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ORGANIC GROWER the Journal of the Organic Growers Alliance in THIS ISSUE Read All About It! News The Summer 2008 No.5 ORGANIC GROWER The journal of the Organic Growers Alliance IN THIS ISSUE Read all about it! News ........................................................................ 2 Most growers just want to get on with their growing. It’s an engaging activity - to the extent that the non-grower might think that organic Aminopyralid - a new threat to growers take an overly obsessive interest in their craft. vegetable growers everywhere .........10 It doesn’t leave much time for anything else. As a craft it is hedged OGA visit to Charles about and pitfalled with all the obstacles that come with working in the natural world, so that when things are going well we can never be Dowdings’.........................................................12 sure that tomorrow will not bring some flood or drought or damaging visitation. If we were to grow laurels it’s very unlikely that we would .................... OGA visit to Tozer Seeds 13 be able to rest on them. We apply our intuition and intelligence and the skills that we learn to this unpredictable world, believing or hoping ......................... G’s and green manures 16 that the best of the good times will see us through the worst of the bad. The Organic Grower has to reflect all of these times, the good and the Green manures and nitrous not so good, it cannot avoid doing so – it’s there in the title. oxides .....................................................................18 How much simpler our life would be if we could just concentrate on doing what we are here to do, and how great it would be if we got the Relay green manures ...............................21 credit we feel we deserve. After all, even though it may not be enough in itself, as a statement of commitment to environmental sanity the Fruit, veg and trees ...................................23 act of growing organically is worth a thousand lifestyle magazines Planning and the organic and any amount of celebrity professions of “green consumerism”. But somehow there is always something in the way, some obstacle or grower ...................................................................26 other. There’s soil and plant and animal – fire, air and water too - the indissoluble and timeless circle within whose disinterested pattern Two years in Indonesia .........................28 and flow we live our working lives as it holds us in its sway. That we accept. And then there’s man . Squash in storage ........................................30 The organic bureaucracy we can put up with – these people are our Wireworm in theory and fellow travellers, may even be our friends. Whether we find the practice .................................................................32 contact a help or a hindrance the purpose, which is certification, is something few of us can do without. From the setting of standards ...and as a current affliction ...............38 to the inspection of their observance we are, or can be, participants. If you’d care to participate – look inside these pages. Then there is Defra, Book reviews ...................................................40 which probably doesn’t impinge much on most of us, horticulture being eternally at the back of agricultural consciousness in the U.K. Field notes and queries ..........................41 The need for producerism ....................42 Goodbye cockleshell heroes .................43 Events ...................................................................44 Page - The Organic Grower - No 5 - Summer 2008 A couple of years ago the department was on record as saying that it did not recognise any threat to our country’s food supply. Now it’s not so sure – you can read about that inside too. You may question Defra’s relevance, but at least it is asking us for our views. NEWS And then there is Dow Chemicals. They are in the News as well, not once but twice. They’ve brought us Spinosad, a Aminopyralid microbial insecticide which is coming into general organic acceptance. Should the SA adopt it, or should it not? Like it or suspended! not, questions like these go to the heart of what we do, where In what can be seen as something of a victory for the OGA principal and practice meet or part, and we shouldn’t try to the Pesticides Safety Directorate suspended the use and sale of avoid them. products containing the hormone herbicide aminopyralid on Dow were once satirised on a controversial Soil Association the 24th July. The PSD said: “in response to the concerns…. poster (controversial within the SA, that is) as Dour Chemicals, about damage believed to result from these residues, PSD has manufacturers of Dusbin. Now they are taking first place been in contact with Dow AgroSciences Limited, the approval in our news section, just across the page, as the bringers holder and data owner for the majority of aminopyralid of aminopyralid, the herbicide which really has caused products approved in the UK. Dow AgroSciences have asked controversy – not to say consternation. Did they ask us? So for their approvals to be modified whilst the situation is under now we have more questions of principle - does contamination investigation.” mean decertification? (for instance) and of practice – whatever Once the Observer had exposed the problem on 29th June in next? (for example). There are other questions too – why does the article ‘Home-grown veg ruined by toxic herbicide’, we anybody need this stuff, who does it benefit, are these people contacted members and it became clear the problem was huge, criminally insane, or are they just criminals? with the potential to seriously affect organic growers. The The Organic Grower is a membership magazine and it’s good OGA, Soil Association, Garden Organic (HDRA) and others to be able to record that the members – who are the OGA lobbied hard to get the product withdrawn. The OGA press – have put a stop to this particular nonsense. As Grower release ‘Growers angered by toxic manure threat’ reporting magazine put it “a week after the OGA’s request, PSD banned our call for a ban was widely reported in the farming/ the product”. It might not have been just us, but it’s great to horticultural press and linked by Grower magazine to its get the credit. We can’t say if the withdrawal of aminopyralid subsequent withdrawal. is temporary or permanent, but it’s one less obstacle in the For more, see article by Alan Schofield inside. way for now. So there’s the news, all of it that fits, and plenty of the other – trees and fruit, gas and green manures, planning in Dorset New inputs allowed and organic cooperation in Indonesia, life and death in the fields - and lots more besides. You have three months to read in EU regulation it in, but only two months in which to let us know what you In May this year a number of new inputs: Spinosad, copper think or to give us your story. octanoate, potassium bicarbonate, and ethylene to prevent We make no apology for printing two reactions to the sprouting of stored onions and potatoes, were added to the consumptive market that surrounds us. They look at the EU regulation 2092/9, approving them for use in organic matter in very different ways, and both are inspired by a deep farming. Individual certifying bodies must now decide understanding of the truths of organic production. whether to incorporate the changes into their own standards. Spinosad Our favourite company of the month Dow AgroScience Ltd makes its second appearance in this OG with its microbial insecticide Spinosad which is manufactured by fermentation using the Actinomycete bacteria Saccharopolyspora spinosa. The strain used has been chemically mutated to produce more product, enabling economic production. In the regulation it may only be used, “if produced by strains not genetically Page 2 - The Organic Grower - No 5 - Summer 2008 modified” and “only when measures are taken to minimise the toxicity or persistence in the environment. The EU stated that risk to key parasitoids and to minimise the risk of development potassium bicarbonate is found to be essential against various of resistance.” Though currently coming under the ‘Restricted fungal diseases in a range of crops and may contribute to the Inputs’ category, needing approval of the certification body, reduction of the use of copper and sulphur in certain crop- this will disappear under the new regulation, and products pest combinations. will effectively be permitted with retrospective justification. The Soil Association is currently considering its position on Ethylene Spinosad as there are ‘considerable environmental reasons for not allowing its use.’ There are concerns over its fate in soil Ethylene has been allowed under the new regulation to and water and its wide, non-specific activity against insects, prevent the sprouting of stored onions and potatoes. It is including beneficial insects such as bees. Subsidiary concerns already allowed for use in ripening bananas. It is claimed include the use of GMOs in its manufacture and the other that use of ethylene would extend the season for home grown constituents in its formulation, and the risk of it being seen as organic onions, giving a corresponding reduction in imports a precedent for the use of other microbial products in organic and an improved carbon footprint. production. Jill Vaughan, chairman of the SA’s Horticultural Standards Up until now, Spinosad was not permitted under EU Committee, would like to hear your opinions on all these regulation for use in organic production. There was, however products, particularly from those of you who are SA licensees. considerable confusion over the interpretation of the existing She would like to know if any growers see a need for regulation, authorities in New Zealand and Argentina Spinosad, either to control pests that are not manageable by had licensed it for use on organic products, under their any other means or to prevent resistance to other pesticides EU programmes, as they had interpreted the regulation as e.g.
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