Organic Apples


"We can only help them along the way. Apples can grow by themselves of course, but we, the farmers, are here to make it more conducive for them to grow disease-free," Kimura said in his speech at the organic food store.

His skill has earned Kimura the respect of experts like Fumio Yamauchi, a professor emeritus of agriculture at Tohoku University, who studied Kimura's "miracle" apple cultivation methods for more than 10 years.

"Kimura's superb observation capabilities, along with his ingenious methods, paved the way for him to grow farm products that are eco-friendly and competitive in the world market," said Yamauchi, 75. "His methods are scientifically sound."

The Japan Times: Apple farmer raises 'miracle' fruit

I'm always looking for organic fruit in my stores, and wondering why it is so hard to find. Perhaps I'm looking for the wrong type of fruits. Stuff that has been introduced to Japanese farms recently may not be as suitable to the climate - or are farmers just not able to develop the suitable methods to avoid using harmful pesticides? I bet there is a lot more to this story. To be continued...

(Hat tip to PureLandMountain.com)

Comments

vegetablej said…
Sure hope more farmers in Japan succeed with these methods because we could use more good organic apples. They are as scarce as hen's teeth in the stores here.
Pandabonium said…
Monoculture is always more susceptible to pests. When people plant multiple types of trees or grow various crops together they do not experience these problems to as great a degree. Some years the apples do well, other the pears, and so on. Also, a given pest does not have a large acreage of their "favorite" crop to infest, so don't multiply as heavily.

I'm afraid we have a lot to re-learn that decades of chemical inputs have caused us to lose.

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