rugbymatt

The same DEFRA/RPA office that wasted millions of pounds during the recession?

agoreira

Seemingly organic food sales went down about 30% last year in UK. With the recession I guess a drop is to be expected, but that can't account for that large a drop. There have been various reports about organic food being no better for you, that has probably had a bigger effect on sales.

Dick Dasterdly

You are no doubt referring to the Dept of Eggheads Fools and Right Assholes,which succeeded MAFF.
I can just about remember long before its demise, when MAFF was to a large extent quite a useful organisation, with a much better understanding of the practical side of farming and its problems.

Rotor

Absolutley, the money rarley filters down to the small farmer , most of the fruit farmers on the Costa Tropical can only afford to run a 50 quid moped and live in extreme poverty, I think the money is robbed by the fruit dealers all who have new Mercs and Land Rovers and bloody great warehouses that get bigger every year.

agoreira

Programme here that explores that topic, the price of tomatoes for example, from farmer to point of sale can increase by 500%
http://www.rtve.es/mediateca/videos/...actualidad&s4=
I think our farmer friend could give us the exact details, but the number of milk producers in UK is dropping every week, they get something like 24p (?) for milk that sells for 70 odd pence.

Dick Dasterdly

Quite so,many big organisations have jumped in over recent years,bought large tracts of fairly unproductive land,taken up every available grant to completely transform it, with little cost to themselves and regardless of what profits are made from fruit production they have probably doubled the value of their investment almost cost free.
A nice little earner, courtesy of EU taxpayers.

fionamw

Statistics & research being what they are (and sometimes funded the way they are) there's no point arguing that... it's a bit nimby though, because I've always thought it's equally important to consider the effect of herbicides, pesticides (& all the other wondrous gloop that's sprayed on mass market foodstuffs) on the soil, plants, trees, insects, etc., & total food chain - every bit as important as considering whether an organic egg tastes better for the price.

btw do I pretend I buy all organic? No. But I'd rather grow nothing than surround my house, child, pets etc., with chemicals so anything I grow is done organically.

bil

Well, I would be hard pressed to grow anything here without some chems. How would I keep the snails off? I put out some marigolds, the damn things were 8" high, and in the morning all that was left were stumps. A couple of kilos of snail pellets, and the death toll was amazing. I had no idea that the garden could hold that many snails!

Then there's the leaf miners on the orange trees..... the weeds in the hard to reach places. I can't rotivate the orchard as it will kill the amphisphenids that live in the soil.

The trick is to use as little as possible.

Personally I think that the organic craze is a way of displaying wealth ostentatiously, and showing how special you are.

AdrianTO

You might have heard of a little thing called Mad Cow Disease?

A British inquiry into BSE concluded that the epidemic was caused by cattle, who are normally herbivores, being fed the remains of other cattle in the form of meat and bone meal (MBM), which caused the infectious agent to spread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_...encephalopathy

Organic cattle feed on grass.

cricketman

I kind of agree with this

But I also agree that the majority of food we are sold has been bred and grown to make sure it is cheap to produce, rather than to make sure it is high quality and tastes nice.

So I take a pragmatic approach e.g. for eggs I make sure they are corn fed and if possible free range (at least straw bedded), but I dont care about the organic bit. Sometimes moderate use of chemicals is for the good.

AdrianTO

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/n...nd/8567267.stm

http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/Antibi...bug24mar98.htm

rugbymatt

With all the will in the world farming naturally and organically is very hard and there is a point where an animal needs to have some sort of chemical. My point always being sheep. To keep the blowflies off sheep you have to either spray them or keep them sheared... not practical in real terms at all.

fionamw

!!!!!!!!!!! If something's been going 40-odd years or more, with increasing numbers involved - let's ignore the supermarket issue for a moment - I'd hardly call it a craze. As to ostentation, maybe among the Chelsea tractor set.

Unfortunately there's probably truth in this, though I guess someone somewhere knows how it's done & is prepared for the hassle of doing it.
Anyway, soap box is put away for the night. Have painting & wine drinking to do (the success of the first depends on limiting the second)

bil

100% correct. Style over substance is for idiots. People with brains who can't afford the luxury of paying over the odds for organic will choose food that is of better quality that doesn't break the bank.

bil

Sorry Fiona, not really useful.

1. snail killing. with some 2,000 sq metres intensively planted with trees, soft fruits, veg and flowers, I'd need hundreds of buckets, eggshells by the kilo and a river of beer. The dog would go mental if he thought I was using his beer ration for snails.

I would be deeply impressed if you can find a non chemical treatment for leafminer, woolly aphid and the like. DEEPLY impressed.

Strimming, don't like it, as weeds propagate nicely when cut. Mostly the whole garden is hand weeded, there are just a few areas which would be beyond me. As for goats, please, I wouldn't have a flower left. Same goes for chickens.

Using as little as possible isn't a start, it's a realistic approach. There's a level of use that it is effectively impossible to reduce if you wish to still grow eatable produce.