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Musings on the Ethics of Organically Approved Pesticides
Musings on the Ethics of Organically Approved Pesticides
Flossing Your Way to Organic Health: Musings on the Ethics of Organically Approved Pesticides
(and why you should visit the dentist)
When I first began flirting with farming, it was closely tied to my commitment to a natural and organic lifestyle. It came about at the same time that I stopped washing my hair regularly, sprinkled nutritional yeast on my popcorn, and stopped visiting the dentist. But after six years of using baking soda or tea tree oil toothpaste, my teeth were in sorry shape. Apparently, despite all of that healthy nutritional yeast, my blind rejection of what I considered conventional dental care had cost me. Rejecting one system of care leaves behind a vacuum, and I learned that my assumption that nature would simply take over when convention was left behind was naïve and negligent of me.
Similarly, it didn’t take me long to understand that rejecting conventional approaches to agriculture requires a degree of understanding that is sophisticated, attentive, and scientific. Furthermore, it is not always clear which “organic” materials align with the integrity and philosophy of a farm business. For the years I’ve been farming, it’s been a very slow road to gradually learning the complex decision making involved in what materials we use to manage pests and diseases on our Certified Organic farm. As in my dental health decisions, I admit that 15 years into all of this, I have grown less radical, but just as I value having healthy teeth above all else, I also want to manage a farm that is sustainable in a profitable sense as well as an environmental sense, and one step to achieving this sustainability involves unraveling the ethics of our decisions as organic farmers.
In my view, the intention of organic agriculture is to create a healthy system that is robust and resilient to pest and disease issues. But despite many of our best efforts, the truth is that planting two acres of butternut squash or one acre of salad mix is never going to be a fully healthy, balanced system simply because the volume of food we are growing defies the principles of a balanced ecosystem. We can’t just plant even a small mono crop and assume that just because we have a rich soil, healthy transplants, or that we’ve even “zone-tilled” and planted directly into our rye cover crop, we are escaping the problems with weeds, pests, or diseases. The question for us is two-fold; first, how to consistently improve our farm health to be less vulnerable to problems, and second, how do we manage the problems within the bounds of our organic farming principles.
According to the Vermont Organic Farmers (VOF) standards, a vegetable producer must first implement the following disease control measures:
Resistant varieties
Rotations
Plant spacing
Raised beds to improve drainage
Sanitation and removal of diseased plant materials
Control of insect and weed vectors
The standards further state that, “Only when the above practices are insufficient, a producer may use biological or botanical substances or a synthetic substance from the National List.”
The National (OMRI) List of approved materials ranges from relatively benign products to some that require careful application and can be dangerous to humans, animals, or the environment. On our farm, we diligently try to implement our best farming practices before we resort to any sprays. Generally, we struggle most with Colorado potato beetle control and diseases on our onions and it is these problems that are most commonly sprayed for on our farm. However, the moment we realize we need to spray our potatoes, eggplant, or onions, I feel stirrings of discomfort. First of all, the fact that we have a problem that requires a quick fix alerts me to an overall weakness in our system. Perhaps our crop rotation needs more attention, or perhaps our sanitation practices need improving. Perhaps the fertility in our soil is lacking so the plants are weak and vulnerable. Perhaps our horticultural practices, like plant spacing or plastic mulch, have contributed to problems. Or perhaps we ought to be communicating more with the many neighboring farmers and gardeners about how we can all keep diseases and pests at bay.
Beyond the deep questioning of how we ought to avoid fundamental causes of the problem, I find myself examining the ethics of the actual material that we choose to apply. I struggle with this on several levels: first, my farmer-self who wants to protect her crops comes into conflict with my eco-self, who wants nothing to do with spraying anything, particularly materials manufactured by big agro-chemical companies (as many organically approved sprays are). Secondly, I examine the ethics of what we apply to our crops from the standpoint of our customers (we are fully transparent about our farming practices with them), many of whom are philosophically opposed to the companies that manufacture many of the organic spray materials. Finally, the fundamental ethic of importing a material onto our farm seems counterproductive to our long-term goals of sustainability. Even the small amount of spraying we do implies a reliance on fossil fuels in the production, packaging, transportation, and application of the materials. It seems to me that we ought to figure out how to grow potatoes without this dependency, but at this point, we have few other options for Colorado potato beetle control on our farm.
All of this said, the weight I throw into thinking about the ethics of our organic fungicide and pesticide applications is far out of proportion to the weight it holds on our particular farm. We use our boom sprayer from 6 to 15 times per season (more often in years when late blight is a threat) and our expenditures on organic chemicals is less than 0.3% of our total budget. We spent as much money on having our dumpster emptied or on renting a port-a-let as we do on organic spray materials. I ought to feel as concerned about our impact on the landfill or where the blue material from the port-a-potty ends up as I do about purchasing a few gallons of organic sprays each year.
