His theories have been around for a long time, and I know there are actual commercial farmers who swear by his methods, but it seems if they were valid, the farmers who use them would have long since so far surpassed the production of their neighbors that those not using the methods would change over to this wonderful set of theories or be forced to sell out to those already using them. True believers can sustain BS indefinitely if their beliefs aren’t terribly counterproductive, but if their beliefs represent a more productive system in a field as competitive as agriculture, it is only logic that says by now his movement would include most of the successful organic farmers in this country and major universities would have long since tested his systems.
I don’t want this forum to become a swap-meet for cult like idea exchanges. It is fine to write about specific things you’ve tried that seemed to have worked, but not healthy for this forum to promote faith based ideology here. At least that is not the kind of forum I want to invest my time into.
Incidentally, I don’t think any educated farmer these days doesn’t appreciate the need of a healthy soil that teems with life conducive to supporting crops.
Actually, deficiency of Ca that plants can uptake is a problem here too. Many farmers in the western U.S. correct this with an NOP approved Ca foliar spray.
Since @JustAnne4 brought it up, I’ll pass along my experience/thoughts with Reams’ methods. I should say that I am not a strict adherent to his methods, but I have found a few which seem to work and I continue to use.
The Reams foliar spray formulas do seem to be quite beneficial. To give the man credit, I think he was one of the first to suggest using foliar fertilizers many decades ago. Back when I first started mixing them up and using them, it made a profound difference in the quality of my garden vegies (no fruit trees old enough to bear back then). My wife always says she hated vegetables until I started the Reams sprays now they taste great. It also seems in my limited experience that there is something to the Reams notion that ammonia based N tends to make plants fruit and nitrate based N tends to promote leaf growth. I have seen more than once a dilute ammonia spray induce flowering in tomatoes which were just not doing it on their own. Even if one has perfect soil, there seems to be a benefit to regular foliar sprays with basic and micro nutrients.
Similarly I find the Reams soil analysis to be useful (although it is not the only soil test system I use). Reams was one of the first to recommend using mild acidic extract solution which is similar to what roots give off, in soil testing. It shows what is available now to the plants; an important part of managing your soil, IMO. And I will say that the Reams based soil testing lab I use has given me the best results (although I don’t much care for them pushing their proprietary fertilizers).
Reams also was the first to promote BRIX as a measure of not only sweetness but fruit/vegie quality.
I do find Reams theories and writings a bit hard to follow, due mostly to his unconventional terminology and theories. But I have found merit in the end results of some of his recommendations. Does it explain everything you need to know in growing, IMO no, no system does that AFAIK. But there are useful practices there which can help.
Nope, but he did popularize the method in good faith.
It is due to the differing acidity of the formulas releasing nutrients under certain conditions.
This was already in textbooks when my grand uncle studied agriculture at UC Davis in the 1920’s.
This was first promoted by Arnold Beckman, the inventor of both the pH meter and the spectrophotometer. It is of use for veggies whose market value depends on sugar content but a very poor measure for other veggie crops.
Science is not the same as the stuff that comes out of the blue where someone claims their brain gave birth to complete new systems without the benefit of rigorous experimentation using controlled methods that are pier reviewed. Of course, analyzing the significance of such experiments is a non-scientific aspect of the process in that there can usually be varied interpretations of results, some of which will prove to be wrong over time (this leads to a lot of suspicion of the whole process by non-scientists). But the difference between claims by an outlier and those made by researchers that are part of the tree of science we humans have been nurturing TOGETHER is important.
This doesn’t mean that a “theory” cooked up in someone’s brain is necessarily mistaken, just that I think it is more practical to let such theories be put to scientific evaluation before we start proclaiming their significance as a whole. As Richard suggests, it is quite possible for some aspects of a wide, untested thing to work but not for the reasons “cooked up” by the egomaniac that wants our worship based on their individual brilliance.
That said, when I was having terrible back spasms that kept me from work, and could not get help from modern, science based medicine I turned to a chiropractor who seemed to alleviate my problem. I would recommend my chiropractor to people with the caveat that “maybe it is a placebo, but not all placebos are equal and this one works for me.” The last time my back went out, my chiropractor didn’t seem to help me so I went to a Chinese acupuncture and herb doctor. The herbal theory seemed completely crazy but my back problem went away after a single treatment of acupuncture and hasn’t returned in the last 3 or 4 years. Maybe just coincidence, but at least I’ve seen some research that seems to indicate a level of efficacy from acupuncture, although without scientific explanation.
I’ve never had a problem in horticulture that I’ve had to resort to “alternative science” to solve. If that happens I will try almost anything.
Sure, but it is interesting how actual farmer applicators get significantly less cancer than the general public- less disease in general- less death in particular-. live significantly longer, healthier and happier than the general public that is exposed to a fraction of the pesticide that these farmers are. I don’t attribute all this excellent news to the imbibing of large quantities of pesticide, however:wink:
Anyone interested in my rather expansive data on this subject can send me a private note and I’ll send you the study. It is based on a major, pier reviewed, epidemiological research project carried out by the U.S. Dept of Health involving about 70,000 farmers with spray licenses over a period of more than 2 decades. No mice or rats involved. The funniest thing about the study is how baffled the scientists are by the results.
My reason for using as little pesticide as practical has more to do with concerns about the environment than about my health.
By law, pesticides are defined by use – not composition. If you use water to drown ants then water is the pesticide.
