This should be required reading for anyone farming or

[truedelphi]

Anyone who likes to eat nutritiously.

And if you value having habitat for the wildlife - well it is a big required read also



http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/13/MN0218DVJ8.DTL

Article details how the small farmer, usually organic, is being told that because there may be a deer or possum crossing his plot of land, he can either watch the middleman business that he was going to sell the produce to then squash the order, or he can dig out the trees, and hedgerows, and start all over.

Here are first three paragraphs -

Dick Peixoto planted hedges of fennel and cilantro around his organic vegetable fields in the Pajaro Valley near Watsonville to harbor beneficial insects, an alternative to pesticides. But he has since ripped out such plants in the name of food safety because his big customers demand sterile buffers around his crops. No vegetation. No water. No WIldlife of any kind.

"I was driving by where a squirrel fed off the end of a field, and so 30 feet in we had to destroy the crop." Peixoto continues: "On one field where a deer walked through and didn't eat anything but jsut walked through, and you could see thee tracks, we ahd to take out 30 feet on each side of the deer tracks nad annihilate the crop."

On the verdant farmland surrounding Monterey Bay, the national maritime sanctuary and one of the world's biological jewels. the scorched earth strategies are being imposed on hundreds of thousands of acres in the quest for antiseptic corps of green.

####

ALL THIS IS AN ILL CONCEIVED EFFORT TO AVOID HAVING O157:H7 type of e coli, which probably is more related to industry farming than anything else.

[peace13]

1. double check your link. n/t

[truedelphi]

3. I am calling Chronicle to see if article is archived - It was

Printed on their front page Monday July 13th

[truedelphi]

5. Chronicle fixed the link.

It should work now.

[nosmokes]

2. your first link doesn't work, the second link takes you to comments

[truedelphi]

4. Article was at that link yesterday - but has

Disappeared into cyberspace.

Maybe I will find it somewhere later today - and the Chronicle is supposed to call me back

[truedelphi]

6. First link should go right to article - the SF chronicle fixed

It. And before my one hour of "EDIT" privileges was gone too!

[nosmokes]

7. Thanks for the linkage fix!

The more I read and the more I learn the more comfortable I am with my decision to do w/o the industrial food machine as much as practicable. Theses days I'd say 95% or so of my food comes from a label-less source- either I've grown it myself or it comes from a farmer I know and trust.

The hypocrisy of Obama, with their little organic garden at the WH while sleeping w/ Monsanto is remarkable for showing the divide in this country between what we should be eating and what we spend our money(in taxes and outta our wallets) supporting.

[truedelphi]

8. All Hail to Bob at SF Chronicle

Who took the time and energy to call me and work on getting the link right.

And yes, there is more than a small amount of hypocrisy coming out of 1600 Pennsylvannia.

But on the local level, I think everything can be done. It will be a fight, but as long as we have the internet, we can prevail.

And as long as we start saving seed. In these times of GMO, that is key.

[bvar22]

9. That is INSANE !

"demand sterile buffers..."

Man, our garden is anything but sterile....Thank god.
OMG! There may even be some animal doody in our dirt!
How DID we ever grow things before Monsanto?

This just reaffirms our decision to grow it ourselves.

I ate a Monsanto Free tomato untouched by Corporate Hands this morning.
It was delicious.

[truedelphi]

10. It really really is insane.

The Western Growers Association, the top guy there, he now heads up the Agricultrural Commision for the state of California. And Since it is the "Western" Growers Association,other states will be forced to come along with the provisions. Small organic Arizona farmers are now in the same muddle.

And I am only speculatin' here - but what do you wanna bet that the Big Industry people are more than a little happy to help figure out how much more sterility is needed to prevent even a single case of food poisioning!

[fasttense]

11. Cilantro Hedges?????

I did a search and found NOTHING on hedges of Cilantro (except a hedge fund called Cilantro).

I grew Cilantro all this summer for sale at the farmer's market. None of it turned into a hedge. I let some of it go to seed to collect the seeds for spices and reseeding. It was tall but definitely NOT hedge sized.

Some spices like Oregano, (perhaps fennel, I don't know, I've never grown it,) will grow huge and into bush sizes, but NOT Cilantro. It grows more like parsley.

Besides, Dick Peixoto claims he grows it for beneficial insects????? Cilantro seems to be uniformly hated by most bugs. I have a big bug problem here in TN. There is so much wildlife and bugs around that they frequently wander into my fenced in garden spaces. I finally broke down and let my chickens out to eat around the outside of the fences (which requires me to lock up the dogs). But, I rarely worry about the Cilantro being attacked by bugs. The only thing that will eat it and come back for more is grasshoppers. And they only do it late in the season when they are eating everything.

He certainly got everything wrong about Cilantro, so it makes me wonder what else is wrong in his story.

[kestrel91316]

12. More insane E. coli paranoia rearing its ugly head. This is sheer

stupidity.

E. coli O157H7 arises in the GI tracts of FEEDLOT CATTLE due to their excessive grain intake. That's what needs fixing.