The Complex Nature of Organic Reality

Why don’t all the farmers just switch to organic?

It’s a question often asked by people concerned about the use of agricultural poisons. Indeed, now that Ventura County voters have decided they prefer agriculture (or agricultural vistas) to development, it’s a question not likely to go away.

I am not condoning the careless and indiscriminate use of agricultural chemicals; I have serious reservations about the ways in which production agriculture relies on biocide as the basis for economic viability. But people who espouse organic production for others should have some sense of what they’re asking for.

As a tree farmer who grows tangerines and avocados, I can’t speak to the agricultural practices of row crop and strawberry growers farming the Oxnard Plain, the Tierra Rejada and Santa Rosa valleys. But given the greater intensity of row crop growing from tree crop growing, I suspect that what is true for me probably applies in spades to them.

I speak as someone whose growing practices are close to organic. I believe that the lives of us bipeds clomping around atop the ground are dependent on the universe of microorganisms that live in the soil beneath our shoes. I engage in what people in organic agriculture call soil-building; I use mostly organic materials for fertility; I avoid pesticides and fungicides and almost all herbicides.

I also acknowledge my participation and implication in the modern world. I drive a car on roads; my organic products are usually delivered by giant diesels; I cheerfully partake of the abundance of our culture. I recognize that money drives us all: If we have it we’re working to keep it, and if we don’t have it we’re working to get it. I think the emphasis on money in our culture is overdone, but I acknowledge it.

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So with that in mind, let me share some costs I entail by growing the way I do.

If I were growing by “conventional” practices, for weed control I would put down a pre-emergent herbicide before the first rain each year, at a cost of less than $500 for material and labor. This would kill almost everything before it could sprout. Later in the spring, I would go around and spot-spray with some Round-up and kill the weeds that made it past the pre-emergent, for maybe $200. Total cost: well less than $1,000 and maybe two weeks’ work.

What I do instead: In March we start mowing between the trees. It’s now mid-June and we’ve just completed the third mowing of 12 acres; we’ve also hand-weeded the basins of close to 1,000 trees and weed-whipped with a string trimmer in the rows where we can’t mow. I have one employee and he hasn’t done much else since March--and we aren’t done by any means. We don’t track our hours around here, but I’d guess I’ll spend five times as much on weed control as a conventional farmer of similar acreage.

(Why do weeds matter? If they grow too high, I can’t walk around the orchard, I can’t see if the sprinklers are working right and I can’t see if voles or gophers, either of which can kill a tree overnight, are active.)

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For fertilizer, farming conventionally, I would probably buy less than $500 worth of urea for the entire year, which I would apply through the irrigation system with almost no work at all. For the avocados, I’d put some zinc sulfate on the ground, also through the irrigation system; less than $200, no work. And I’d pay the helicopter guys to fly some zinc and manganese on the tangerines for a couple hundred dollars. At a guess, I probably could get by with $1,000 for materials and labor for the year.

What I do instead: I get a bunch of hydrolyzed fish powder, liquid kelp and some special juju juice from the organic suppliers catalog. I mix it up and spray it on the trees, once before they bloom and then six or seven times afterward. It has a very special smell. I also spread, by hand, compost that I have made and purchased around as many trees as I can afford to and get around to. Cost: three or four times what it would cost for conventional fertilization.

Now I don’t do this just because I’m nuts. I get benefits from microorganisms and micronutrients in the materials I apply. I attract beneficial insects and am building good soil. I strongly disbelieve in reductionist science that says “farming consists of supplying the 16 elements we have identified that plants need.” I believe that science tells us a lot, but also that growing things is participating in something more complex than science knows. I guess I’m striving to be a craftsman more than an industrialist (not a model for everyone.) So I’m stumbling along in the agriculture business, trying to find a way to grow the fruit I like, sell it, not harm the planet and make a profit.

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Shifting farming to a less chemically intensive regimen is an important aim. Along the way, we need reliable enforcement of existing regulations and better access to reports and records so the public can be confident that those rules are being followed. We need to provide the county agricultural commissioner with adequate resources to carry out the significant responsibilities assigned to that office. Organized agriculture needs to come around to participating in the search for genuine alternatives to the kind of systematic poisoning that it relies on under current production practices.

But the game of farming goes like this: What you get paid is the difference between what you get for what you grow and what it costs you to grow it.

So those who advocate an end to the use of agricultural poisons of all kinds need to recognize the costs they are proposing to shift onto farmers. They need to differentiate between kinds of agricultural chemicals. They should look at their own implication in contemporary American life: Do they pay extra to support local farmers? Do they buy organic? In their life, what value do they assign to making a profit? What value are they willing to tell others they should assign to making a profit?

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The farms around us constitute one link in the middle of a long chain that’s been assembled over the past 50 years, starting with research and ending with the markets here and abroad. Changing farming practices is not as simple as “why don’t all the farmers grow organically?” Changing farming practices is going to require changing the entire chain.