Cancer on the other hand is almost entirely due to genetic predisposition. If there is cancer in your heritage then of course you should be extra careful about exposure – especially if your neighbor or a farm or other business nearby uses harmful compounds without following the label.
I assume the farmers in the study had just as much genetic predisposition towards cancer as the general public. The data seems to indicate that pesticides are not likely high on the list of environmental factors influencing the onset of cancer. I don’t know if you use a mist blower in an open tractor, but I assure you a high percentage of the farmers in the study I speak of did and do. You probably understand how much direct exposure that would lead to.
Nevertheless, call me a true believer, but I prescribe to the belief that poisons are bad for you, so do be careful with them.
My wife and I were participants, long phone interviews every year and even longer paper surveys. They certainly couldn’t understand their results.[quote=“alan, post:171, topic:8054”]
My reason for using as little pesticide as practical
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They are expensive to use, my produce is for my own use and a few blemishes doesn’t hurt.
The test subjects, regular pesticide users, had a lower rate of cancer than the general population. A little background, I worked in the lawncare industry, 35 yrs, almost from it’s inception. I also sprayed greens in the early70’s in tennis shoes and shorts. Both of these activities along with growing 70 acres of squash for years exposed me to alot of different pesticides, so U of I medico’s couldn’t explain why neither my wife and I weren’t dead from cancer. The last few years of interviews became, at times, contentious because of the failure of their hypothesis.
I do see skin cancers but that is mostly in high sun exposure skin and 60+ yrs of sun exposure.
To some degree, science is driven by culture, but scientific method should eventually steer research from cultural bias. However, I feel that in research studies of environmental health risks an extraordinary focus is put on chemicals used in agriculture because of a cultural bias towards fear of poisons we actually put in our mouths. Less attention is paid to what we breathe or absorb through our skin (perhaps because we evolved in a world where what we ate was the only one of the three that might make us sick).
Our society seems more concerned about the unproven risks of agricultural pesticides than about the proven ones, such as that of automobile emissions, lead in school drinking water, plastics choking our oceans, the overuse of antibiotics and even the antibacterial chemicals we use in our homes that appear to damage the immune systems of our children.
The focus on agricultural pesticides has been helpful in leading to the development of increasingly less dangerous compounds, and there are certainly environmental and even health issues with pesticides that are cause for serious concern- paraquat exposure being one example (which along with the natural rotenone may be a potential trigger for Parkinson’s) . But the media tendency is to lump all synthetic pesticides into the same boat of risk and danger and this motivates scientists to look there and expect to find solutions to public health problems by identifying those risks.
The scientists involved in the health study I brought up here spent a lot of blood, sweat and tears to amass data that they probably thought would prove the high risks of pesticide exposure. As scientists they shouldn’t have hoped to obtain any particular results, but as human beings, who can blame them if they wanted their research to be an important part of a crusade to reduce the use of pesticides. If this was the case, the results were almost precisely the opposite of what they were looking for.
What I take from the study is that we should look at the farmer’s life style to find ways to IMPROVE public health. Research does seem to indicate that excessive sitting at a desk is harmful to your health.
I believe there is also a higher rate of prostrate cancer among the study group. Pesticide exposure probably does increase the risks of certain cancers, IMO- it is just not enough to come close to negating the advantages of working outdoors for a living. I also believe the overall risk to pesticide exposure is much less than public perception.
One surprising thing about the study is that, as far as I know, no chemical manufacturer has ever attempted to use it to promote the use of their products. To me that suggests that they aren’t terribly concerned about the increasing popularity of organic foods. Maybe they see the potential of higher profit margins on the new pesticides they will be introducing to serve organic growers. They far prefer to market their own patented products than older materials, I’m sure.
How many farmers with pesticide applicators licenses believe deeply that pesticides are good for humanity and have visceral objections to organic theories about the dangers of pesticides? How many of those farmers, if they had had cancer, wouldn’t participate in the study because they wouldn’t want their cancer to be used as an argument against pesticides? My guess is enough farmers to hide a potentially significant increased risk of some cancers (or cancer in general) among farmers with pesticide applicators licenses.
I’m also curious about how the study dealt with differences between farm managers that might have pesticide applicators licenses but rarely if ever actually apply those pesticides and migrant workers that are probably spraying a lot of the pesticides used on produce crops (which although relatively insignificant in terms of acreage compared to field crops are however more pesticide intensive and labor intensive.) Migrant workers would obviously be much more difficult to survey, especially with lengthy phone and paper surveys conducted over multiple years.
Those are at least two reasons I wouldn’t put too much trust in just one study, even if it was very extensive.
If the researchers were thorough in the Methods section of their work, the questions you have are likely addressed. As for your first question, @Chikn’s comments imply that it was a long term study, which would likely catch new incidents of cancer and allow them to compare to a non-farmer control cohort over the same period.
In general though, it’s usually a good idea to be critical of any results (ones that disprove or confirm our biases) and look for repeatability, although with studies this large and over a long period, that takes a lot of time and money.
Good point, but it would still depend on participation, in that case continued participation. And the inverse distortion might be an even bigger factor: for all the random reasons surveyors never get anywhere near 100% participation a lot of farmers surely declined to participate or dropped out part way through this study, but there could very well have been healthy farmers that were extra motivated to participate and to continue because they were motivated to prove that the pesticides they used were safe. There are plenty of farmers smart enough to both distrust scientists and to know how the scientists were wanting to spin things and to do their part to spin things the way they’d like them spun.
