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lets hope this is em joke
Hawke's Bay grape grower Chris Howell wonders how he's going to handle pruning this season after learning it could be painful for his vines. The Tauranga-based Society for the Protection of Organism Feelings has written to Mr Howell and other Hawke's Bay growers calling for a ban on field trials, a newspaper reported. Spokesman Timothy Pickering said an agri-chemical company was carrying out field trials of its products on live crops, fungi and insects in New Zealand. "We'll be taking action, and organising protests, to bring to the attention of horticulturists that plants, fungi and insects do in fact have feelings, and suggesting measures to increase feelings of peace, love and harmony within the fields and paddocks of New Zealand," he said. The Hawke's Bay Grape Growers Association discussed the matter at a committee meeting earlier this year, and recently published a letter from the society in its newsletter, Vitis Informus. In his letter, Mr Pickering said recent research by overseas biologists had found evidence that plants sensed and reacted to the presence of leaf-chomping grubs. "Their response was to emit an odour similar to lavender, thereby alerting other plants to the presence of a predator," he said. "This process also served to attract wasps, which were drawn by the odour to the plant where they either devoured the grub or injected it with eggs that later killed it." He claimed other experiments had shown electrical resistance changes in a plant when a researcher thought about burning leaves on the plant. The society was committed to protecting the rights of plants and insects so they wouldn't be exposed to any negative feelings - including fear. But Mr Howell said grapegrowers were bemused and wondered whether the letter was a university prank. Not that he's ignoring his own vines' very definite feelings. "They are sensitive wee souls," he said. "They like being looked after and pampered, which is what we do. They don't like it too cold or too hot." Mr Howell, the chairman of the Grape Growers Association, said it had not responded to the society, which gave just a box number as its address. But he and other members had notices that its initials made up the word "spoof". Posted by: muck4doo 2005-11-17 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=135284 |