Organic food?

[Mystical]

Some organic things I grow at home - (not my garden and not my photos)

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[Bibliofagus]

@Luckie: I grow veggies myself as well. More and more. We bought a house 1,5 years ago and anything that dies is being replaced by something edible. It's fun to do because every time we change something we get to figure out what would work out. For instance: We took out a sick tree that provided some privacy in the back yard, and replaced it with an array of bean stalks Quick growing, perfect for the soil, climate and spot.
Next year I'm gonna buy a small greenhouse. Peppers cost like .50 euro's over here So I'm planning to grow these.
And weed if my girlfriend allows it

[Mystical]

You lucky bastards!
Is it legal... wherever u are?

[Bibliofagus]

Not really legal. But it's okay as long as you don't make a living out of it.
(I live in the Netherlands)

[The Grand Nudger]

Next year I'm gonna buy a small greenhouse. Peppers cost like .50 euro's over here So I'm planning to grow these.
And weed if my girlfriend allows it

Try a hoophouse first, honest to goodness greenhouses are usually a waste of resources and space - for the average home gardener. If you do go the greenhouse route, and you've never actually worked one before - don;t assume that it;s somehow a more ideal, better, or easier production area for any given thing you may want to propagate. Any problems you would have -outside- are exacerbated by the close confines. If you've ever had, for example, your squash fail to mildew or tomatoes to leaf curl - the two of those are nearly unstoppable once you cluster everything into a glass box. It becomes an issue of harvesting -before- they do too much damage, not -if-. Might want to look into some gp anti fungals as proactive measure as well. Keep everything dusted with baking soda (or a more potent designer compound) and that's half the battle in a greenhouse. The other half is treating the area like a clean room.

[JesusHMuhammad]

You have two choices.

1. Eat plants that have been exposed to toxic chemical designed to kill things and wait for the long-term studies to conclusively prove or disprove negative effects.

2. Eat plants that have not been exposed to toxins.

Your choice. Just think cigarette smoking.

[The Grand Nudger]

Long term studies -have- been undertaken (and continue to this day), none of the risks that were predicted (stretching all the way back to the 50's but picking up pace in the 70's) have materialized - and we understand why this is the case. Other risk factors have presented themselves - and we understand these as well. The pesticide in the corn isn't going to kill you, it won't even make you sick, because it isn't stable enough to reach your table when properly applied - and this is by design. On the other hand, eating all that damned corn probably will kill you, tubby tubby.

Obvs, the last bit isn't aimed at you, but us in the general.

We're more careful now than we ever have been about our food, and we're more capable of being so. This is an argument from ignorance - against the consumption of food-...and frankly..that's disturbing. The comparison to smoking doesn't really apply because it's not as though we weren't aware, and for solid reasons, long before anyone felt like running a test - that smokes were "coffin nails". Similarly, I know better than to slam down a 40 of agricultural pesticides, but no ones asking you to do that and you certainly aren't doing so by putting a tomato in your mouth. All crops are exposed to toxins, most produce their own. Ironically, the group of food that falls to the usda axe most often with regards to toxins and contamination - is the organic subest, for reasons mentioned a few posts back.

[Clueless Morgan]

You have two choices.

1. Eat plants that have been exposed to toxic chemical designed to kill things and wait for the long-term studies to conclusively prove or disprove negative effects.

2. Eat plants that have not been exposed to toxins.

Your choice. Just think cigarette smoking.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Because organic farmers don't spray their crops with pesticides or fungicides. Suuuuuure...



http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~lhom/organictext.html

ORGANIC PESTICIDES VERSUS SYNTHETIC PESTICIDES

Clearly, the less we impact our environment, the better off we all are. Organic farming practices have greatly advanced the use of non-chemical means to control pests, as mentioned earlier.
Unfortunately, these non-chemical methods do not always provide enough protection, and it's necessary to use chemical pesticides. How do organic pesticides compare with conventional pesticides?

