This is the transcript of a series that aired on NWPR the week of June 19, 2008.
Intro:
"Our Organic Northwest" is a series of conversations on-air and online about organic agriculture in the Northwest.
Today, we answer more of your questions about organic agriculture. Correspondent Glenn Mosley spoke with Brad Jaeckel, the project manager for the organic farm at Washington State University in Pullman.
Mosley:
What does organic mean, anyway?
Jaeckel:
Organic means that the food that is labeled as organic meets USDA standards. And these are national standards that have to be followed if a producer wants to label their food organic, and that name can only be used if it is such, so to meet those standards a producer has to follow the guidelines and they're going to be different for every type of situation. Fruits and vegetables are going to have different standards then a meat producer, or a dairy producer, or a processor. So each of those different types of outfits have to follow standards. For fruits and vegetables, the main things that we have to watch out for are non-approved applications, in particular herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers.
Mosley:
One question that we were asked was this; are organically grown foods really healthier then foods grown sort of the old fashion way?
Jaeckel:
That’s a good question and it’s a really important question because people largely are concerned about the health of their food. And if your eating something that hasn’t been grown organically, in particular fruits and vegetables, the main concern with those would be that there's some residual herbicides and pesticides on that product that you're purchasing. You can look it up one the web and find the top ten fruits and vegetables to avoid that are non-organic.
Mosley:
And we had one other question this week about the use of weed killers and growing organically.
Jaeckel:
There's not many organically approved herbicides, but there are some I know that are coming on to the market. One of the more traditional ones that I know of is vinegar. Vinegar, not store bought vinegar that you get at a low concentration, but vinegar at a higher concentration actually will burn back some weeds if used correctly. So there's some things like that and there's also some synthetic organic weed killers coming on the market. But really, if you're a home gardener or small scale, you can easily just combat your weeds by making sure they don't go to flower and seed, hand pulling weeds and using those methods is a great way of controlling them. You can also use all kinds of mulching methods; there's plastic mulches, there's wood chip mulches... and those really do help suppress weed growth also.
That was Brad Jaeckel, project manager at the organic farm at WSU in Pullman, speaking with correspondent Glenn Mosley.
Read more on organic foods at Our Organic Northwest. There’s an article from the Mayo Clinic on organic foods as well as a guide for minimizing your exposure to pesticides in produce.
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