> Ask farmers to drink water from the wells on their farms and try to conceive babies.  
I am on a farm with well water and admit I find it difficult to conceive 
babies. But it ain't the water. Mostly gender.

But this actually has to do with the subject line. We now live in a 
world dominated by "news singularities". One person who has a problem is 
put in front of a camera and the singularity is elevated to the entire 
population. CCD is classic. A small, in relative terms (it is never 
small when it happens to you), bee die-off was elevated to 80% kill-off 
on the east coast of the US, and bees disappearing nationwide, when none 
of this was true.

Well water is contaminated in some places and is not in others and not 
because of pesticides. But all you need do is put a person in front of a 
camera and it becomes gospel. The 
environmental/organic/holistic/natural/sustainable/you-get-the-drift 
groups know this and perpetuate myths on the public to foster their 
agendas. All you need is one victim, real or not. All they need is to be 
fed the buzz words. Just look at the word "Commercial" or "Big" and all 
they do is add whatever they want after it to taint them. Big 
Agriculture, Commercial Beekeeping- easy isn't it.

I have many commercial and organic farmer friends. I have helped them by 
working for them for free.The sane one have to make a living from what 
they do. The crazies are the hobbyists who work at jobs outside of the 
farm, since they cannot make a living from their practices.They are also 
the ones who rail the most. Real farmers, organic or otherwise, know how 
hard it is to make a living.

I practice organic beekeeping and farming, but I could never make a 
living from either, unless I could sell my hand-picked Tomato Horn Worms 
and Japanese Beetles. I have loads of them. All my apples are 
cosmetically marred, because I do not spray. Same goes fro Beekeeping. 
Like Dee, fortunately my money comes from elsewhere.

There is a truism- the further you go from the farm the more fervent you 
are for "animal rights". You could paraphrase that with- the further you 
are from making a living from farming or beekeeping, the more fervent 
environmental/organic/holistic/natural/sustainable you are.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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