Sometimes what we fear most is incongruous with the weight it holds in actuality, like people won’t swim in the ocean because they are scared of sharks but are perfectly comfortable driving on the highway each day. Likewise, I know that I could be a better environmental steward in so many bigger ways than in examining the occasions when we load up a sprayer tank with a chemical to combat or prevent a problem on a crop. But truthfully, there’s no way for me to comfortably stomach the fact that each jug we buy of the organically approved material Entrust means dollars heading to Dow AgroSciences, even if it is a tiny part of our budget and a much less significant amount of money for them. It’s still symbolic of how far we have to go to be a fully sustainable organic farm, and it also signifies the dependency we have on the companies that we like to believe we are separate from. Perhaps this is a reminder for me to understand that in rejecting so much of conventional agriculture, we must fill in that gap with an open-minded but scientific comprehension of how to grow delicious, beautiful food in a long-term, sustainable manner. It’s just like going to the dentist and being reminded that flossing every night doesn’t mean you’ve subscribed to some conventional philosophy, but is instead the best way to prevent trouble. If only farming were that simple…
Becky Maden is the Assistant Farm Manager at Intervale Community Farm (ICF), a thriving member-owned CSA farm in its 21st season of growing organic produce in Burlington, Vermont. Becky has worked on several diverse vegetable farms throughout the country and around the world. At ICF, Becky is either found in the greenhouse, on a tractor, or jogging between the two. She also writes the farm newsletter, Bottom Land News. In her time spent away from the farm, Becky loves to travel, write, bike, run, ski, and cook bounteous meals with glorious produce.
and treatment plants also become one of the success factors of organic farming, because of the healthy plants are not susceptible to the disease. from my experience and my friend could apply organic farming patterns of land that is not healthy and had no history of excessive use of chemical pesticides.
The key patient and painstaking care for plants and soil, as my friend and I took 4 years to be free of chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides. the result is satisfactory, gradually increasing productivity and good quality can be produced.
I would like to thank you for the efforts you have made in writing this article. I am hoping the same best work from you in the future as well. Thanks...
Well said, I suffer from the same dilemma of over thinking minuscule problems due to illogical connotations I have of certain subjects. I concur with your conclusion of having an open-mind. We have no choice as humans to leave a footprint, how big is our decision.
What I usually find strange with Organic farming is the use of so many non-renewable materials. A good example, from the picture above, is the use of Plastic mulch. An organic farm is not currently allowed to use bio-degradable mulch, such as BioTelo. This means that many dumpsters full of plastic go to the landfill each year. This would also include the drip tape watering line that is used under the plastic mulch.
Worrying about how many off farm inputs are going into modern farming is sort of silly. Unless you use horses and built all of your own equipment, grew all of your seeds, built your own greenhouses from only farm based sources, etc. etc. This list of off farm inputs is VERY long on any farm, whether conventional or organic.
What should REALLY be focused on is sustainability, healthy maintenance of the land a clean healthy product for consumers.
We currently grow five acres of produce that is sold via CSA and to institutional customers. We use both conventional and "organic" practices and inputs. We try to balance the cost of the inputs with against all of the points listed above.
The plastic mulch disposal issue on organic farms is not an issue on ours. We use BioTelo mulch produced from non-gmo Cornstarch. It contains a small amount of a synthetic input that is required when making the mulch so that it is uniform. This synthetic input has been ruled non-toxic and inert by the European Organic Certifiers and is in fact certified organic in Europe. Late in the season the mulch starts to break down. We disc it once and then plow the field with the mulch still on it. The next spring the mulch continues to break down and by mid-year is gone.
Contrast that with the dumpster full loads of plastic mulch that go to a landfill from the organic farm. It seems terribly wasteful to have this mulch sit in a landfill for hundreds of years.
As to the use of off-farm chemicals for disease and insect control I would say that is a necessary input if a farm wants to be profitable and provide a product to their consumers that they will accept. Will you accept earworms in your corn, lots of holes in your kale or collards, chew holes in your berries, etc. etc.
A good integrated pest management program, good cultural management and the use of appropriate chemicals when necessary, is good farm and land management.
Monsanto and other companies and the farms who use these products irresponsibly, etc. have tainted the publics image of these companies to the point that they won't accept ANY inputs from these companies, even ones that are certified organic. It is up to farmers to be good stewards of the land. It is up to the consumer to demand from the farmer that they BE good stewards of the land. When those two things happen, we will have a safe food supply without needing to worry about destroying our ecosystem.
