Marcie and Bart (and the rest of SANET),
First, I agree with both of you. Reductionistic research is a mediocre
approach at best, for looking at this problem. But in it's simplicity (while
not offering every answer) more people can understand the results. There have
always been (and will always be) integrated systems and reductionistic ways of
looking at soil foodwebs. I consider myself a systems approach person.
I personally like to use canonical correlations and principle components as a
multivariate comparisons between organic and synthetic fertility systems in
much the same way that Drinkwater et al. did (Drinkwater, L.E., D.K.
Letourneau, F. Workneh, A.H.C. van Bruggen, and C. Shennan. 1995. Fundamental
differences between conventional and organic tomato agroecosystems in
California. Ecol. Appl. 5: 1098-1112. Online at
http://www.jstor.org/journals/10510761.html ). Noone (to my knowledge) has
looked at nutritional characteristics of tomatoes from the different systems in
the same manner. Asisde from making it into a scientific journal (which is
fine and looks good on the CV) little will be heard about it in the general
populus, until the Averies start talking about how organic agriculture is going
to kill us all off with all the E. coli!
I'll spout more later. . . But again Bart, Marcie, I agree with you. . . :-)
--------------------
Russ Bulluck
Visiting Post-Doctoral Scholar
Department of Plant Pathology
1 Shields Ave
UC-Davis
Davis, CA 95616
lrbulluck@ucdavis.edu
-------------------------------------------------------------
The soil population is so complex that it manifestly cannot
be dealt with as a whole with any detail by any one person,
and at the same time it plays so important a part in the soil
economy that it must be studied.
--Sir E. John Russell
The Micro-organisms of the Soil, 1923
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