The Organic Dilemma

[Guest guest]

A few months ago we had a number of messages relative to organic produce.

 

I classify it with the vegetarian diet. It can be accomplished, but the

majority of the people have neither the knowledge or determination to

accomplish the near impossible feat.

 

My growing combines the best of both worlds. Only a scientist with

unlimited funds could grow better produce with better flavor than I do if

he was using organic methods. Very likely the produce I grow is superior

in flavor and nutrients to that of most organic produce.

 

Main article below by research scientist, Graeme Platt

 

==================

 

Three cheers to Ray for daring to be so forthright and honest in respect of

his query - Just what do you mean when you say ŒOrganic'?

 

I too have never been able to fathom the sheer illogical statements made by

so many of the protagonists - yes I still love nature and natural things but

the art of living, (I would have thought) was in understanding and thereby

living even better lives!

 

Some years ago one of our customers dropped a couple of pages onto my desk

which I found extremely helpful because the author (who I believe is a

research scientist by the name of Graeme Platt) seemed to me to explain in

relatively simple terms why so many of the Œorganic¹ claims are based upon

emotion and, completely overlook the basic facts of life - If in fact the

following text is attributable to Graeme then I do hope he will not mind it

being reproduced here for the benefit of the list members and I would like

to thank him for what I would hope will help quite a few in their quest for

understanding.

 

Rob Smith posted the article below.

 

Here is the text........

 

 

Just before Christmas I received a phone call from a lady who was not at all

happy. She had heard I had not been flattering in my assessment of the

quality of crops being produced by biodynamic and organic growers.

 

The call came not long after I had been to advise an organic grower who had

spent over $40,000 on a crop that was a total failure.

 

Instead of a harvestable crop he finished up with a few paddocks of weeds

all properly bio registered at great expense.

 

No weed, chemical fertilizer or toxic spray was ever to be used on his land.

 

While these noble goals are great in theory, reality is a different matter.

 

He had failed on three counts. First, the soil wasn't rich enough in

balanced nutrients required for the crop. Second, very few of the seeds he

planted germinated and third, a sea of weeds beat those that did germinate.

 

A biodynamic guru had advised him to apply chemical fertilizer when nobody

was around as a way out of his predicament.

 

Both farming and horticulture have made some dreadful mistakes in the use of

toxic mercuric compounds as fungicides and stable compounds such as DDT and

Dieldrin as insecticides.

 

These tragedies are sound reason for promoting and understanding the

principles of elemental science and not a case for rejecting them.

 

The spotty, runty, mineral-deficient, sickly produce promoted as health

giving organic fruit and vegetables is a sham.

 

The whole purpose of producing food is to provide a rich source of balanced

essential elements in the form of digestible, carbohydrate and protein.

 

Starving crops of essential minerals professing it is in interest in human

health and well being is nonsense.

 

Many organic growers survive only because the land they are growing their

crops on was fed minerals by three generations of farmers and

horticulturists before them.

 

Vegetables are made up of 24 essential elements, all of which are inorganic.

It is ridiculous to claim any one carrot can be any more or less organic

than another.

 

In third form science I learned that all things in the universe were made up

of inorganic mineral atoms, which modern science has confirmed. Every object

from our planet to the far reaches of space including moon rocks, space

ships, carrots and cucumbers consist of inorganic mineral atoms.

 

The various atoms are bonded by positive-negative attraction to form the

compounds of the universe, i.e. two atoms of hydrogen bonded with one atom

of oxygen forms hydrogen oxide or water!

 

All compounds are organic - All compounds are made up of inorganic elements

bonded with electrons. Some are very stable and last for eternity. Others,

bound together with carbon and hydrogen atoms are very unstable, decompose

very quickly and are called organic.

 

Whether a carrot is called organic or inorganic may appear semantic.

 

Promoting organic things as healthy, and inorganic as a menace to good

health, is deceiving.

 

We cannot eat or drink organic compounds such as aviation gasoline,

newspapers, rubber tyres, botulism, anthrax, ergot, the aids virus, methane,

coal or cyanide.

