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Mexico Loses Its Interest In Giant-Vegetable Grower

VALLEDESANTIAGO, Mexico (UPI) -- For three months, Mexico's wonder farmer has been deluged with questions about how he produces 60-pound cabbages, 10-pound onions and collard greens the size of palm fronds.

Yet the Mexican government lost interest when J. Carmen Garcia offered to tell his secret to help feed the poor.

Garcia maintained that his success came from a formula on a scrap of paper given him by a stranger who claimed to have been held captive in an underground city of extraterrestrial beings. Now, Garcia has entrusted what he calls "the method" to the mystical Roscicrucian Order of San Jose, Calif., for the benefit of mankind.

Garcia, whose perennial giant vegetables made him a folk hero in his Guanajuato state valley 260 miles northwest of Mexico City, was challenged by Agriculture ministry agronomists to a grow off in December 1977.

The context, on identical side-by-side plots, was conducted at the ministry's Tangasneque experimental station near Tampico. when the April 1978 harvest was in, the unschooled farmer and his associate, Oscar Arredondo, had pu the government agronomists to shame.

A ministry spokesman, researching the results of the contest at the request of UPI, said:

"In cabbage alone, Garcia outgrew the agronomists 107 tons per hectare (2.5 acres) to five tons per hectare. However, government experts determined that his large produce was less nutritious than normal-sized produce and the government decided not to pursue the matter."

Last February, UPI distributed an illustrated dispatch about Garcia based on an article by Bill Robinson, a San Diego police information officer, who happened upon the farmer and his big vegetables while on a Mexican vacation. Inundated by more than 1,000 letter requests for more information, Robinson visited Garcia again.

"I don't want to talk any more about how I got that formula. That's not important," Garcia said, pushing back his straw hat and leaning on his shovel as he irrigated his tidy, three-acre parcel. "What is important is that the way to grow giant vegetables has been put in a safe place for the benefit of mankind.

"People have offered to take me to the United States and to Germany to teach my method, but I prefer to stay right here. People offer me money for my method. I don't tell. I will tell you just this: A farmer must change his mentality before he can change the size of his produce."

He refused to part with some of is miracle seeds.

A man named Arredondo, who is the village photographer and half-owner with Garcia of the wonder farm, said, "The secret is that the seeds are energized before planting. The chosen depository for the benefit of humanity is the Rosicrucian Order."

Arthur Piepenbrink, supreme secretary Rosicrucian Order, issued a laconic confirmation of the order's interest in the formula from its San Jose headquarters though spokesman Christian Knueson:

"We went down to Mexico and took a look. We were given the formula and had no objection to analyzing it. We do not have the faintest idea whether it is valid or not."