Well it wasn't my intention to ignite a conventional vs. organic debate, but I think it's fair game on any serious food growing forum. I thought the article was interesting because it showed organic has been so successfully marketed. It's benefits are deemed preferential by the populace, irregardless of the facts. Whether organic is practically "doable" at any serious level of scale, in areas of rain, is another question. On that topic, I've followed the organic arguments for years and the solutions (either implicit or explicit) boil down to: - Grow food in arid climates (generally west of the continental divide). The flip side is that adequate water in those areas can be an issue. - Grow food that has natural immunity of local pests. The disadvantage for the lower Midwest and South is that there are precious few foods that fit this bill. Those that do are generally considered inferior by the populace (Our extraordinarily high standard of living has moved the standard of taste to high levels. People in the developed world won't reduce their standards of food unless they are forced.) - Eliminate monoculture, thereby estimating pests. The idea is that if many grow a multitude of different food stuffs, large acreages of monoculture, that encourage pest pressures not found in small plantings, will be reduced thereby reducing pest pressure. However, diversity plantings were common prior to the green revolution, yet still resulted in low yields, somewhat due to high pest pressure (I'm speaking from a lower Midwest perspective here.) I still maintain an increasing dedication of backyard acreage to food production will eventually result in pest pressure common in today's commercial orchards, whether the backyard plantings are monoculture or diverse. It's possible widespread diverse plantings could result in more pest pressure because there is no break in host crops (i.e. In monoculture, host crops can break the pest cycle via crop rotation. In small widespread diverse plantings pests always have a host available.) Theory aside, here's my own experience. Most food grown here requires some type of spray to have any level of customer acceptance. Secondly, people demand a reasonable level of value for the purchase of their food. As a personal example, I charge $2/lb. for high quality (non-organic) tree ripe peaches. Even at this price I lose sales because of the expense. My options for growing organic would be to try continuous applications of Surround, which I'm not willing to do for fear of adding too much aluminum to the soil, or try to bag each peach with a cotton drawstring bag (not tested on a commercial basis, but anecdotal trials from a serious home grower on this forum indicate promise). In short, I could not charge my customers enough to pay for the labor to bag each peach in a cotton bag. I can't imagine how much labor it would require to bag (and unbag) all the peaches. To get paid a reasonable wage for that labor would require $6, $8, $10/lb.? Nobody in this area would be willing to pay those prices. We have less than 1/2 acre of peach trees which only provides a small part time income, yet the time required to bag all those peaches would be huge, and consume all current sales income from that crop. My wife and I have recently purchased a small 10 acre parcel which we plan to plant mostly to peach trees. I can't even fathom the amount of labor it would take to bag peaches from 100s of trees. I'm all for organic culture if future technology makes it "doable" in my climate. But I think it's illogical to insist organic technology is the only way. I hope (and look for) conventional techniques/pesticides to become safer (as has been the case) with improvements in research/technology, as well as improvements in the efficacy of organic culture/pesticides.

Henry, I'm not questioning your credentials or your family's credentials. I'm questioning your circle-running of Google search articles for things you want to prove...and how you use some of them. While you seem to have a mind for science, your application of certain paper's topics to what you're trying to prove can be lacking. The "discussion" about the economics of large acreage farming and farmer choice burnt me out. I'm not getting into any more of that stuff...it's a never-ending circle. I understand nature is complex... I spend my personal and professional life studying it. I know large scale cropping systems, specialized hybridizing (CMS/etc), plant breeding, genetics, and the economics of cropping system especially...I also know soil science (another degree I hold), but I don't get to apply it that much in my profession. Just because I know about "science" things...it doesn't make me an expert or knowledgeable about nuclear reactions in power plants or making new elements from atomic super collider reactions. The field of science is just too broad in scope. Hell, even close fields aren't the best of neighbors. Ecologists and Horticulturalists share some similar/same terms, but the final definition is going to be different depending on which one you ask. I'm not out there trying to have a discussion/argument on the best way to raise hostas...because other than micropropagating them, I know jack about them. Expects have to specialize at some point. I know what I'm an expert at and where I'm lacking. You gotta draw that line, especially when you're diving into material you don't fully grasp. I chose a profession which puts me on the ground floor of the industry, and on the cutting edge of the technology (both GMO and non-GMO). This industry goes on without me...it happens independent of me...farmers don't care if I exist. What's going on out there doesn't care what I think. What's going on out there is what I'm exposed to on a daily/weekly basis, though. No one's wishes can make the reality of the decisions made on the ground different. It's happening whether people want to believe it or not. I've been in fields in almost 20 states, I've seen/gathered/crunched-numbers of pest data, I've used the pesticides/herbicides, I've grown the plants in greenhouse and field environments, I've talked so many farmers in so many different climates... Sorry, I can't give you their phone number and I'm not going to play Google search tag (because it never ends). If you choose to dismiss the things I say, fine. Wishes and hopes don't change what's going down on the ground floor of this particular field (or many fields). This post was edited by nc-crn on Wed, Mar 13, 13 at 20:30

