Besides those tough cattle they also use a small tough breed of horse, for urban transportation and other uses. There seems to be a trained response in Americans to downplay the Cuban food revolution rather than see it as a model - and more than that, a branch sticking out of the cliff we're falling off of. Some say the end of the embargo would solve Cuba's food problems by once again opening the door to chemical fertilizers and pesticides and more fuel - a discouraging thought. Pat, you said 'I suspect the problem will be lack of population and hence lack of labor to apply to the land' here. Yesterday a lady called, offering us her (willing) teenage son as a farm labourer; the boy has a new dirt bike, and she and her husband have refused to buy gas for it, @$1.39/litre or about $5.50/gallon here. That reminded me of your comment and made me smile. High-priced gas => labour for an organic farm? Win-win-win. About humanure, the prejudice against it is huge, unless it's sold in disguised form, like Milorganite. I have reason to believe we've lost business for our market garden because I talked too enthusiastically to the wrong person about the idea of it - we don't practice it ourselves, but I think there's great potential. Since then, every now and then somebody will ask me out of the blue whether we use our own sh*t on the gardens. And the manager of a small local grocery store declined to carry our produce because of 'hygiene issues' - a comment that surprised me so much I left it at that. Luckily we have some smart local people and smart American summer residents who know what organic produce is worth and are willing to pay for it.

Quote: The produce that comes from outside the USA can, because use is not regulated, have much higher concentrations of whatever was used than the same produce grown in the USA. Research has shown that the amount of residual pesticide on the produce you eat, if grown in the USA, is fairly minute and most will dissipate or be digested and rendered "safe" by the soil bacteria in your soil, if you have a soil that has a good, active Soil Food Web. Kimm, such a blanket statement about other countries' guidelines on food production. Perhaps you would like to state what countries the U.S. imports from having such lower standards than the U.S. I would be very interested since Canada is America's biggest trading partner and vice versa. Toronto is the third largest customer of California truck farm produce. That fact was unknown by its governor...Mr Swartzeneggar (sp) when he visited us last summer. President H.W. Bush was also surprised at that fact. And the second biggest trade parter of the U.S..... the Province of Ontario. Now it would be most interesting if you would state where you get such data from and list the countries you think have such low standards. Did you know Kimm, the U.S.'s largest producer of chicken meats---for such places as Kentucky Fried Chicken et al...they came to Quebec to open a factory to serve the local restaurants and to ship all across Canada. Well, they had to pick up their bat and ball and move out....it seems Canada's standards of production was too high for this company to make sufficient money at. So they left this country. That's a fact that you can check on. Now its one thing to suggest that standards MAY BE lower...and such statement is probably true...you can always find something, some country with low or lower stnadards. So if you will KIMM, state from where you get your data.

Maryanne, I regret the direction this thread turned, as well as the condescending tone of my previous post. I won't say it was misinterpreted, because it was certainly intentional - a response to people picking my original post apart and alleging that I said something that I never said. Does anyone even remember my original post on this thread? Some posters here took a very simple comment of mine: "Other than the obvious differences of the U.S. product most likely being fresher and slaughtered/processed under the watchful eyes of USDA inspectors...." And from that, alleged that I was insinuating that Australian beef was "slaughtered and processed under less sanitary conditions than in the US." I NEVER said that or even implied it. NEVER! My comment regarding the USDA inspection simply referred to the fact that we don't know anything about the inspection in foreign countries. Granted, ours could be improved upon, but at least we know something about it. It's certainly possible that Australia's is as good or even better than ours, but we just don't KNOW that. And the comment I made about freshness was ONLY pertaining to the logistics of shipping. It's actually a pretty simple concept... The less distance there is between the point of a commodity's production and the point of that commodity's consumption, the fresher that product is likely to be. Not just beef, but ANY product. But, the shipping time is not even an issue for me, because I wouldn't buy the imported product under ANY conditions. I have a strong desire to support local farmers and ranchers - and not just because I'm a cattle producer. I feel STRONGLY that we should support our domestic food producers...even at the higher price. I put my money where my mouth is and do the same thing with products other than beef. We've already given much of this country's manufacturing capability to China. We're becoming more and more dependent on them all the time for fish and seafood. We depend on the Middle East for way too much of our energy needs. If we ever become too dependent on foreign countries for our food....well, I'm going to do my part to be sure that doesn't happen. Even if it costs more. Again, I regret hijacking your thread and the direction that it turned. Thanks for buying U.S. beef!

Re the lindac reference to the Jay Leno Late Night show with the apparently stupid people. The first point is that we have no idea how many people were actually spoken with to find these perhaps few examples of ignorance. The second point following on plllog's point that most of us have large gaps in knowledge, is that with the passage of time, common knowledge changes with the needs of the day. In spite of my advanced age, I had to Google rice to see an adult plant. I had seen the Film Strips (boy are we old lindac) on rice growing, but all I recall is the planting in the flooded fields. Yes I assumed rice was a grain, but I never knew what ripe plants looked like. I lived most of my life in California where tons of rice are grown and never saw any of it. Speaking of stupid people, who is dumb enough to grow rice in a desert!? And back to common knowledge: WWII was wrapped up but essentially current knowledge at my birth; it is ancient history to a 10 year old. I do think that people should be able to have a general flow of history and realize that the US Civil War is nearly a century preceeding WWII. However, I can't seem to keep centuries and concurrent events clear either when they recede more than 200 years. On the current end of history, and being older, I have no idea why any of the Jenners are famous, and usually don't even know the names of current actors and certainly couldn't connect them with their film/TV offerings. I expect this common knowledge lack makes me seem stupid. One more thing: its not really surprising that people on a Cooking forum (with that common experience) would be especially surprised at other's lack of experience; all the more so when that forum was on a site named GardenWeb.