ETHICAL Edibles-Doing It Right

Demystifying the Big ‘O’ - What is a truly organic experience?

by Dag Falck

How did Grandma keep her garden healthy and productive year after year? Her approach was probably not that different from today’s organic agriculture methods. Like organic growers, Grandma grew and processed her veggies in harmony with nature. She didn’t expose them to chemical fertilizers, synthetic pesticides, irradiation, harsh solvents, sewage sludge, or artificial preservatives or colours. And, of course, no genetic engineering.

Admittedly, all farmers—big and small, whether they raise grains, vegetables, or fruits—face the same challenges. They lie awake at night thinking about how to overcome pest attacks, diseases, and competition from weeds. The soil also has to be fertile in order for the plants to grow. Every successful farmer knows that without addressing these concerns, they might as well throw in their hoe.

In non-organic farming over the last 40 to 50 years, these challenges have been solved—mostly by applying the solutions that organic farming has rejected: chemical fertilizer for soil fertility and pesticides for bugs and weeds. Additionally, processors of non-organic foods add “freshness” with artificial preservatives and bright, artificial colours.

Is there something intrinsically wrong with non-organic approaches? That’s a matter of opinion, but here are the facts:

• Chemical fertilizers and pesticides are produced by fossil fuels.
• Fossil fuel reserves are finite; they will run out one day.
• Most pesticides are toxic to insects, birds, and micro-organisms in the soil.
• Most pesticides cause toxic runoff, which pollutes streams and aquifers.
• Pesticides are hazardous to those applying them.

Organic avoids all this, yet it’s a successful farming system—a method that not only yields food free of the above issues, but also avoids their Earth-ravaging side effects.

With organic farming, it’s easy to keep the soil rich and fertile—and it’s often cheaper than a bag of chemical fertilizer. Here’s why: organic farmers rotate their crops and fertilize the soil with seaweed, alfalfa, composted manure, or “green manure.” A green manure crop (it has nothing to do with actual manure) is a crop such as clover or vetch that’s grown and turned back into the soil. Green manure can add more pounds per acre of nitrogen than any farmer could afford to add from a bag.

But how did Grandma manage pests? Simple: she had a balanced ecosystem in her garden, where one bug ate another and where one plant exuded a repellent that benefited another plant. When bugs did become pests, she either lived with them, handpicked them, or devised various traps—none of which left toxic residues in the soil, water, or air.

Organic growers listened to Grandma, and even on large-scale farms they now plant crops in a rotation system to encourage diverse insect cycles. Organic farmers plant hedgerows to attract birds and diverse species of insects, which get close to the crops and eat the pests.

As for weeds, in large field crop situations—grains, for example—green manure crops and crop rotation do wonders for preventative weed control, as do late seeding and pre-emergence tilling. Organic farmers often delay seeding their crop to give weeds time to sprout; then they lightly till the land and wipe out those weeds, and then plant the crop. In the garden, hand weeding, mulching, and some hoeing usually do the trick.

Simple methods like these make all the difference between success and failure for an organic farmer. Just ask Grandma.

Dag Falck, the organic program manager for Nature’s Path Foods, reveres all grandmothers who grow their own organic gardens. See Dag’s insights on organic grain farming at naturespath.com under “Organics.”