Re: With all the FT and organic certification talk

In <618fc736-9d24-4fae-9c4a-d624b25c884c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
on Wed, 3 Sep 2008 09:13:46 -0700 (PDT), sprsso, sprsso@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
What put me off in the first place was reading all the exemptions and
the realizations that no agency could possibly enforce them all. It
gave me a headache. Probably all that organic ink and paper it was
printed on....al

Magnesium sulfate as a soil amendment is a no-no...
unless its necessity is documented, then it's OK.

So, farmer A needs Magnesium sulfate, and adds it.
His produce is now NOT organic because he used a
restricted chemical.
Farmer B, whose soil also needs MgSO₄, pays a cert.
agency to document that fact. He can sell his produce
as "organic" even though the levels in his soil are
now much higher than those in fields owned by farmer A.

Copper sulfate is fine in rice paddies as long as
it's only applied once in any 24 month period. If you
get the "organic" rice that was picked the week after
the copper sulfate application, don't worry, be happy
that your rice is certified "organic" even though the
non-certified rice from the next paddy over has never
had an application of CuSO₄.

Potassium chloride is fine if it was obtained from
a mine, but prohibited if obtained in any other way,
say from seawater. The KCl is identical in both
products though.

What does the USDA NOP really ensure? Not what most
people think.

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