There are downsides to using computers but the biggest sickener of all is losing material beyond recovery. This is exactly what I did two evenings ago. Having finished my article for OM – ahead of my self-imposed deadline – I was smugly getting ready to blast the item off to the editor as an email. However, I had fatally prepared it as an HTML email document - I liked the formatting better than Word - and thought I had been saving as I went along, as you do. Then, for no reason, other than dreamy carelessness (post-computering, I was mesmerized by the view across the Bay during this beautiful early April weather and congratulating myself on doing the article between spading lazy-beds and having the stew), I clicked the Delete button instead of the Send. If I had realised immediately what I’d done, I could have simply pressed Undo Delete, but I stupidly went and did something else – in the ensuing panic I couldn’t remember exactly what.
The upshot was that the evening’s work was lost –completely - and utterly - and absolutely. But that only became apparent after I had gone through an hour’s desperate scrabbling through Temp Files, Recycle Bins and similar awful places. Then I phoned an expert who talked me through the whole thing of Recovery etc but he just confirmed that I had almost expertly dumped the file. I know it wasn’t War and Peace that was lost to the world but it still was not very nice. The sea wasn’t the only thing blue after that!

Despite this little contretemps with the medium I am going to be cheerful and say that putting up a website can be as easy as pie. A website can be conceived, designed and put live on the Web by practically anyone – in a morning! And without costing anything either, assuming of course that the basic minimum hardware and software is already in the house and the IQ level is north of 100. Notice that I used the phrase "can be". I didn’t have it so easy - but my son did. He asked his "webmaster" pater to give him advice on starting a website. I gave him to him but I think the poor shaver was intimidated by my tales of agony and effort and apoplexy over getting it up – tut! - the website that is. Anyway he retreated from the subject for a while – I thought to ponder his father’s weighty words, study the manuals, research content and so on - but then, one Saturday morning he rang me and told me to look up his new website which he had created and put on line that morning. Spurning his elder’s advice, he did it without manuals, without bought software and without paying for a server! But then he was south of 21! He went on to make a more elaborate site, www.rallyinsite.com which is based on his burning passion and ambition to race rally cars. My excuse for including mention of it here is that he uses an organic diet as part of his training. Interestingly Senan (the son) claims that, apart from parent indoctrination (on food if not career) he buys organic food because it’s cheaper! He spends less than his flatmates because he needs to buy less, as organic food is so much more nutritious, he claims. That’s an argument you don’t hear very often – perhaps it deserves more of an airing? A new slogan maybe; Organic costs more – but gives you more.
The moral of the story is – abandon fear and get stuck in – download instructions and freeware form the web. Perhaps a glimpse at a simple book like, Easy Web Pages by Gina Carrillo would help, but burn the manuals, especially Microsoft ones (although their cheap paper would make good bog-paper too) – they will otherwise do your head in.

I must admit that I like it, nay, love it, when I get email saying, "You’re doing a great job" or "Keep up the good work". Site visitors are notoriously slothful in communicating their views, so the one or two a week that Planorganic gets is enough to encourage me in my madness (although an enclosed €50.00 note would also be very welcome). The only negative reaction I got (honestly!) in this past year was from Noreen Gibney’s slayer on RTE last year, Prof."Tony" Trewavas. But then he doesn’t count, as the ever-ready interviewee don is the organic movement’s Public Enemy No.1 and the fact I got up his nose should instead be a badge of honour. He threatened libel action if I didn’t remove material from my site. I didn’t – he didn’t. Search "Trewavas" on my "News & Comment" page. Incidentally he is in charge of www.monsanto.com’s, Knowledge Centre (is that an oxymoron?).
The Junior Min. Ag. Noel Davern, has capped organic development by telling us (Ear to the Ground, search "Davern" on my News & Comment page) that the organic sector will continue to be a niche market never rising above 10% of the overall food market. The unreformed Tipperary T.D. was also heard to proclaim recently, "I have never been in a health food shop in my life and I never will".
The Consumer Association’s, Peter Dargan, has shattered the scientific world by claiming that "all cows are organic". Read more about Peter’s muck-spreading, and the new teeth of IOFGA’s leadership and members in dealing with it, elsewhere in this issue.

I long to do intelligent, philosophical things on my website and was hoping my Articles page could become a vehicle for such attempts but I am delighted (and relieved too; the old grey matter, realistically, wasn’t ever up to it) to recommend a newly-found site from Tasmania that will give food for thought to those of you wanting a mind-stretch and spiritual renewal. www.ibiblio.org/soilandhealth/index.html. Find A.Albrecht’s wonderful essay from 1938 - a classic!

N.B. I was not able to put up a page on the Irish Famine on my website (promised last issue). The floppies it was stored on had become degraded. However I am going to see if somebody will put it up for me as a pdf file. The famine situation in Malawi today has tragically similar elements to the Irish Famine in that, again, it is the poorest-of-the-poor, in the midst of plenty, that are suffering. See www.concern.ie.

www.defra.gov.uk/farm/organic/default.htm This UK Min. Ag. site has good statistics and references. One thing I found was; the area devoted to organic farming, including first and second year conversion, is now approaching 1.5 million acres. Interestingly, Scotland has almost twice the acreage in these categories than England.

www.organic-vet.reading.ac.uk. Although they say that their site is not meant to be a self-diagnostic resource, there is certainly an awful lot here for the organic livestock farmer and references to much more. It was through them that I got information on mastitis control for an Australian dairy farmer considering converting to organic production.

www.organicfarmers.uk.com . We don’t often hear about this, the second largest UK certification body. Lots of interesting stuff and an awful lot easier to get at than material on the Soil Association site. Surprisingly they have 15 employees including nine Certification Officers.

www.foodpolicy.co.uk. This is the website of the Centre for Food Policy, Thames Valley University. See their excellent 59-page report, Why health is the key to the future of farming and food.

www.biotechinfo.ie Launched with much brouhaha this April including the decorative "bionic" model, this site purports to inform us all about what’s good for us.