Well it wasn't my intention to ignite a conventional vs. organic debate, but I think it's fair game on any serious food growing forum. I thought the article was interesting because it showed organic has been so successfully marketed. It's benefits are deemed preferential by the populace, irregardless of the facts. Whether organic is practically "doable" at any serious level of scale, in areas of rain, is another question. On that topic, I've followed the organic arguments for years and the solutions (either implicit or explicit) boil down to: - Grow food in arid climates (generally west of the continental divide). The flip side is that adequate water in those areas can be an issue. - Grow food that has natural immunity of local pests. The disadvantage for the lower Midwest and South is that there are precious few foods that fit this bill. Those that do are generally considered inferior by the populace (Our extraordinarily high standard of living has moved the standard of taste to high levels. People in the developed world won't reduce their standards of food unless they are forced.) - Eliminate monoculture, thereby estimating pests. The idea is that if many grow a multitude of different food stuffs, large acreages of monoculture, that encourage pest pressures not found in small plantings, will be reduced thereby reducing pest pressure. However, diversity plantings were common prior to the green revolution, yet still resulted in low yields, somewhat due to high pest pressure (I'm speaking from a lower Midwest perspective here.) I still maintain an increasing dedication of backyard acreage to food production will eventually result in pest pressure common in today's commercial orchards, whether the backyard plantings are monoculture or diverse. It's possible widespread diverse plantings could result in more pest pressure because there is no break in host crops (i.e. In monoculture, host crops can break the pest cycle via crop rotation. In small widespread diverse plantings pests always have a host available.) Theory aside, here's my own experience. Most food grown here requires some type of spray to have any level of customer acceptance. Secondly, people demand a reasonable level of value for the purchase of their food. As a personal example, I charge $2/lb. for high quality (non-organic) tree ripe peaches. Even at this price I lose sales because of the expense. My options for growing organic would be to try continuous applications of Surround, which I'm not willing to do for fear of adding too much aluminum to the soil, or try to bag each peach with a cotton drawstring bag (not tested on a commercial basis, but anecdotal trials from a serious home grower on this forum indicate promise). In short, I could not charge my customers enough to pay for the labor to bag each peach in a cotton bag. I can't imagine how much labor it would require to bag (and unbag) all the peaches. To get paid a reasonable wage for that labor would require $6, $8, $10/lb.? Nobody in this area would be willing to pay those prices. We have less than 1/2 acre of peach trees which only provides a small part time income, yet the time required to bag all those peaches would be huge, and consume all current sales income from that crop. My wife and I have recently purchased a small 10 acre parcel which we plan to plant mostly to peach trees. I can't even fathom the amount of labor it would take to bag peaches from 100s of trees. I'm all for organic culture if future technology makes it "doable" in my climate. But I think it's illogical to insist organic technology is the only way. I hope (and look for) conventional techniques/pesticides to become safer (as has been the case) with improvements in research/technology, as well as improvements in the efficacy of organic culture/pesticides.

Natal - Hmm.. then what is chicken flavor? I've heard the following ingredients always contain MSG glutage glutamic acid monosodium lutamate monopotassium glutamate textured protein hydrolyzed protien calcium caseinate sodium caseinate yeast extract year food autolyzed yeast gelatin These ingreidens OFTEN contain msg or create msg during processing. artificial flavors and flavorings soy sauce bouillon malt extract whey protein pectin corn starch protein-fortified ingredients seasonings soy protein isolate stock (didn't even realize this one was listed) malt flavoring carrageenan enzymes cirtric acid enzyme-modified ingredients natrual flavors and flavorings (chicken stock) soy protein broth barley malt maltodextrin protease powdered milk ultra-pasturized ingredients Trailrunner - I never knew that about the starter stock! Thanks! I agree about the low sodium still seems to be too high.

Hi Emma, Have been using freezer tape for years. Just learned about Washi tape and thought it'd be a fun change from plain freezer tape, and a fun way to color-code frozen foods. I'm not crafty, so I have to use these pretty, crafty things in practical ways :)

I do know several small farmers who refuse to be certified as "organic" because they feel that is misleading as American standards allow the use of many . They will instead label their products as "pesticide free" or "produced in an organic manner" or something similar. They are always happy to tell anyone who asks about their growing methods. Most will employ biological controls, like predator insects, or mechanical devices like my "fake apples" brushed with a sticky substance that traps coddling moths. The bigger corporation farms will spray and dust more regularly, as they have the equipment to do so. Not all "natural pesticides" are harmless to humans, as once thought, and so things like rotenone, which is derived from plant sources like jicama vine has been found to kill fish and is "mildly" harmful to humans. Whatever that means, one would think it was harmful or not. However, if an item is labelled "organic", it will, at least at this point, be GMO free. Annie