Compare / Contrast: Organic -vs- Sustainable

If it is applied according to label directions as required by law there will be no run off. What little of the active ingredient there is will soak into the soil and will be broken down.

As to using glyphosate on road ditches I ask why? Most need the soil held in place by vegetation. Vegetation also slows water flow. Why kill all of the vegetation with glyphosate?

The definition of organic says nothing about having to use heritage or heirloom seeds.

Also, a lot of the problem with sludge is not the human feces, it is all the other chemicals that people dump down their toilets- bleach, cleaners, lye, whatever they want to get rid of, etc etc. I also wonder whether all that bleached toilet paper woudl have a lot of dioxins in it?

Additionally, if you are selling produce, it isn't possible to have a closed loop, because the buyers are walking off with the nutrients from your soil, and then they go poop somewhere else, in other words they do not return the nutrients to you.

No human poop in the gardens here - organic or otherwise!

Windy in Kansas - the Roundup on the roadway is not in a ditch. It is used on banks where poison ivy and wild roses hang over into the road. One neighbor does spray it everywhere in spite of requests to use restraint. He says he does not like to weed-whack and so there is little we can do. On the sections two of us maintain the round up is only used on the poison ivy and wild rose......and on one bad section with pampass grass.

This is interesting discussion. I did not realize it would raise such emotion too. Thank you for all the input.

couldn't find the link, but i read story about an organic farmer (vermont? connecticut?) who raised pigs and chickens. he took the food waste from organic restaurants (and charged them a tipping fee, slightly less than they would pay to the garbage company) and fed that to his pigs and chickens, along with pasturing them. then sold his fattened pigs to organic restaurants. seems to me that's pretty sustainable, and doesn't use any humanure. think he's been doing this for 20-30 years too. (wish i could find that link. sorry.)
--sgl

OK, how about this? Organic has a hard and fast line. Either it is or is not organic. Sustainability is on a scale. You have have 90% sustainable, etc.

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Flaming Xtian
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mahatma Gandhi


Libertarindependent

It's sustainable in my book. If your farm has outputs there is no reason it shouldn't have inputs.

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Flaming Xtian
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mahatma Gandhi


Libertarindependent

http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/NOP/stan...odHandReg.html

The National Organic Program as administered by the USDA, Regulatory Text Section 205.204 Seeds and planting stock practice standard.

We are in the process of certifying for our "organic certification" which takes a minimum of three years to apply for.

This is our first year of being inspected for organic compliance, we must be inspected during both of the following two years, as a prerequisite.

We can not use hybrid seed for any crop that is being grown as 'organic', nor can our crop-land have any hybrid seed planted in it during this period of time that is not 'organic'. It must all be 'organic' seed, nothing GMO, nothing hybrid, only heritage/heirloom seed.

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http://www.mofga.org/

http://www.mofga.org/Programs/FarmAp...2/Default.aspx

I read through that and it said nothing whatsoever about hybrid, heritage, or heirloom seeds. All it said was that except for a few exceptions, the seeds have to be organic. They could be any kind of organic open pollinated non-GMO seed, or even organic hybrid seeds.

Organic seed is not hydrid.

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http://www.mofga.org/

http://www.mofga.org/Programs/FarmAp...2/Default.aspx

All corn is hybrid. Are you saying there is no organic corn?

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Flaming Xtian
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mahatma Gandhi


Libertarindependent

Umm, there are lots of corn varieties that aren't hybrids.

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Corn is a hybrid cross of 2 different plants.

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Flaming Xtian
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mahatma Gandhi


Libertarindependent

"There are several theories about the specific origin of maize in Mesoamerica:

1. It is a direct domestication of a Mexican annual teosinte, Zea mays ssp. parviglumis, native to the Balsas River valley of southern Mexico, with up to 12% of its genetic material obtained from Zea mays ssp. mexicana through introgression;
2. It derives from hybridization between a small domesticated maize (a slightly changed form of a wild maize) and a teosinte of section Luxuriantes, either Z. luxurians or Z. diploperennis;
3. It underwent two or more domestications either of a wild maize or of a teosinte;
4. It evolved from a hybridization of Z. diploperennis by Tripsacum dactyloides. (The term "teosinte" describes all species and subspecies in the genus Zea, excluding Zea mays ssp. mays.) In the late 1930s, Paul Mangelsdorf suggested that domesticated maize was the result of a hybridization event between an unknown wild maize and a species of Tripsacum, a related genus. However, the proposed role of tripsacum (gama grass) in the origins of maize has been refuted by modern genetic analysis, negating Mangelsdorf’s model and the fourth listed above."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize#Maize_physiology

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Flaming Xtian
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mahatma Gandhi


Libertarindependent

It may have started as a hybrid, but evolved into it's own form.

