Hi Steve,
Friday, March 31, 2000, 8:31:03 AM, you wrote in response to my saying:
>> Having taken a look at the Petrik website, first I saw some fairly
>> good theory that winds up offering 22 Farm and 5 Bioremediation
>> Products. Therefore, I have to conclude that what I'm looking at is
>> more of a product oriented rather than a natural systems oriented
>> approach.
SD> Well you've missed the boat Douglas. Go back and look through the
SD> Petrik Labs website and print off all the bulletins and leaflets
SD> relating to soil biology and and humus and *management.* When you
SD> get done, you will have a big fat stack of useful information.
I've tended to refer to Robert Pharnes "Fertile Soil", but a matter of
fact I did save 6 pages from the Petrik site to disk, each with all
the .gif's it had. Never-the-less, their push to sell 27 distinct
microbial adjuncts whose contents are NOT clearly identified, is a
product oriented rather than a natural systems oriented approach in my
book. They may have put quite a bit a valid theory (and I have no idea
how much of that is due to independent research on their part) behind
the push to sell their bottles, but the shear number of products
detracts from the kind of orientation Bart Hall described in his post
today titled "Microbial innoculants", a perspective that I happen to
sympathize with and share.
You're still with attra? Does attra beat a drum to sell a load of
bottled products to the people it deals with? Maybe I didn't miss the
boat - maybe I just didn't get on it. It too much of a Petrik Product
boat and not enough of a biological, organism based agriculture boat.
The guy may well know a lot and could probably do a lot of good, if he
decided to simplify things rather than promote all those things he
sells. Are you telling me that all of them are necessary? Isn't he
exploiting his background (as well as the lack of one on the part of
many of the farmers he targets)?
SD> Also, get in touch with the company and talk technical stuff, then go
SD> visit the farms where these products and practices have been
SD> implemented.
I agree that on the spot, eye witness involvement is best, but I tend
to favor a more integral, organism based natural systems approach and
the microbial organisms Petrik's using are not clearly identified,
apparently for commercial reasons. This makes it hard for me to
sympathize with what he's doing, regardless of how much he knows.
I had already acknowledged the possibility that some of his products
may be worthwhile. But I am currently looking to identify organisms,
not products. One done, if those organisms are available commercially
(Dale mentioned some), that might save us the trouble of breeding them
in order to try them out; but if they work, breeding might be the next
step. Or would you favor a terminator approach to the breeding of
beneficial organisms? (Admittedly rhetorical question).
SD> A written summary of this investigation would really
SD> interesting to read about.
SD> Something practical back on Sanet would be great.
My interest in not that academic. We have our own projects that leave
little time for things not directly related. Maybe we will try one of
his products and go deeper into it with Petrik from there, just to see
how far he'll go before reverting to fomenting a dependent,
proprietary relationship for personal gain. That's exactly what I
don't like about these things.
Douglas
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