Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

You could save the cost of a tanker load and just drink lots and lots of beer. At least then you'll get double the value for your money.

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

wait a sec..you might be onto something here,

Nuke the weeds.

I'm sensing great entertainment value here...........................

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

And then...


To be certified as biodynamic, a farm must first be certified organic.

When a farm is organically certified, it is inspected and evaluated by a third-party certifying agent on how well it meets organic standards. Basically, the farm must practice organic methods for at least three years. This includes objectives like choosing only all-natural (nonsynthetic) fertilizers and pesticides, using sustainable processes such as crop rotation and composting, and feeding livestock 100-percent organic feed, as well as treating animals humanely (no hormones or antibiotics).

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

I think you are hoping for something that is impossible. Each chemical, organic or not, has its own properties. To think the organic ones are fundamentally different in some uniform way, other than not being synthesized by humans, is, unfortunately, not true. You need to research the specific issues/chemicals/applications you are interested in. Organic does not equal safe. Botulinum toxin is 100% organic, and one of the most potent neurotoxins known to man.

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

Organic does exclude some nasty bits like GMO's, synthetic ferts and pesticides. And speaking about BT...

New Study: Genetically Engineered Crops Drive up Pesticide Use | Pesticide Action Network

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

You know I'm not opposed to organic. All the ferts and pesticides I've been using lately are organic, but I think we need to be realistic and thoughtful about the relative costs and benefits of "organic" versus not. The mantra "organic is good, synthetic is not" is far too oversimplistic to really be a useful way of addressing pressing issues of adequate food production for our overpopulated planet. For example, do you think it is better for the planet to harvest fish to grind up into "fish fertilizer" to grow plants, or should we instead eat the fish and use synthetic ferts to grow plants? Fertilizing plants with ground up animals is not sustainable, given the world's population.

And do you think a website for the "Pesticide Action Network" might be a wee bit biased?

More and more, we are will need to make hard choices that will force us to think carefully, rather than subscribing to simplistic philosophies, like "organic is good, man-made is bad."

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

Facts are fact regardless where the info comes from. Don't kill the messenger!

Nature has grown food for ever without man's intervention. The only reason for man to intervene in money.

This propaganda about GM feeding the over populated starving world is total nonsense. We could feed the world organically but the huge multi national corporations would go under in the process. This has nothing to do with what's right for the planet or it's population.

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

I like your posts Mitchel so don't take this too personally.





This propaganda about nature spontaneously producing food to feed large cities is total nonsense.
Nature rolls the dice. So YES nature created wheat. Selective breeding has produced our current cornucopia.

Have you ever seen a spontaneously germinated field of wheat?
Soy?
Corn?
Alfalfa?

Let's take that last one alfalfa.
Alfalfa in legume and therefore participates in symbiosis with N fixing bacterial. YAY we saved the world!!

NO!
Alfalfa removes K at a rate of 60lb/ton with 5-10 tonnes produced per acre.

SO we take our 100 acre field and let's say we have a decent yeild of 5 tonnes per acre.

100x5x60=30000 or 15 tonnes of K

Mitchel I would like you to suggest where and how to get 30,000lbs of potassium in an organic manner, in extremely rural areas.
It also needs to start availability within the first year, second at latest.
The field will only be tilled every three years for replanting so heavy topdressing is unacceptable in the off years.


Most of the time when you throw the ball to the organo-mantra folks they decide not to play.
Let's see if Mitchel will take a swing at this one.
I really do need an answer to this problem so others please chime in.

I see no reason NOT to get a second use from your beer, or all the crazy amount of protein we eat.
We did pay for it didin't we?

Fire is ORGANIC LOL

I think you hit the truth with the "crutch" comment.
Organic is largely a marketing ploy aimed at uneducated consumers.

What ignorant consumers?
Well how about the box of cotton candy with " TRANS FAT FREE !! " plastered on it?
who,what,why the heck would/should there be shortening in cotton candy?
trans fat bad ..... trans fat FREE is good..... cotton candy is trans fat free.....so......cotton candy is good

there is clearly a lack of critical thinking skills being taught in our schools
SON OF A B I just realized I continue to be off topic.........

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

GW, did you see the post that PR posted about the roadside bananas growing nice bunches without any human intervention? That's what I'm talking about. The planet has been making food without scientists and their chemical cocktails for ever.

