for three weeks, how well would you perform your function? And who is it that did that research? Um, USDA extension folks in which State? Don't tell me that they are trying to give compost tea a fair test.....
Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
www.soilfoodweb.com
SFI Oregon, USA
SFI Australia
SFI New York
SFI Europe
SFI New Zealand
"Hope is not a feeling. It is not the belief that things will turn out well, but the conviction that what we are doing makes sense, no matter how things turn out." -- Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic
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