Becky - Well written, thank you! As a farmer with a background in biodynamics backpack sprayer has no evil connotations for me, we apply 501 and other preparations with backpack sprayers all the time. I have never used anything other than compost, biodynamic preps, companion planting, other biological controls and a little hot pepper wax. This year my little CSA was hit with tremendous pest pressure, cumulating in the early demise of my cucumber and squash vines due to beetles.....I am now thinking in the future I may have to consider organically approved pesticides when crop loss is imminent. Reading this helped!
Thank you for such a beautifully written and honest assessment of the challenges facing organic farmers today. I've been doing so much reading around this subject lately trying to reach conclusions that make sense and your article was so helpful.
THANK YOU for your insightful and eloquent contemplations about "spraying," a neutral word (do not we all "spray" water on seeds and seedlings?) that has come to be associated with the loathsome practices of industrial agribusiness.
I read several years ago that the best way to control the potato beetle is to plant the potatoes later. I have done this for a few years now, and haven't had any problems since. The next time someone asks "Did you get your potatoes in yet?" tell them about this theory.
Outstanding article. As an organic grower still at a small scale and getting larger I struggle with and think about everything mentioned in this article. Thanks for putting it in to words for everyone to read.
The decision to use pesticides on an organic farm is a complicated one, and you've clearly done a lot of thinking on whether this is the right decision for you and the people who eat the crops you grow. In reality, it seems your usage is responsible and deliberate. Thank you for this well reasoned article on a very important issue for organic farmers.
Thanks for broaching this important and complex subject. After reading orchardist Michael Philips' books and purchasing a mist blower for our 10 acre produce farm, I have a different perspective on spraying. The word "spraying" implies chemical and pesticide application, but it can also describe foliar feeds, and pro-biotic approaches to pest control. Maintaining a healthy leaf canopy-- replete with bacterial growth can out-compete blights and potentially offer unappetizing sites of feeding for insects. I'm not a researcher, beyond my own farm, but I think we need to not shy away from the spraying rig which is just another tool in the toolkit on an organic farm striving towards balance and sustainablity.
Thank you for this informative article. After reading the article about your backpack spray, I had many questions on why an organic farm was spraying their crops. Thanks for explaining and making it interesting. I have loved this site since I first came across it. I am almost 75 years old and my farming days are way behind me and none of them were organic so this brings a lot of new information to me and I thoroughly enjoy it. Please keep up the good work and keep the info coming.
The key patient and painstaking care for plants and soil, as my friend and I took 4 years to be free of chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides. the result is satisfactory, gradually increasing productivity and good quality can be produced.
Worrying about how many off farm inputs are going into modern farming is sort of silly. Unless you use horses and built all of your own equipment, grew all of your seeds, built your own greenhouses from only farm based sources, etc. etc. This list of off farm inputs is VERY long on any farm, whether conventional or organic.
What should REALLY be focused on is sustainability, healthy maintenance of the land a clean healthy product for consumers.
We currently grow five acres of produce that is sold via CSA and to institutional customers. We use both conventional and "organic" practices and inputs. We try to balance the cost of the inputs with against all of the points listed above.
The plastic mulch disposal issue on organic farms is not an issue on ours. We use BioTelo mulch produced from non-gmo Cornstarch. It contains a small amount of a synthetic input that is required when making the mulch so that it is uniform. This synthetic input has been ruled non-toxic and inert by the European Organic Certifiers and is in fact certified organic in Europe. Late in the season the mulch starts to break down. We disc it once and then plow the field with the mulch still on it. The next spring the mulch continues to break down and by mid-year is gone.
Contrast that with the dumpster full loads of plastic mulch that go to a landfill from the organic farm. It seems terribly wasteful to have this mulch sit in a landfill for hundreds of years.
As to the use of off-farm chemicals for disease and insect control I would say that is a necessary input if a farm wants to be profitable and provide a product to their consumers that they will accept. Will you accept earworms in your corn, lots of holes in your kale or collards, chew holes in your berries, etc. etc.
A good integrated pest management program, good cultural management and the use of appropriate chemicals when necessary, is good farm and land management.
Monsanto and other companies and the farms who use these products irresponsibly, etc. have tainted the publics image of these companies to the point that they won't accept ANY inputs from these companies, even ones that are certified organic. It is up to farmers to be good stewards of the land. It is up to the consumer to demand from the farmer that they BE good stewards of the land. When those two things happen, we will have a safe food supply without needing to worry about destroying our ecosystem.