Obviously to grow huge fields of food we have to do it, that's not my point. My point is that we can grow enough food organically or conventionally to feed the worlds population without using GMO's. We do not need to play god in this way. Hybridizing and natural selection are one thing, gene splicing in order to sell massive amounts of roundup etc is another.

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

Being someone who writes "facts" -- that is publishing peer-reviewed scientific papers like the one cited -- I can tell you that selective reporting of these papers is certainly biased, and almost the same as lying.

"Nature" (are we not part of nature?) has always grown food -- and the amount of food grown by nature without human intervention could never support the current human population. For thousands of years we have "artificially" selected for high-yielding versions of plants and animals, we have created productive hybrids (the edible bananas), etc. I'm not talking about GM, I'm talking about old fashioned plant breeding and artificial selection, which humans have done for 10,000 years, at a minimum. Using "organic" methods to grow even "heirloom" varieties is nothing like "nature feeding the world". It is humans modifying the environment and the genetic makeup (via selection of favored genotypes) of plants and animals to increase food production. How many people do you think you can feed with the "natural" seeded version of Musa acuminata grown in the wild with no human intervention versus the artificially selected parthenocarpic Cavendish, Mona Lisa, Nino, Gros Michelle versions of it, carefully fertilized, irrigated, etc.?

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

You must have been typing while I posted above you. Look up there ^

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

Oh, now having looked at the study Mitchel mentioned, it appears that it isn't even peer-reviewed, so doesn't meet the minimum standard for good science. That's not to say the conclusions in it are wrong, simply that it hasn't had to face the scrutiny of other experts on the subject.

Moreover, the impression that one might get from the study is that GM crops require use of more pesticides. The impression would be caused by a misinterpretation of the statistics. The facts as stated are that people growing GM crops are now using more pesticides than were people growing crops in the past. There's any number of causes for that pattern, e.g., pesticides got cheaper, new pests showed up, etc., and it may have nothing to do with differences attributable to the GM crops per se.

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

So do you dispute the numbers in the report? Should we believe what the seller of the chemicals reports? :ha:

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

I was.

But back to the original statement: "Organic does exclude some nasty bits like GMO's, synthetic ferts and pesticides." I'm not convinced that these things are inherently any more nasty than "organic" equivalents. And to make that decision, you need to look at each, say, organic vs synthetic pesticide to determine which is more toxic, more environmentally persistent, etc., rather than apply a blanket statement along the lines of "organic is good, man-made is bad."

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

No, I don't dispute the numbers. I question how they are interpreted. That's one of the things peer-review is for -- to evaluate whether the interpretation of the data is justified, or the data could be better explained by another interpretation?

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

We have had a very long study of "organic" foods called the human civilization. Seems it is safe to eat providing you avoid the the plants and animals that will make you sick or kill you. Yes you need to know which are which. We have figured this out over time.

On the other hand there has been only one "long term" study of GMO and Round-up. The results were not so great.
ScienceDirect.com - Food and Chemical Toxicology - Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

If I was thinking of buying a banana farm I would get advice from other banana farmers/commercial growers :)

P.S. organic or non organic

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

That would be wise and there are a few here but they rarely post.

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

That is an interesting and disturbing study. (And it's published in a peer-reviewed journal.) Thanks for pointing it out. Now we need more of them to see if this a general and repeatable result.

As to your first point, how exactly has that study gone, human civilization as a study of organic foods? Would you like to compare average human lifespan, for example, between the period prior to use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides with life-span during their use? I can assure you that you would find life span is higher during the period we've been using those synthetics. Now, you would rightly argue that at least some, if not all, of that difference is due to improvements in medicine between those two periods, but that is the problem with "before-after" comparisons. They are always confounded, like the first study (GMs and pesticide use) you mentioned. But more seriously, you could probably directly attribute increased average human height over the last century to better nutrition, which has in part gone hand in hand with "industrial agriculture". Would you have let the Irish potato famine happen if you could have avoided it by using synthetic fungicides? Of course not. It's just not as simple as "we were fine before we started using these man-made products." We were not fine. We are not fine now -- we've solved some of the older problems and created new ones. Is that an acceptable tradeoff? I don't know. It's complicated. Let's be realistic and accept that it is complicated and "organic" will not solve all the world's food problems. Nor will "synthetic", "man-made", or "GM".

Re: Advice sought for a novice buying a banana farm?
 

If we are to be truly organic /natural we should not use any pesticides organic or others. The bugs and diseases should be left to do what they do naturally. We should not interfere with Mother Nature. :)