A recent study compared the effectiveness of a rotenone-pyrethrin mixture versus a synthetic pesticide, imidan. Rotenone and pyrethrin are two common organic pesticides; imidan is considered a "soft" synthetic pesticide (i.e., designed to have a brief lifetime after application, and other traits that minimize unwanted effects). It was found that up to 7 applications of the rotenone- pyrethrin mixture were required to obtain the level of protection provided by 2 applications of imidan.

It seems unlikely that 7 applications of rotenone and pyrethrin are really better for the environment than 2 applications of imidan, especially when rotenone is extremely toxic to fish and other aquatic life.

It should be noted, however, that we don't know for certain which system is more harmful. This is because we do not look at organic pesticides the same way that we look at conventional pesticides. We don't know how long these organic pesticides persist in the environment, or the full extent of their effects.

When you look at lists of pesticides allowed in organic agriculture, you find warnings such as, "Use with caution. The toxicological effects of [organic pesticide X] are largely unknown," or "Its persistence in the soil is unknown." Again, researchers haven't bothered to study the effects of organic pesticides because it is assumed that "natural" chemicals are automatically safe.

[snip]

Unless you know your grower personally, there is no guarantee that your produce has been grown without pesticides or other chemicals.

[The Grand Nudger]

Actually we do have some idea of how long they persist, relative to synthetics. A requirement for OMRI or organic certification is that the pesticide exist in an "unprocessed" or "minimally processed" state. By nature of this arrangement they are much more stable than a synthetic intentionally designed to be unstable in the environment. Add to that the impurities that nature uses as as binding agents for this stuff and you can watch, for example, bt wash off the plants and puddle all around the production area - whereas the synthetics which handle the same issue literally dissolve into their constituent components - often inert when uncombined, again, by design.

Long story short, nature doesn't have any "good ideas" relative to pest control or fertility, it lacks the capability in a fundamental way. It has ideas that work, some of the time - damn the consequences.

( a minor, but to me major nitpick - nothing can be "grown without chemicals" regardless of who ones grower might be and how well they know him/her. Plants are nothing -if not- chemical powerhouses. They make us look like rank amateurs. They're busily engaged in a chemical campaign the likes of which we could not possibly hope to match. The sorts of abuse, the chemo-bio wasteland envisioned by a certain subset as a possible outcome of mans involvement here is actually realized within the metabolisms of the plants themselves. If one chooses to concieve of our own actions in this regard as an attempt to "destroy the earth" then one has to accept the reality that plants have already "destroyed it" for us. We needn't lift a finger, and could possibly do alot to minimize the damage they are incapable of -not causing- by virtue of their biological limitations.)

[JesusHMuhammad]

First of all I resent my position being characterized as "argument from ignorance".

Secondly, "studies" underwritten, directly or indirectly, by the chemical industry should be viewed with some suspicion.
You may note that your position is the exactly the same as the defenders of
leaded gasoline when true scientific inquiry was being systematically suppressed by large petroleum.

In the case of cigarettes, they were marketed as having health benefits
BY doctors. And plenty of favorable "scientific" papers where
(and still are) being written by tobacco industry funded "scientists".

I will simply quote some sources you may have heard about

The EPA

"Laboratory studies show that pesticides can cause health problems,
such as birth defects, nerve damage, cancer, and other effects that
might occur over a long period of time."

The NIH National Institutes of Health
"Scientists do not yet have a clear understanding of the health effects
of these pesticide residues. Results from the Agricultural Health Study,
an ongoing study of pesticide exposures in farm families, show that
farmers who used agricultural insecticides experienced an increase in
headaches, fatigue, insomnia, dizziness, hand tremors, and other
neurological symptoms. Evidence suggests that children are particularly
susceptible to adverse effects from exposure to pesticides, including
neurodevelopmental effects."

I will eat my veggies from my local organic farmer, thank you. You are of course free to eat whatever you like. But, I will reserve the right to resent your accusations.