Hello every one. Newbie with his first post, I would like to respond to marshallz10 6 points by talking about my community. The first point about city ordinance is spot on. The citizens here have recently gotten a bylaw changed that kept home owners from having chickens on there property. Now we can have 5 chickens and apply for an exemption to have more. This in a town where more then half the land is still in the ALR (Agriculture land reserve) and run by small family farms. We have a few community gardens and demonstration gardens. But there is a development proposal on some farm land that soil is considered unusable for farming, for a mixed development of housing and small acreage farming controlled by and organic land trust as well as a community farming collage. The primary school in my area does a year round guarding program. It is the only one I know of and it just finished its first year. We have a yard wast pick up program where they take it away and make compost. Once a year you can go to the dump and pick up a truck load for free. And all year you can go a buy it there. For the price of $5 for 500 Kg (about 1000lbs I think) of compost. You just have to go and collect it. What we donÂt have is a good year round farmers market. We have a couple of summer markets but that is it. With our mild winters on the west coast I Know there are several farms that grow almost year round. Thanks Shawn

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.

Finally I completed reading the book and got a good understanding on Ivan's findings and practical advices as well and on the evolution of things. As in our time he was inspired by the latest technology, in this case the deep plowing technology as quintessence of agricultural science until he questioned it as being too complex and too expensive. He tried shallow plowing and early and continuous maintenance of the soil as guiding principles. Until he made first successes he was not at all accepted and even laughed at. This in my eyes explains the verbal attacks against current practices at that time in some sequences in the book. After his method has shown successes he started to explain the method why it works so well and refined it. I think this is a good example of finding a solution in supporting nature rather than try to be better than nature. The book contains a lot of details on the interaction of living and nonliving things, a description of critical success factors of plant cultivation and a very practical guideline on the how to. There are advices one can use right away like preparation of soil, seeding, weed management and other things which are good for the understanding, as the soil irrigation by dew. Looking at todays agriculture we are still on the way to regenerative agriculture. The technology on machines and chemistry enhanced further and the understanding of processes of nature enhanced further - and there is still the same question - Do we need all this technology? Let me give you some links which I find very interesting in this respect: Feeding the soil, building top soil Establishing the right milieu for plants: Fungi Bacteria Ratio Design of permaculture Regenerative agriculture and Humus built up The way we treat the plants and soil is of course dependent of the quality of the food the customer wants. So whether the customer wants food grown w/o chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides. Respective trademarks in Germany are 'bioland' and for a biodynamics standard 'demeter'. This trademarks are very well accepted by the customers. Looking at the bare fields of conventional agriculture a lot of changes are still required, but I think we are on the right track. PS: Now Valerie I know that you are a man, but ... Could you let me know a bit more about you? Heribert

This letter to the journal Nature outlines the safety risk of antibiotic resistance due to horizontal gene transfer from GMOs and points out that this is not the only risk that needs to be urgently addressed by the authorities. ------ Ampicillin threat leads to wider transgene concern Sir: We are concerned by the suggestion, in your Editorial "Don't rely on Uncle Sam" (Nature 434, 807; 2005), that the US Food and Drug Administration does not consider the presence of the ampicillin-resistance gene in Syngenta's unapproved variety of genetically modified Bt10 maize to represent a safety problem. This is not the view of the UK government's scientific advisers (the DEFRA Antimicrobial Resistance Coordination Group), who state that some important veterinary pathogens remain susceptible to ampicillin (K. L. Goodyear et al. J. Antimicrob. Chemother. 54, 959; 2004). They state that there is "extremely low or no detected resistance in certain bacterial species", so that "any occasional transfer of resistance genes to these organisms would be a very significant event". If, as a result of such horizontal gene transfer, it became necessary to use more modern antimicrobials to treat animal disease, they write, "then there could be significant consequences for the consumer through the food chain". The risk of horizontal gene transfer from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is not a theoretical one. One study found that, after Bt genes in plasmid form were incubated in the saliva in a sheep's mouth for a few minutes, they could still transform Escherichia coli bacteria so that they developed antibiotic resistance (P. S. Duggan et al. Br. J. Nutr. 89, 159$B!](B166; 2003). In addition, it is worth noting that the ampicillin-resistance gene in Bt10 maize and other genetically modified crops is a remnant of the bacterial plasmid inserted into these varieties, and would therefore function very efficiently if taken up by bacteria as a result of horizontal gene transfer. Once the Bt10 maize incident has been dealt with, we feel there should be a review of the general question of horizontal gene transfer from GMOs. There is no reason to believe that any health implications are confined to antibiotic-resistance marker genes; they could, for example, equally apply to the inserted Bt toxin genes present in all genetically modified Bt crops. However, the transfer of antibiotic resistance is the only such risk currently being addressed by the authorities that regulate GMOs. We consider that the case-by-case approval approach used by the authorities does not adequately address such problems, which are common to all GMOs. Gundula Azeez Soil Association, 40-56 Victoria Street, Bristol BS1 6BY, UK