Thanks for the link Annie, I checked it out, and as of the date of that article, Seminis did sell to Territorial and Johnny's as well as Fedco. It could be that a couple of the brassicas I just bought from Fedco, as well as the Lollo Rosa lettuce from Burpee could have come from Seminis. I will have to call the companies and check. A short snippet from the article Annie posted: " Taking spinach into his own hands: Nash Huber doesnâÂÂt want to get stuck depending on a hybrid that might get dropped by a mega-company owner on a whim. He also doesnâÂÂt want to lose any of the vigor, disease resistance, etc. that hybrid has provided. So Nash is working on dehybridizing �" breeding an open-pollinated spinach that is well adapted to his needs. (pictured: Huber, left; Matthew Dillon, right) Posted February 22, 2005: The news of MonsantoâÂÂs agreement to purchase Seminis has received little attention from the media other than the financial pages and a few seed industry and anti-globalization web sites. But then again, why should it? How many consumers �" of food or seed �" have even heard of Seminis? And yet, as Seminis spinmeister Gary Koppenjan said, âÂÂIf you've had a salad, you've had a Seminis product." It is estimated that Seminis controls 40 percent of the U.S. vegetable seed market and 20 percent of the world market�"supplying the genetics for 55 percent of the lettuce on U.S. supermarket shelves, 75 percent of the tomatoes, and 85 percent of the peppers, with strong holdings in beans, cucumbers, squash, melons, broccoli, cabbage, spinach and peas. The companyâÂÂs biggest revenue source comes from tomato and peppers seeds, followed by cucumbers and beans. In large part, these numbers reflect usage of Seminis varieties within large industrial production geared towards supermarkets, but Seminis seeds are also widely used by regional conventional and organic farmers as well as market and home gardeners. JohnnyâÂÂs, Territorial, Fedco, NicholâÂÂs, Rupp, Osborne, Snow, and Stokes are among the dozens of commercial and garden seed catalogs that carry the more than 3,500 varieties that comprise Seminisâ offerings. This includes dozens of All-American Selections and an increasing number of varieties licensed to third parties for certified organic seed production. The brand-name companies under Seminis (such as Petoseed) have developed, released, produced and distributed varieties common to the market farmer and even home gardener. These include Big Beef, Sweet Baby Girl and Early Girl Tomatoes; Simpsons Elite and Red Sails Lettuces; Red Knight and King Arthur Peppers; Gold Rush and Blackjack Zucchinis; Stars & Stripes Melon; and Bush Delicata and Early Butternut squashes (see sidebar for other popular varieties)." So home gardeners DO have to check their seed, these are very popular varieties though the article is NOT saying that these...

I do know several small farmers who refuse to be certified as "organic" because they feel that is misleading as American standards allow the use of many . They will instead label their products as "pesticide free" or "produced in an organic manner" or something similar. They are always happy to tell anyone who asks about their growing methods. Most will employ biological controls, like predator insects, or mechanical devices like my "fake apples" brushed with a sticky substance that traps coddling moths. The bigger corporation farms will spray and dust more regularly, as they have the equipment to do so. Not all "natural pesticides" are harmless to humans, as once thought, and so things like rotenone, which is derived from plant sources like jicama vine has been found to kill fish and is "mildly" harmful to humans. Whatever that means, one would think it was harmful or not. However, if an item is labelled "organic", it will, at least at this point, be GMO free. Annie