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Published Monthly By

:/ the ALTER project @ Slippery Rock University ® Slippery Rock, PA 16057-9989 e (412) 794-7322

 

VOL. I, No. 1

MASTERING THE ORGANIC GARDEN

I would love to see the Master Gardener program of the
Cooperative Extension Service System provide. more en-
couragement to organic gardeners. Often they are only tol-
erated. Master Gardeners who are organic-minded are allowed
to tell people how to avoid using pesticides and other poisons,
but only if they also give the official state university recom-
mendation—which almost always calls for use of. poisons
against pests.

Unfortunately, many gardeners still want to use toxic
chemicals against garden bugs. They have the desire to domi-
nate nature rather than live happily within a benign natural en-
vironment. So they often use toxic sprays, rather than the
numerous safe, biological methods that could be just as ef-
fective—or more effective.

County agents and the Extension Master Gardeners could
change that. But the state universities would have to change
from the prevailing spray-and-pray mentality to the use of
biological and organic methods for gardening.

Organic gardeners have shown that it’s possible to have
pleasant and productive gardens in every part of this country
without using toxic chemicals. They make their home grounds
an island of purity instead of a place that is poisoned regularly.
Yet the organic idea isn’t spreading fast enough, because far
too many state university horticulturists and entomologists are
still hooked on the old poison-first mentality.

Why do the universities do that? One important reason is
that they are paid to become centers of poison technology.
The makers of poisons provide money to the researchers at the
land-grant universities. They cover some of the cost of study-
ing pest problems. And those grants have continued for so
many years that the idea that poisons are essential to insect,
disease and weed control has become deeply entrenched in the
culture of the universities.

But what about academic freedom? We know that all kinds
of ideas are welcome at a true university. The Extension Ser-
vice can’t turn the idea of academic freedom on its head and
say just the opposite—that because of the university and its
ideas a diverse expression of views by private citizens who age
not paid is prohibited.

Of course that can’t be done, but it’s exactly what the
Extention Service is doing. And they say the law requires them
to do it. Master Gardeners must give the official Extension
Service line when asked for advice because of ‘legal matters
involving liability,” I was told by Ricardo Gomez, who is staff
leader of the project in Washington.

The implication is that if county agents or Master Gar-
deners say what they think to be true rather than what the
local university tells them is the truth, they or the government
will be sued. I say that’s nonsense. What’s far more likely is
that the Extension Service, the universities and their agents
will be sued for causing pollution. There is evidence all around

January, 1987

us that the poison approach to insect, disease and weed
control is creating vast environmental damage. My guess is that
no jury anywhere would find against a person or organization
trying to stop that poisoning. Just the opposite! They would
be honored, which is just what we are setting out to do with
our own new Master Gardener program.
Robert Rodale
Organic Gardening, 11/86

P.S. AMEN, Robert, ALTER uses no poisons

ROSEY RED APPLES

Safeway, the nation’s biggest supermarket chain, an-
nounced in July that it will no longer sell apples treated with
daminozide, a chemical found to produce cancer in laboratory
animals. Starting with this fall’s apple crop, apple sauce and
apple juice sold under Safeway’s house names will not contain
daminozide either. Two other supermarket chains—Giant
Foods and Kroger—quickly followed suit.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was
weak-kneed by contrast. After proposing a ban on daminozide
in August 1985, EPA decided to follow the advice of its
science advisory board, which argued that more studies were
needed.

Daminozide, manufactured by Uniroyal under the trade
name Alar, is applied to apples (and other fruit crops) at
harvest time to extend shelf-life and enhance the apple’s
redness.

Rose Marie Audette
Environmental Action, Sept./Oct. 1986

WALTER ALTER: our ‘correspondent in the field’
says: = :
“Found a good line in The Postman the other day |
— it goes like this: “‘You know, I've found that the
~ big causes don’t love you back — They take and
g take but never give in return. So now I fight for the
“\ little — the tangible things — my family, my

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