Organic Philosophy, Regulation, and Research
The Organic Materials Review Institute verifies whether organic pesticides, fertilizers, or other inputs conform to the standards of this federal body.
What is the National Organic Program?
This category of crop includes fruits, tree nuts, vegetables, and herbs.
What are specialty crops?
This voracious pest of small fruit is markedly easier to manage with physical control tactics than with biological control.
What is spotted wing drosophila/SWD?
In organic production, most pesticides or other chemical pest controls can only be used if these two sets of management practices are insufficient to control a given pest.
What are Level A and Level B practices?
A specialist insect pest with poor mobility or a specialist pathogen that does not persist more than a year in the environment without its host would be effectively controlled by this practice.
What is crop rotation?
What is the Law of Return?
This crop is very difficult to grow organically in the Eastern United States due to humid weather and high disease pressure. 90% of its organic production is done in Washington.
What are apples?
The cacao disease frosty pod rot can be most realistically controlled using this practice.
What is pod removal?
Choosing a disease-resistant cultivar, limiting overhead irrigation to reduce leaf wetness, and removing crop residue after harvest would be a strategy encompassing all sides of this fundamental disease management concept.
What is the Disease Triangle?
Interplanting your crop with dill or sweet alyssum might be an attempt at this practice.
What is conservation biocontrol/insectary planting?
This synthetic deworming medication used to be allowed in organic livestock production but was banned entirely a few years ago due to its residual toxicity to dung beetles.
What is ivermectin?
This type of pest damage does not significantly impact the taste, safety, or nutritional value of crops but nevertheless can render certain crops wholly unmarketable.
What is cosmetic damage?
This pest has a common lookalike, but can be distinguished by its much cleaner stripes and elytra extending all the way to the tip of its abdomen.
What is the striped cucumber beetle?
Despite being arguably the most impactful pests in most organic systems, chemical control options are extremely limited for this type of pest.
What are weeds?
Rotating from a fall-planted crop to a spring-planted crop, combined with tillage or cultivation before planting, would disrupt the life cycle of this type of weed.
What is a winter-annual weed?
This fertilizer made from reclaimed human waste is allowed in conventional agriculture but is not allowed in organic production.
What is sewage sludge/municipal biosolids?
Growing this field crop organically is important for provisioning organic dairy cattle.
What is alfalfa?
This livestock pest bites cows and can lay its eggs in any damp, decaying organic matter.
What is the stable fly?
Planting fast-growing cultivars, applying mulch, and repeatedly cultivating/mowing/grazing fields are all elements a multifaceted weed control strategy described with this phrase.
What is 'many little hammers'?
Though the "pesticides" used in this unique management tactic are synthetically produced, they are allowed in organic agriculture due to their very high safety for non-target organisms and the environment.
What is mating disruption?
An experiment that could be described with this word or a synonym should be kept to research farms and should not be conducted on actual growers' fields.
What is complex/complicated/multifactorial?
A lack of this can easily make hand-weeding unfeasible as a management practice even when economically favorable.
What is labor?
This stage of the apple scab disease cycle is effectively impossible to control in organic agriculture.
What is secondary inoculum?
High insect pest populations can lead to this cascading series of issues affecting your crop plants, your harvest, and your bottom line?
What are injury, damage, and loss?
This soil-covering input can both prevent weeds from germinating and reduce oviposition by some insect pests.
What is reflective mulch?