The Beginnings of My Internal Debate - Conventional vs. Organic Agriculture

In the scheme of things, this topic looms large in my mental framing.  My ideas on this have evolved and matured over time.  This post frames my initial awakening to the topic of the conventional vs. organic question.  You may recall from an earlier post that as a child of the 70's and the OPEC oil embargo, I saw self-sufficiency as a key issue and as an ideal.  In a very real sense, I considered what it would mean to live in that time frame with greatly reduced access to petroleum and petroleum products.  At that point in time, my thinking revolved around the idea regarding how we might gain the needed fertility and energy required for farming from source materials other than petroleum products.  This was not a consideration regarding which forms of fertility were better or worse, but simply a thought about replacements for required farming inputs.  In my junior year at USU, I took the next step, wondering whether or not organic agriculture could substitute for conventional chemical agriculture, evolving to whether or not there were other pros and cons for conventional vs. organic.  This protracted query was a jolt to my farming "worldview."

During my junior year at USU, I started considering the many potential avenues into developing some form of agricutural business and also, how to efficiently produce food for my family in an efficient manner and at a scale that was greater than the suburban backyard vegetable garden.  This query led me to several books in the USU library about market gardening.  Market gardening is the idea of growing vegetables at a relatively small scale to be sold primarily direct to customers and/or restaurants.  The large commercial analog is a "truck farm," which you may find in California's Central Valley.  My review of these market gardening books highlighted the idea of organic production methods and conventional production methods.  The idea that these two forms of production were not merely substitutes for one another was brought front and center in my mind.

A debate was forming in my mind about issues surrounding both fertility, weed control, and other pest control (e.g. insects, small mammals, etc.).  The questions of fertility initially developed around access to the macro nutrients of NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium).  All of these could be had through both conventional fertilizers and organic fertilizers, although perhaps more easily measured and applied through conventional fertlizers.  As I studied, it became clear that there was a raft of micronutrients, known and unknown, that were more readily available through organic fertilizer sources, but not included in most conventional sources directly.  It also became clear that nutrients supplied through conventional fertilizers were much more leachable than those same nutrients provided through organic fertilizers.  That meant that the fertility could easily be swept out of the crop root zones.... and into our streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans.  I also learned that most conventional fertilizers were also based upon salt bases, gradually increasing the sodium and chlorine levels in the soil over time, leading to overall fertility declines.  A final additional thing that I learned related to the role of organic matter in soil structure and fertility reserves and the decline in organic matter in our soils over the 20th century in particular.  In effect, our soils were becoming a substrate to anchor the plants while being fed hydroponically the major nutrients that impacted plant growth and quantity yield.  I started to wonder if this really made sense.  Not only did conventional fertilizers require ongoing purchases on at least a yearly basis, but their regular usage led to a long-term decline in soil fertility.

I recalled spraying cockleburrs on Rawl's farm as a teen.  I had a tank of 2-4-D, wading through a sea of waist-high cockleburrs, sweeping the spraying wand from side to side, trying to get rid of what was probably 1/2 acre of cockleburrs.  I waded through the mist.  I breathed in the mist.  2-4-D was meant to kill broadleaf plants.  But I wondered, did it have any effect on me?  Since the government had approved 2-4-D for agricultural use, it must be okay, right?  I started reading about negative health consequences for farm workers exposed to pesticides and herbicides.  While these products seemed to have great ability to reduce labor, what were the other costs that were not usually discussed?  I thought about the Hughes's apple orchard down the street, which they sprayed religiously every 21 days during the summer.  How did people used to grow apples before pesticides?  It seemed that there was no way to grow fruit commercially without pesticides.  That couldn't be right..., so I thought.  What about Johnny Appleseed?  I read that pesiticides were systemic and not only applied to the surface of fruits and vegetables.  You could wash those vegetables as much as you wanted, but you couldn't wash out the portion that was absorbed into the tissues of the food.  Were those absorbed pesticides "safe enough?"  What did the research say?  I saw many holes and many open issues.  Intuitively, it seemed that there must be a better way.

I had a visit with  my favorite professor, Dr. Bruce Godfrey.  I explained my questions and concerns and wondered aloud whether or not organic or conventional was better.  In true Aristotitialan thinking, he said, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.  There are pros and cons to each approach, and probably neither approach is completely correct in the way the questions and issues are discussed and presented.

At that point in time, I did not come to any specific conclusions.  I came to understand many of the questions, ideas, positions, and competing views.  It would take decades of reading and research for me to develop my current frame of thinking.  This was the beginning of the journey.