Re: [asa] Organic farming article

There is a middle way looking for more friendly pesticides.

In Wales the National Trust use a substance banned by the EU for pest
control as it is cheap effective and harmless. it is dilute washing up
liquid and is effective at killing aphids . But it is illegal.

Pyrethrum based pesticides are better and we can go on.

How do you control caterpillars on cabbages?

The logic of the "leave it to the Lord" approach , is not to practice good
husbandry which is the essence of all farming etc. Do we keep pigs in
squalid conditions and rely on the Lord to prevent diseases. There are
enough hints in the OT to counteract that

Michael

----- Original Message -----
From: "Loren Haarsma" <lhaarsma@calvin.edu>
To: "_American Sci Affil" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 2:13 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] Organic farming article

>
>
> On Tue, 18 Sep 2007, Christine Smith wrote:
>
>> I found this article very interesting :)
>> http://www.enn.com/lifestyle/article/23143
>> "But because we're organic we can't poison bugs and
>> we're dependent on the Lord," he said, as chickens
>> clucked nearby and a rooster crowed. "There's an
>> aspect that we trust the Lord to take care of
>> things.""
>>
>> ...
>>
>> The second point of interest--their justification of
>> organic farming practices as an expression of their
>> trust in God, and their characterization of
>> non-organic practices as humanistic because it's about
>> control. I've never heard this argument in the context
>> of organic farming practices before....
>
>
> I haven't heard that argument before in the context of organic farming,
> either. I have heard it before in the context of not buying health
> insurance, not taking vaccines, not taking medicine when sick. (Many
> decades ago, it was used by some people to argue that we shouldn't worry
> about farming practices with accelerate soil erosion, since taking care of
> the soil which the Lord put in place was Lord's work.)
> So organic pest control might or might not be good practice, but this
> particular type of argument has a long, bad history.
>
> ----------
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
> "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
>

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Tue Sep 18 12:45:24 2007