Preface

In January, 1990, I went to the Ecological Farming Conference in Asilomar, California. I heard the ideas of Robert Rodale, Wes Jackson, Eliot Coleman, and Amory Lovins concerning the relationship of agriculture to the land and to society. Public sector leaders such as Bill Liebhardt and Patrick Maddon shared their vision of a new relationship between government and agriculture. The most exciting part of the meeting, however, was the deep commitment of the conference organizers, grower-speakers and attendees to an agricultural future that was based on care for the land and a closer relationship between producers and consumers of food.

I returned to my teaching and research position in the Horticultural Science Department at North Carolina State University eager to introduce students in my senior-level Vegetable Production course to these new concepts. I quickly discovered, however, that it was much easier to find material on the concepts and philosophy behind these new approaches to agriculture than to find technical information on commercial-scale implementation of these concepts in the southern U.S. Excellent publications were available for California and for small growers in the Northeast, but not for the Southeast.

In 1990, I didn't even know if the ideas I had become so excited about would work here. Growers in our sometimes humid, sometimes mild-winter climate use more pesticides than farmers in other parts of the U.S. Wouldn't appearance and yields of vegetable crops suffer if pesticide use were reduced? What about soil management? Even our non-agricultural soils are infertile compared to other areas. Abandonment of farmed-out coastal plain fields began in pre-Revolutionary War times. Could growers here really get high yields without using high-analysis fertilizers? Many of our agricultural soils are also comparatively low in organic matter. Could growers really increase soil organic matter given our high temperatures and rainfall?

It was a conjunction of local, regional and national trends that really led to the production of this book. Locally, I discovered that a number of small-acreage `organic' growers had already put principle into action, growing vegetables with little or no reliance on conventional pesticides and fertilizers. Ken Dawson and Alex and Betsy Hitt, to name just a few, are conscientious stewards of their land while consistently growing high-quality produce and expanding their farming operations. Farmers in North Carolina and elsewhere in the South were using the year-round rainfall and mild temperatures to grow cover crops and to overwinter beneficials, rather than worry about whether the University thought it could be done. Universities were also changing. Regionally, universities increased research efforts in what is now called `sustainable agriculture'. In large part, this was because of funding from the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) (formerly Low Impact Sustainable Agriculture (LISA)) program. Nationally, many pesticide labels for vegetables were lost and few new chemicals were registered to replace them. Regulators at every level of government scrutinized the potential reduction of water quality from fertilizer, pesticide and sediment runoff. Thus, the time seemed right to look at sustainable vegetable practices for the South.

In 1991, I received a grant from the SARE program to include new topics such as cover crops, IPM, organic fertilizers, biocontrols and solarization in the text I had already developed for my vegetable production class. The idea was to draw on both the experience of southern growers and research results from Southern Region universities to provide information on practices farmers could use to reduce usage of pesticides and fertilizers, to reduce runoff and to improve the biological integrity of the soil. I hoped such a document would be useful to Southern Region farmers, extension agent and researchers as well as students. I hired a research assistant, Sarah Slover, to ferret out this information, sift through it and organize it into chapters. Her dedication and her belief in organic farming has kept the project going though some rough times. I would also like to acknowledge my cooperators, Drs. Mike Linker and Greg Hoyt, for lending their support and technical expertise. Countless other colleagues, both at NCSU and throughout the country, have also reviewed chapters and shared their research results and observations, often before publication. Special thanks also to those hardy soils who reviewed the entire book: Dr. George Wilson, NCSU Extension Specialist; Dr. Katie Perry, NCSU Extension Administrator; Dr. Terry Schettini, Research, Rodale Research Institute; Steve White, Organic farmer, Grey Goose Farm; and George Bostick, NCSU Educational Media.

If, despite help from so many people, readers find errors in these pages, I ask for forgiveness. This has been a big undertaking and I was frequently overwhelmed by how little I know and how little of what I was trying to find out had been documented by traditional scholarship. For example, the practices described in the first half of the book are used by `organic' and other farmers in the belief that they are better for the environment and for people. For this reason, they have been included in this document, with examples given, where possible, for the southern U.S. The question of whether these practices are actually `better' or whether they are more `sustainable' or even whether they are allowable in particular organic certification programs is beyond the scope of this document. So many important topics could only be dealt with briefly here, that we list an appendix of books for further reading and organizations to contact for further information and a short description of the organic certification process and certifying groups in the South.

For the convenience of the reader, the second part of this document presents background botanical and horticultural information on the 12 most important groups of vegetables grown in the southeastern U.S. Where possible, crop chapters include specific information on cover crops, rotations or other sustainable practices. For some crops, however, the information given does not differ greatly from that in conventional texts. More detailed and locally relevant research or extension bulletins on particular aspects of crop production are available in many states and can be obtained by contacting Cooperative Extension Service Publications Offices at the addresses given in an appendix. This is particularly true for growers outside the mid-South, which was the region from which most of our examples are drawn.

A preface should look toward the book that follows, but also look beyond it. Much more research in this area is going on now in Southern Region Universities compared to 1990. It becomes impossible as this document goes to press to keep up. We can only hope the concepts presented here will offer the reader a better perspective on future findings. Topics still in the research stage may have been skipped over altogether or only touched on here. For example, many scientists believe advances in biotechnology will accelerate the introduction of resistance genes into crop plants and will improve the arsenal of beneficials available for biological control. Does this mean that growers will no longer need to practice such basic IPM techniques as scouting, rotating or plowing under residues? It seems much more likely that the endproducts of biotechnology will complement the IPM practices described in these pages than that they will replace them.

Vegetable growers in the southern U.S. and elsewhere must find a middle path between the pre- chemical, often low-yield agriculture practiced before World War II and the chemical-intensive, usually high-yield agriculture practiced after World War II. Growers need information on how they can farm successfully without violating their personal environmental ethics or legal restrictions.

This book is dedicated to those growers.

Mary M. Peet, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Horticultural Science North Carolina State University

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