Just as many domestic animal breeds and other plants originally started out as crosses.

The domestic cat has been found to contain genetic material from 7 different species of small wild cats, but it has evolved into it's own species (of sorts).

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Sustain means....

# To keep in existence; maintain.
# To supply with necessities or nourishment; provide for.
# To support from below; keep from falling or sinking;
Sustainable farming has come about with NAIS and other of these programs that desire to have control over our lives. Just think when the word became popular! I do not want the NAIS in any part of my life. If we depend on being told what to do we shall be flushed down the drain so fast we won't be able to yell help! Farm organic if you want to, everybody should , it would be better for the whole world, but steer clear of that binding threat - sustainable!
Suemo

prop.[QUOTE=The Paw]I think the term "sustainable" has been bandied about, and means different things to different people. (some would say the term has been "co-opted").

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Nimbus Dairy Goats
somewhere in Missouri Ozarks!!
LaManchas for milk and show lambs
nimbusdairygoats.com

A breed is not the same as a species. The cat may contain genetic materials from 7 different STRAINS of the same species, they had to be the same specie in the first place to be able to provide viable offspring.

__________________
Flaming Xtian
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Mahatma Gandhi


Libertarindependent

7 separate species.

Most of the small cats can interbreed, and most of the large cats can interbreed. They are definitely distinct species.

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So why does a seed developed later not qualify? I understand why GMO wouldn't but how old does a 'newer' strain have to get to qualify?

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Give Blood it saves lives.

It doesn't. This is a crock.

http://research.cals.cornell.edu/entity?home=4&id=30602

http://www.gardensalive.com/product....cd2=1179893566

http://www.parkseed.com/webapp/wcs/s...0Ten%20Organic

Afternote for the sake of clairty: what I mean is, this idea that hybrid seeds cannot also be organic is a crock, and can be disproved by the above links to purveyors of hybrid organic seeds.

OK I'm about to wrap my head in duct tape to keep it from exploding, but if I do blood is gonna start shootin' from my eyes....

I couldn't read all the posts here, but here's the bottom line IMHO. The terms organic and sustainable are no more that that - just terms. Someone used the word co-opted - yes, the terms are co-opted.

'Organic' by big agriculture via the USDA and sustainable by the growers that use it but don't understand it. So much for 'organic'.

Sustainable...
Please don't make the argument that sustainable means no outside inputs then state that it's OK to use newspaper for compost (unless you print your own newspaper on paper that you made from your own trees and print with ink you processed from soybeans that you grew on your own land. It's exactly that type of argument that 'co-opts' the term sustainable and renders it useless for others that actually promote valid agricultural practices.

There's a legitimate argument to be presented that if you export any organic material in the form of produce sales, that it depletes certain organic compounds from the soil that can't be replaced without outside inputs. That's categorically incorrect, but even if it were a fact, so what? Replacement nutrients are readily available from legitimate sources that do not involve manufactured compounds.

There are agricultural practices that allow best use of resources and productivity on an ongoing basis - that cycle the nutrients in a 'natural' way that is predictable, safe and reliable.

If you follow the practices and inform your customers of the procedures that you use without the buzz words, then there really is no issue - they make their own choice to buy your products or not.

If I remember correctly, the original issue was the spot use of herbicides to control weeds. Why not if it's used judiciously and responsibly? Can any property in an agricultural area be truly organic? Today the state inspector comes out to your property, inspects the soil and your procedures; certifies you to be 'organic' and as he/she leaves the soy bean farmer 2 miles away begins to spray his/her RUR crop and the spray drifts to your farm. OOPS - no longer organic... but at least you've got that piece of paper.

The buzz words are nothing more than just that - buzz words. As long as we continue to place so much importance on them, we'll be slaves to them and will have to fight the battles that they cause....