Michelle Obama's organic garden angers US farming companiesMichelle Obama's decision to make her new White House vegetable garden entirely organic has angered America's powerful agribusiness lobby who are urging the First Lady to consider the use of appropriate "crop protection products". Last Updated: 8:30AM BST 23 Apr 2009
Mrs Obama started work on the kitchen garden with a gang of schoolchildren last month. Media coverage of the first White House food plot since Eleanor Roosevelt "dug for victory" in the Second World War garnered media coverage across the world.
But to the consernation of Big Ag, Mrs Obama has said the project will not use chemical products to tackle pests or give her plants a boost, the Times reports.
Shortly after the digging began, Mrs Obama received a letter from the Mid-America CropLife Association (MACA), which represents the companies producing the pesticides and fertilisers underpinning "conventional" American agriculture, the paper said.
Addressed to "Mrs Barack Obama", the letter congratulated the First Lady on "recognising the importance of agriculture in America". Farming is America's largest industry, generating 20 per cent of GDP and directly or indirectly employing 22 million people.
The letter avoiding the term "organic", highlights the role of technological advances - technologies that can see a single acre produce almost 20 tonnes of strawberries of 110,000 heads of lettuce in a season - in modern agriculture.
more @ telegraph.co.uk