 

Neither can they be promoted as health giving breakfast products on the

strength of being organic.

 

We eat carrots, wheat, apricots and potatoes and drink apple juice because

the balance of elements are in an unstable, digestible form.

 

Plants require 24 essential elements for metabolic processes. Animals

require 26. Fifteen of the 26 are regularly absent or not available in the

correct proportions in the soil in which our food is grown.

 

Organic growers place great importance on the fact that all elements are

toxic and use this excuse as justification for banning them.

 

All 26 elements can kill you! You can kill yourself with any one of the 26

essential elements. There is no such thing as a toxin‹there are only toxic

doses.

 

Healthy living is not possible without all 26 elements.

 

The toxicity of any one element is diminished by the presence of the others

in the correct proportion.

 

Describing essential minerals as artificial fertilizer just because they can

be purchased by the sack is play on words. All minerals are natural and,

with the exception of nuclear fission and fusion, mineral atoms cannot be

manufactured, destroyed or in any way changed, only recycled and bonded into

new compounds.

 

Fertilizers such as super phosphate are processed to ensure they are

unstable and readily available as plant food.

 

The magic troika is hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. Using the energy from the

sun and photosynthesis these three elements are synthesized into unstable

organic carbohydrates in the form of sugars and starches.

 

The essential elements in soils are never balanced. A balance is achieved by

plants accumulating those elements they require in the correct proportions.

 

The reason compost made from decomposing living things is such a wonderful

aid is because it contains the right balance in an unstable form that is

freely available to be utilized again by living plants.

 

While compost is the ultimate in garden fertilizers it has two weaknesses.

First, it contains only the minerals it was made from and second, its use is

impractical on a very large scale. It is almost impossible to feed a 100

hectare paddock and even if you could the concept of raiding 1,000 hectares

to feed it is a flawed concept.

 

If there is little or no potassium, phosphate, magnesium, zinc, calcium,

copper, cobalt, sodium, sulfur or selenium in the soil it will need to be

applied to achieve healthy crops.

 

When the crop is sold the essential elements are removed and must be

replaced. They can be replaced in a supplementary form as fertilizer.

 

The aim of horticulture and farming is to produce quality! food containing

the full complement of essential elements as unstable protein and

carbohydrates so they may be used by the body.

 

This same philosophy should be utilized in the manufacture of fungicides,

insecticides and herbicides.

 

Synthetic formulations manufactured from essential elements can be perfectly

safe but they must be unstable, have a very short half life (about 24 hours)

and then decompose releasing their elements as plant and animal food.

 

Bordeaux, one of the first fungicides widely used and a compound of water,

copper-sulfate and calcium-carbonate was formulated to control botrytis in

French vineyards.

 

When Bordeaux breaks down,the six elements (hydrogen, oxygen, carbon,

calcium, copper and sulphur) are released into the environment and are

available as plant and animal food.

 

Poor health is a direct result of mineral deficiencies. The effort people go

to starve themselves of these is truly astonishing. The purpose of eating

food is to obtain the elements and compounds required for healthy living and

this is only possible through eating properly fed plant and animal products.

 

The health of a nation is in the hands of its gardeners and farmers. People

can remain healthy only if the land which is used to produce their food is

also healthy.

 

 

Definitions

 

€ Inorganic elements: all the elements of the periodic table.

 

€ Organic compounds: Groups of elements bound together into compounds with

carbon and hydrogen atoms.

 

€ Atoms: a single element of the periodic table.

 

€ Essential elements: those elements of the periodic table that are the

building blocks or catalysts required by living things.

 

€ Minerals: any naturally occurring solid element or compounds of elements

of the periodic table at normal atmospheric pressure and heat.

 

€ Inorganic compounds: groups of elements of the periodic table bound

together into compounds that are not organic.

 

€ Synthetic compounds: any group of elements bonded together by man.

 

€ Stable compound: those that do not decompose at normal atmospheric

pressure, or with heat and light.

 

€ Unstable compounds: Compounds that decompose at normal atmospheric

pressure, heat and light.

 

==============