🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3124@blia.BLI.COM> heather@blia.BLI.COM (Heather Mackinnon) writes:
>In article <3667@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>, walton@tybalt.caltech.edu (Steve Walton) writes:
>My point was this:  our bodies are complex systems and the foods we eat
>are complex aggregations of chemicals.  Pesticides are one, or at most,
>a few chemicals, and they are chemicals we either know or suspect of being
>toxic as well as carcinogenic.  We have evolved with the foods we eat;
>our ancestors must have been able to survive on them or we wouldn't be
>here.  Extreme reactions to staple foodstuffs would be counter-adaptive.
>Agricultural pesticides have not been around in their present concentrations
>during the evolution of the human species.

This is an extremely important point.  Many years ago I was an
Environmental Science student (which was actually quite depressing).
I basically learned two things:
	
	1) We know very little about how nature works
	2) You cannot do merely one thing (Pogo, I believe)

The reason I personally feel safer eating barnyard chickens and
vegetables fertilized with manure is that humans have survived for
millenia this way.  Synthetic pesticides and fertilizers are new
inventions.  Rule #1 above says that we don't really know how they
work.  Rule #2 says they certainly do more to nature (including us!)
than we intended.

>There's also a lot of evidence suggesting that we wouldn't need pesticides
>if we didn't practice monoculture.  

True.  But it's very difficult now to get seeds that didn't come from
this interventionist establishment.  It isn't possible to make cider
the way it was made in the 18th century because some of the varieties
of apples are extinct.  (See Vrest Orton's Cider Making book; he was
a "good old days" person if I ever read one!)  In Wales recently I
visited an Iron Age archeological dig where they are trying to grow
crops from some of the seeds they have discovered (or like strains,
I suppose).  They apologized for the presence of wire fencing around
the crops, but explained that those crops had originally been grown
without the harassment of rabbits. Rabbits were introduced to the
British Isles by the Normans!  I digress...

>The classical mode of agriculture was to plant diverse crops (both
>diverse species and diverse genomes within a species) in a family
>garden or small farm.  Sure, you had insects and rodents and plant
>diseases.  But you also had spiders and cats and preying mantii.
>If you lost your cherries one year, it didn't affect your beans,
>and the Smiths at the next farm might well have cherries.

Right on!  Something about "all your eggs in one basket".  I am
reminded of an article I read in a "Back to Basics" book recently.
The subject was a fellow who had worked as Foreman for a modern
Factory-Farm for 10 years, then managed to buy some land of his
own.  Since he didn't have enough cash to get set up with expensive
machinery, he decided to farm with draft animals at first, even
though his experience was all motorized.  In order to keep up,
he planted diverse crops, so that he didn't have, for example, a
one week period in which ALL of his crops needed harvesting.  Well,
it turns out that he's one of the more profitable farmers in the area.
His "tractors" reproduce themselves, and he's hedged his bet against
failure of any particular crop.  He claims now that he'll keep farming
with horses/mules - because there's more profit in it!

Steve Frysinger
***
We are made of dreams and bones...
		-- Dave Mallet in "The Garden Song"