IDENTIFYING AN ORGANIC FARMER
The farmer will tell you where the farm is located—and the nearer, the better. If they’re organic, they’ll be able to give you details on how they fertilize the land. Ask them whether they use green manures. All organic farmers know that green manures are crops grown expressly to be plowed under when they reach maturity in order to decompose in the soil and fertilize it. Clover, alfalfa, buckwheat, soybeans, annual ryegrass, and vetch are common green manures. Along with green manures, organic farmers will use compost to improve the soil. Ask the seller how hot his compost piles get. If they are true organic compost makers, they’ll know that compost piles reach from between 140 and 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Both conventional and organic farmers will sometimes use farm animal manure on the land, but organic farmers will have composted the manure before spreading it. Manure left on the soil surface rapidly loses much of its fertilizing power as the nitrogen becomes ammonia that evaporates into the air.
Another way to tell an organic farmer is to ask if they’ve had any insect problems and how they’ve handled them. If the seller says he doesn’t have insect problems, that’s just not realistic. All farmers have insect problems, but organic farmers have a set of nontoxic ways of dealing with them. They may use Bt—Bacillus thuringiensis—a naturally occurring microbe that causes caterpillars to stop feeding and die. It has no adverse effects on other plants or animals, including human beings. It’s been exceptionally useful in dealing with the caterpillar stages of common cabbage moths, tomato hornworms, tent caterpillars, and many others. In most cases, it’s the moths and butterflies in the caterpillar or worm-like stage of their development that damage crops. Mature moths and butterflies tend to sip nectar. Genetic engineers have taken the gene that produces the Bt toxin from the microbe and inserted it into corn and cotton, so that the corn and cotton itself will kill any caterpillars or bollworms that come to feed on it. However, because it’s built into the DNA of every cell in the plant, the Bt toxin is present in all the plant’s tissues, including its pollen. In 2001, scientists found that the pollen from Bt corn was drifting into meadows near the cornfields and landing on weeds where monarch butterfly larvae (the butterflies’ caterpillars) were feeding on milkweed, causing a massive die-off of the monarch butterfly population. By inserting the gene for Bt toxin into crops, the genetic engineers unwittingly hasten the day when insects will develop a resistance to the toxin and a perfectly useful organic control will be rendered useless.
Another fact of nature that farmers will be intimately familiar with is how variations in growing seasons produce fluctuations in the quality of crops. One year may be a banner year for apples, but the pears may not be so good. The next year, the pears may be wonderful—big, juicy, and relatively blemish free—but the apples will be runty or scabby. The same holds true for vegetable crops. A given year might produce a good growing season for tomatoes but a bad season for beans.
This effect generally varies from place to place and farm to farm, because it depends not only on the weather but also on how the climate interacts with the farmer’s own cultural (growing) practices: If he plowed too early, that could harm the soil structure; if he plowed too late, that might affect which weeds become bothersome in July. Did he fertilize properly? Have the crops been given sufficient water? Organic farming involves taking many factors into account and managing them together to bring in consistently good crops. Even when everything is running most smoothly, there’s usually some crop that’s having an especially good year and another having an especially bad one. ....read more
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