Cultivating Organic Peanuts

Leeann Drabenstott Culbreath found this YouTube version of a Georgia Farm Monitor report on an Organic Peanut Field Day:

Note the cultivator. The host had to explain what it was and show it several times so people would understand it. Yes, that’s how farmers used to control weeds before pesticide vendor propaganda convinced people of things like “don’t throw dirt on peanuts.” The cultivator throws dirt on weeds next to the peanuts, thus suppressing the weeds and releasing the peanuts.

Gretchen remarks:

Organic growing isn’t a specialty market, it’s a matter of safety. Chemicals sprayed on peanuts, soy beans, cotton and corn are TOXIC. Good management and kindness to the earth can grow crops in a sustainable way. Just say no to chemical spraying.
Peanut growers may not like manual labor, but they’re having to resort to that anyway, because their pesticides have produced the mutant pigweed, which pesticides don’t kill. Spraying more and different herbicides doesn’t do it, either. The only way is physical removal of the pigweed. And a cultivator can do that without manual labor (the report mentions that). Oh yeah: and you don’t have to pay for pesticides to apply with a cultivator.

So, it’s time to stop poisoning our air, water, plants, animals, and people and move away from petrochemical pesticides. Organic is the way to go, and we know how to get there.

-jsq