Re: mildiued vitis
"f. cardama" wrote:
>
> moira, sorry about my english.
Fransisco
The reason I corrected your (one) mispelling was because of the
otherwise astonishingly accurate English of your posting. Had it not
been for this odd spelling it would have been impossible to pick your
note from one written by someone for whom English was his native
language. I am filled with admiration and envy, being unable to write in
any language except my own, though I can understand written French
moderatly well if I think about it carefully.
> yes, my vine also finds its own food and water and never suffers from
> mildew. the grapes are very sweet and smallish, and not over abundant.
> I suppose that if one´s greed pushes the vine to produce a lot of grapes,
> the quality is bound to suffer.
I think you have put your finger on the major problem which has
developed from the use of modern agricultural techniques with often
gross and unbalanced use of fertilizers. Like a human on a bad diet the
poor plants also suffer unnecessary ill-health. Everything seems to be
geared to quantity, usually at the expense of quality, in commercial
food production.
> I am in the middle of wine country and sometimes in the morning there is a
> nasty yellow fog from all the spraying that goes on.
> the local farmers will spray anything that they tell them to in the local
> cooperatives.
> fortunately my house is high up on a hill and I look at the fog from above,
> but the people living on the plain certainly do inhabit in the middle of a
> fungicide,herbicide, insecticide cloud for part of the year.
How lucky you are above the cloud. I wonder what will eventually happen
to the general health of that community. I came across a horrifying
study done in some South American country comparing, as it happened,
people who live up on the hills and did not spray, with their fellows
living down in the valley where spraying went on at all seasons.
The main finding was that the valley children's mental development was
slower and less effective than that of those living in the clean air.
As the two communities were fed much the same and lived very similarly
the investigation concluded it was the sprays which were responsible for
the poorer mental performance. A sobering though for anybody who lives
and brings up a family in a contaminated atmosphere.
Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
Wainuiomata, New Zealand. (on the "Ring of Fire" in the SW Pacific).
Lat. 41:16S Long. 174:58E. Climate: Mediterranean/Temperate
