Out with the bathwater again?

[Johnboy]

It appears that there are to be changes made into the Soil Association rules on what is to be considered as organic. One of the changes mooted is that to be considered organic a plant must be grown directly into the soil and no containers.
I would suggest to you that if you use your own organically made compost to produce your own grow bags the plant grown in this fashion is nothing but organic but apparently not it seems!
How say you?
JB

[peter]

I certaintly agree that the home made, or even commercially made, 100% organic compost content grown crop should be classed as organic.

Perhaps the next rule change will be that only manual labour by man or horse can be used in the process.

Then that said labour can only wear organic clothing or harness.

Then the use of metal implements will be banned.

Finally only pointy sticks and flints can be used in an arboreal environment to carry out slash and burn for self-sufficiency.

I go too far in parody, but how else to get the message across that the SA are going too far?

[alan refail]

As a long-time supporter of the Soil Association I cannot help thinking that the organisation has developed a "death wish policy".

Make it so impossible and expensive for SA-certified members to meet changing "standards" and they will go elsewhere for certification, or just give up being "organic". Then the demand for organic produce will be filled by imports. Now, that's really sustainable! Unless, of course, all imported produce can be brought into the UK by Phoenician galleys visiting Anglesey or Cornwall to trade for tin

I have often wondered about the SA certification for Halen Môn.. Although this is the best sea-salt we have ever tasted and we use it every day, I fail to understand how NaCl produced from the waters of the Menai Strait can be considered "organic".

[Primrose]

So how are all these tomatoes and other vegetables which are grown using hydroponics classified? Presumably because nutrients are used, even if they contain only natural ingredients, they would fall outside the classification? Or perhaps they are already?

And if you grow organically in the soil but water your garden with water taken from your tap, is that not organic growing (because the water authorities have added fluoride to your water?)

I think this is all going a bit too far.

[Colin Miles]

I have been skimming through their certification files. So perscriptive - talk about a nanny state! Nick Clegg could perhaps start here.

[Colin_M]

I fail to understand how NaCl produced from the waters of the Menai Strait can be considered "organic".

Yes, and whilst I enjoy the taste of sea salt, I often wonder what its advantages are over the equivalent rock salt that's mined out of the ground.

Unless I've been misinformed, I understood rock salt to have been produced from ancient sea beds, so largely equivalent to sea salt. The main difference being that I don't expect the sea is as clean now as it was several thousand years ago. Not wishing to criticise your neck of the woods Alan, but if the Irish were worried about the effect of Sellafield on sealife in the Irish sea, the Menai Straits can't be very different.

[Colin_M]

That'll teach me to write before following Alan's links....

Turns out that his local sea salt is in fact mined from rock salt (see above).

However to go back to the question I raised, given the opportunity to cook your spuds in today's seawater, would any of us choose to do so? For example, Maldon is a well known English brand, from a place at the bottom of the North Sea, not far from the mouth of the Thames. Details of how it's made are here

[alan refail]

That'll teach me to write before following Alan's links....

Turns out that his local sea salt is in fact mined from rock salt (see above).

No, Colin, it really is made from Menai water.

http://www.seasalt.co.uk/wisscms-en-175.aspx

[Tony Hague]

Not meaning to either criticise or support the SA, it seems to me that it is rather inevitable that they would end up with some rather bizarre rules.

If you are offering a certification that allows the grower to charge a premium for his product, you must have hard edged rules. It is no good allowing growers to use whatever they thing is the "pragmatic" solution. Although there are those artisan growers who are driven by passion, there will always be a great many to whom it is like any other business, driven by profit alone. Whatever requirements the SA impose for the "organic" label, the latter type of growers will do the minimum to meet he standard in order to maximise profit.

Now, when your central idea is from the heart, trying to reduce it to a set of rules is never going to be easy. And if a committee is involved, anomalies and inconsistencies are inevitable. And it must be tempered by what is practically possible too. So you get bizarre ideas like copper fungicides being allowed because they are a naturally occuring mineral, or pesticides made from natural plant extracts - but there are plenty of rather toxic natural materials around.

[Johnboy]

Hi Tony,
Surely the Soil Association must realise that some of the rules they intend to inflict upon organic growers do not stand up to scrutiny yet they go ahead and that really amounts to the dogmatism they have been accused of by myself and several other contributors to this forum.
Another of the mooted changes is for heated commercial organic greenhouses to be heated only by non fossil fuels. The best suggestion they could come up with was wood chip burning equipment. The supposed thinking behind this is that organic greenhouses have an enormous carbon footprint and they are the largest single blot in their carbon footprint copybook. I don't really know but their use of Diesel must come a very close second and that is very debatable.
What concerns me is that the SA know very well that this will put organics with a very high cost factor to their producers who will not have signed up to these stringent changes and their only course is to try and pass it on to the unwitting public or quit organics. It is called playing footloose and fancy free with somebody else's money because heating for greenhouses is one hell of a slice out of the capital outlay of a producer and to make such a drastic decision without there being a vote of all their producers is very wrong indeed.
JB.

[Tony Hague]

As I said, the need to draw hard rules may be behind some of these things. Like with the "must be grown in soil", I guess this arises from the desire not to endorse hydroponically grown crops - you can imagine that it is hard to accept that a crop, albeit grown with naturally derived fertilisers, in a medium of sterile rockwool (high carbon footprint) can be Soil Association endorsed despite having never been near actual soil. But where do you draw the line ? Can you allow composted coffee grinds for example, despite the fact that coffee is grown with huge amounts of pesticides ?

Similarly the greenhouse heating. I guess the argument is that fossil fuels shouldn't be allowed because it does not meet a sustainability criterion, but then does that not rule out a lot of quite praiseworthy uses of CHP plant to provide heat, light and CO2 for glasshouses (such as http://www.thanetearth.com) , or even use of power station waste heat ?

[Colin Miles]

What is the definition of Organic? This seems to me the crux of the matter. But can't find anything SA web site. Not surprising really when you think about it and hence all the endless rules and regulations trying to nail it down. So many links, so many very, very grey areas. An impossible task.

[Johnboy]

Hi Tony,
I suspect that the reason for 'to be organic the plant must be grown direct in the soil' is so that prevent organic growers using containers such as grow bags irrespective of what that growbag may contain.
It seems that there is some disquiet with some organic greenhouse growers with regards to enforced crop rotations where they have been made by the SA to grow crops that quite frankly they simply cannot make enough money to sustain their operations.
A quote from one of them;
"When it comes to prescription verses flexibility in harsh economic times. I need freedom to choose varieties, inputs that work for me.
If I make a loss through a decision I've made, that's my fault. But if I make a loss because of a decision the Soil Association has made I want to take someone to task!"
There is certainly disquiet within the organic world at present and I suspect it is due to the total inflexibility of the SA and it is apparent that those who make the rules are not listening hard enough to their growers.
Most of these growers are highly qualified people who's brains the SA higher echelons should be using instead of stamping on them.
JB.