It all depends what you mean by organic
That’s one of Adam Balic’s many useful comments on my earlier posting, “Is organic the right way to go?” I’ve got to start somewhere so why not here.
And, clearly, what is meant by organic is hugely confused. There are, as Diana Buja and Ji-Young Park point out in their comments, huge areas of the world where organic is the default just because small farmers have no option.
Let’s for the moment, though, stick with the developed world. Here, broadly speaking, there seem to be two senses of organic.
1. The relatively narrow legal definition now in force in many countries. This usually seems to boil down to some version of “no synthetic chemicals,” though how this is refined varies from nation to nation.
2. A much broader definition that makes organic in the inverse of modern framing: small, labor intensive, chemical averse and so on.
Advocates of organic were and are driven by the second concept. Good discussions can be found in Warren Belasco’s classic Appetite for Change (1989), ch. 4 and more recently in Julie Guthman’s Agrarian Dreams (2004), ch. 6. Members of this social movement were disappointed when the legal definitions turned out to be so narrow.
Here’s my rather simple take. Appealing as the idea of the small farm is (and the vision of the small farm is particularly deeply rooted in the US), I just can’t see how small and labor intensive is going to work in the developed world.
That’s for lots and lots of reasons. It doesn’t allow the use of labor saving machinery. It depends on people being willing to work at back breaking labor which, whether it’s Hawaiian taro or Californian vegetables, is now in fact done by poorly paid immigrants. It doesn’t come to terms with the facts that different kinds of products and different kinds of landscapes lend themselves to different scales (it’s not much fun small farming in arid lands for example). It doesn’t allow for economies of scale. And so on. So much as it appeals to the romantic in me, I just can’t sign up for the broad definition of organic.
Nor do I think the narrow definition does much for us. It’s based on a natural/unnatural distinction that is spurious. Chemicals are chemicals. Natural chemicals are not necessarily nicer than unnatural chemicals. Adam and Diana point to recent research that extends the common knowledge that nasty toxins are plants’ first line of defense. Think cassava leaves, taro, deadly nightshade, yew berries, all dangerous stuff. And the common wisdom in medicine–it’s all in the dose–applies as well. For humans water can kill taken in sufficient quantity. For fields, organic fertilizer (aka dung and urine) turns grass rank or kills it unless it is spread about.
So the question to ask about chemical inputs to farming is not natural/unnatural but how much, for what condition, for how long, etc. If I lack iron, I am happy to take an iron supplement. If I get an infection, I am happy to take an antibiotic. If a soil is deficient in nitrogen, as many are, or a plant or an animal gets a bug, I see no reason to treat them differently.
Now back, briefly, to places where you can’t afford such remedies. There the immediate problems are those that Diana and Ji-Young describe. But I hope they are transitional problems. That in a generation or so (or less) they too can have the benefits of modern farming methods.
“If I lack iron, I am happy to take an iron supplement. If I get an infection, I am happy to take an antibiotic. If a soil is deficient in nitrogen, as many are, or a plant or an animal gets a bug, I see no reason to treat them differently.”
That’s the metaphor I use when I talk to children. Plants are living things and they need doctors (and science) too.
How do they respond? I’d be curious to know.
They get it right away. And quite cheerful that they learned a new bit of information that’s easy for them to relate to and share.
I ask them if they know what a botanist is. I tell them a botanist is like a doctor for plants. Plants are living things and they need doctors just like you and me.
I ask them if they’ve been to the doctor for check ups. Of course. What does a doctor do for them? Make sure they’re growing well, healthy, eating right, etc.. What happens when they get an infection? They take medicine.
They understand the importance of proper dose. They’ve seen their parents or caregivers measure out precise, age and weight appropriate doses.
Thanks Ji-Young. And specially that they understand about doses because that seems to me absolutely key in all these discussions.
Good post, Rachel. Lots to think about. Regarding your thought that modern techniques may appear within the next generation in LDCs, this is a complicated issue. Since WWII extension programs have been woring to introduced improved breeds of crops and animals together with improved farming and husbandry techniques.
Generally referred to as Transfer of Technology, or ToT, the model of ‘a technology on the shelf’ that can be taken and put into practice in another ecosystem in which inhabitants may have vastly different socio-economic and cultural frames of reference, is being proved largely unworkable. Just too simple. Indeed, improved breeds of manioc, for example, that are resistant to manioc mosaic that we’re now introducing in sub-tropical regions of eastern Burundi, appear a god-send. However [and completely not surprising] they simply are not amenible to all microecosystems of the area. That’s just one of so many examples…
Also, improved microcredit, marketing, processing, etc. techniques prove equally frustriating if applied ‘only’ in a ToT framework.
Supply and distribution chains, together with enanced training, policy changes, information flow, etc., are proving equally and sometimes more important than simply improving and transfering a given technology.
People tend to adapt [or refuse] technologies in ways to suit their own environments – as I know you know; but the difficulty is that so may both in the R&D community don’t – or don’t want to fully understand the implications of this.
A couple of decades ago I was PI on a long-term study of dairy and grain production and distribution systems in Egypt. One of the more interesting findings [at the time] was that farmers were completely unwilling to grow HYV wheat, because the stocks, which are the primary animal feed in the Nile Valley, were much shorter and thus farmers were loosing money on their harvests. Scientists developing the HYV had never thought to send out some people to discuss what the _farmers_ wanted from HYV! This is changing somewhat now. But it’s taken over 20 years and still has a long way to go.
Hi Diana,
http://www.rachellaudan.com/2008/09/is-organic-farming-the-answer.html#comments
My comments and yours are pretty much in agreement.
Rachel and Diana,
I also explain ToT to children, showing a photo of an agronomic engineer helps. For the most part I think they understand adaptation, context, the need for a local expert, etc.. Showing them different microclimate at school or a park can help them understand microecosystems.