Pristine fungicide

[Olpea]

Thank you for the compliment Richard.

It seems we are going farther afield in discussing who should be doing risk-assessment studies, where the food in the USA should be grown, competitive agricultural advantages of the EU and the U.S., insect and disease pest pressure in the U.S. vs. EU, etc.

I"m going to stop the discussion on my end, largely because much of this has already been discussed, and it doesn’t change anyone off their entrenched positions.

I will correct one assumption you made in your post. That is, that everything was organic 60 or 70 years ago in my area. On the contrary, that’s when DDT was in it’s heyday. Years before that, pesticides were organic but very toxic and dangerous. Google how many million pounds of lead arsenate and Paris Green were used in the U.S. before the popularity of DDT. It will probably surprise you. My wife’s father-in-law grew up in the 40s in KS and told me they used lead arsenate even on their garden.

[RichardRoundTree]

You are very right about that stuff and it was exceedingly toxic and things weren’t really fully organic for 110 years ago. I mainly said the 70 years ago number because thats when we were primarily smaller family farms and most family farmers didn’t spend very much of there money on seed or pesticide and raised animals / agriculture side by side.

[alan]

I would add that this is a fruit growing forum primarily for hobby growers from all over the country. The name of the forum is growing fruit, not soybeans or food, although we have sub-categories and many of us also have vegetable gardens.

From time to time the subject of conventional and organic food production comes up, and often there is a clash between those who live in western climates and can easily grow fruit without much synthetic input and those of us in the eastern humid regions.

The fact is that growing conventional fruit where humidity is high and rain frequent during the growing, and especially the ripening season is a completely different game than growing in relative desert. It isn’t impossible to grow organic apples, and when we are blessed with relatively dry growing seasons, even stonefruit can often be produced without synthetic intervention. However, in the long run, synthetic orchards are much more productive with much less input than organic ones in the northeast.

My business is growing bearing age fruit trees, installing them and managing home orchards. Most of my customers initially want to grow organically, and we often give it a shot. When we have success for a year they get very excited but that success is difficult to duplicate consistently. Brown rot on stone fruit is especially difficult to control on mature trees most years. Right now, out of about a hundred orchards I manage, only one has stuck to organic, but the orchard is only in its third season, so the customer has enjoyed 2 small crops.

I am grateful for the technology that allows people to grow wonderful fruit where it would otherwise be almost impossible. I know of no commercial producers of organic stonefruit in the entire state of NY and have never seen organic peaches grown in Georgia or N. Carolina in sources like Whole Foods- it is all shipped from the west.

For home growers, Indar is the best fungicide to combat brown rot in stone fruit, IMO. Fortunately, a few trees on an acre seems to require a lot more time to create resistant fungus. There just isn’t the adequate concentration of trees to easily develop resistance.

As far as the issue of the use of synthetic compounds in commercial agriculture, that subject really belongs in the lounge, and needs to be handled with diplomacy.

This subject, along with climate change has brought out some of the ugliest arguments on this forum.

That isn’t to suggest that you’ve said anything not well within the realm of civility, but the subject matter has certainly drifted out of the realm of the category of general fruit growing.

[alan]

On the issue of Pristine, my problem with it is that it contains 2 separate fungicides which is part of the reason for its high expense. Only one of the fungicides is effective against brown rot in stonefruit, but the compound is not available alone- at least last I checked. The manufacturer should be required by law to sell them separately (for it to be labeled for stonefruit) because every time you use it you are adding half the material to the environment for no practical purpose.