Hal Hamilton
Center for Sustainable Systems
433 Chestnut St., Berea KY 40403 USA
Phone: (606) 986-5336; Fax: (606) 986-1299
hhamilton@centerss.org
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu [mailto:owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu]On
Behalf Of Ted Rogers
Sent: Monday, December 20, 1999 6:39 PM
To: WILSONDO@phibred.com
Cc: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu; loscott@envsci.rutgers.EDU
Subject: Rational argument (was: Rotenone Hazards) -Reply
Hey Dale
You said:
*I disagree with LM's contention that your argument is a straw-man, and I
believe you are right. Food safety concerns are driving the ag chemical
industry toward safe, well-targeted pesticides. Many are clearly safer than
classic natural products like rotenone. But I do think he has a point about
how much regard organic adherents have for rational arguments. I don't
believe that the driver in this movement is really safety, but a desire to
cohere to natural law. The food safety issue is more of a tool to incite to
action the masses, who don't care that much about natural law (or just
incite them to buy organic).*
Interesting perspective and it illuminates some of the things I have been
trying to express.
Yes and in this country we will, I think, see many very good reduced risk
pesticides with that narrow spectrum of effect. Don*t forget that these
will be expensive and highly profitable for their registrants. I of course
would like to see more work done on biological control agents but there is
less likely high profit in that realm. I think that the both would be best
for good bio-intensive IPM or best management practice agriculture but we
take what we can get. I understand that a lot more public money goes into
biological strategies in Europe.
I am a little confused about what you are saying about organic, indeed the
driver should not be food safety. The food safety issue was seized upon by
novices and marketing people and has taken over the field, so to speak. I
think that you give the organic market and community to much credit for
formulating a strategy of any kind. I need to know what you think their
concept of *natural law* is. Be careful getting into their minds is a
dangerous exercise.
My perspective as a student and practitioner of organiculture for thirty
years is that the THEORY is that when the soil system(and projecting from
the soil into the whole agroecosystem) is properly managed then the need for
invasive pest management techniques (whether *approved* organic inputs and
techniques or otherwise) is reduced over time to approach nil.
All of us who have worked with this THEORY for a while have heaps of
anecdotal *evidence* but data is rare. It (data) is not nonexistent there
is just very little and the stuff is site specific, disjointed and in some
instances very old (Bill Albrecht did a whole series of green house studies
from the forties through the sixties growing insect infested plants side by
side with healthy un-infested plants the only difference being the balancing
of cations on the soil colloid) that it cannot stand scrutiny with out a lot
more replicated and modern work.
So it remains a THEORY, one that I tend to BELIEVE, but the *organic*
scientific community has not yet done enough work for anyone to talk about
many facts.
I do not consider this THEORY to have anything to do with *natural law* it
has to do with what are some basic biological facts such as the carbon and
nitrogen cycles, some of the other nutrient cycles, the soil colloids, the
whole agroecosystem and how these might be theoretically managed. At the
point that humanity endeavors to manage these cycles and invents agriculture
anything *natural* goes out the window so far as I am concerned, but you
have heard all that from me before.
To the old timers, who I know, the whole natural substance is better than
the synthetic substance thing was recognized long ago as a double edged
sword. The assumption was that if the substance was natural then a
biological system was more likely to be able to handle it and most
importantly it was more likely to be short lived in the system. All of us
understood that there were going to be and were synthetic substances that
would be as good as naturals(maybe even better) but the natural allowed,
synthetic prohibited rule of thumb was the easy(and unsophisticated) way
out. Now a whole bureaucracy has grown up around it, one that I have
characterized as not only unsophisticated but seemingly predatory. The type
of review that potential organic inputs are being put through now is
byzantine and draconian. Frankly I had no idea seven years ago that any one
outside of government circles had that sort of talent, boy did I learn
different.
This stringency, appearing mindless to the technically astute, results in a
further force to drive the food safety issue to the center of the discussion
leaving the historic and philosophical core as the poor stepchild given the
occasional crust of lip service but little sustenance.
Your last statement is the clincher and what the organic community has
missed is that the consumer that is moved by such tactic is a fickle
consumer and not one that you would want to build an industry on. Here
today gone tomorrow.
I continue to be most interested in the structure of agriculture in the next
century and in the role of agroecosystem and soil humus management in that
agriculture.
Your posts are always a delight, I still want to hear your take on *natural
law*.
Happy solstice and on to the third millennium!
Best,
Ted
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