>Klaus, I suspect that if you looked at your soils you would find
>100 % bacterial contamination. What does this have to do with
>organic produce?
yep, but we're talking of ENTERO-bacteria here and these you will
not find in soil by itsself (just as the name tells you). they are
a clear sign of bad or wrong hygienic conditions or bad
or unsatisfiing composting.
and what that does have to do with organic produce ? well, it's the
almost only organic growers, who use feathermeals, guano,
bonemeals. for conventional farmers the relation of nutrient
content vs. price is just too small.
according to my findings i would say, that a farmer, who neither
uses organic fertilizers NOR sewage slugde, has definite better
hygienic conditions in the field than anyone, who uses EITHER of
them. which other conclusion did you draw from the data ?
what i never would say, that IN TOTO one of the production
systems is more hygienic. i will mostly depend on the fruits you're
growing. all short-culture plants like leak, radish aso MIGHT
run you into trouble. here in germany there are time restrictions
for sewage sludge applications, but not for fertilizers...
want a real ugly experience ? just last week we found
out, that main distributors for feedstuff mixed large
amounts of substratum prior used for mushroom production
into the feedstuff. this substratum consists of a smear
of deteriorated and highly contaminated straw, barnyard manure, an
uncountable number of colony-forming bacteria, residues of urea
other unindentified nitrogen fertilizers. then there were amounts of
mycotoxin our gas chromatographs at first could not measure (the
recorder paper was too small!). cows are no waste disposers and
sometimes i doubt about the sanity of human minds, who think, that
this will have no consequences.
here's a clear bonus for organic growers, who can (or need
to) avoid such stuff and i would not recommand to use such a
rubbish in the allowed 10% of external feedstuff. and you
better take care of your hay and the silage processing...
Klaus Wiegand
Landwirtschaftl. Untersuchungs- u. Forschungsanstalt (LUFA)
(Governm. Inst. for Agricult. & Environm. Res.)
67346 Speyer, Obere Langgasse 40 (GERMANY)
Dept. of Seed Sci., Microscop. Analysis & Plant Pathol.
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