I was fortunate enough to be invited to several drinks parties over the festive period, luckier still as each was within walking distance from our house. At one of these occasions while enjoying a small glass of bubbly, I was asked to explain why organic farming is better for us than using chemicals in crop production methods. I sensed immediately that this fellow guest was far more knowledgeable than I about the value of chemically produced food for the world population, and predicted that whatever facts I imparted to corroborate my preference for giving organically grown food to my grandchildren were about to be disputed.
I accept the food produced using chemical methods is safe enough for most individuals. Whilst we must never stop questioning, we do trust the experts who classify as harmless the level of chemical absorbed by our direct food (plants) and indirect food (animals). However in my view, the danger to us humans is the long-term effect on our environment. It is the overload and cocktail effect on our soil life that is devastating and wholly disadvantageous to us humans.
Meanwhile back to our guest eagerly awaiting my answers to the organic debate and how to get the above message across without sounding like a slightly bonkers organic visionary. I decided to answer the question from a viewpoint undeniable by any chemical supporting theorist; that is the effect chemical production is having on my local environment and I believe the whole world.
I explained that after 25 years of chemically assisted farming I have witnessed first-hand a different farming world. Farms that have been organic for some years. The hedgerows and margins offer wildlife sanctuaries, animal stock gleam with health and good strong crops stand out. The soil which is heavy and lifeless in a chemical farming world requiring damaging cultivations to get any sort of ‘seed bed’ is in comparison soft, mostly self-draining and fertile under organic farming.
I related a recent article I had read about a landowner who had taken advice from an expert arborist about his beautiful tree that was quite immature but had gradually died over a two-year period. The tree was positioned at the point of a large field where the drains emptied into the stream. The arborist reported that the likely failure of the tree to grow was from the surplus of chemicals used in the landowner’s arable fields killing the tree roots before entering the stream. Worryingly his report highlighted this as a common occurrence which he is often invited to comment on.
I decided on one more anecdote (my recipient’s eyes were starting to glaze over and I was not 100% sure it was from the champagne). Towards the end of six years since applying chemicals to our soil, a neighbouring farmer called in to see how we were getting on with our organic methods. “No ponytail yet then?” he chirped (everyone’s a comedian) as we watched the topper at work across my pastureland. As expected, he was impressed by how our soil had improved in texture in such a short period of time but more noteworthy is what we saw moving above the topper. Hundreds of thousands of shimmering insects totally covered the top of the machine all gathered up from the organic grass field. In our combined 50 years of grassland farming using chemical interventions neither of us had ever seen this before.
I never asked my fellow guest his thoughts on organic production methods but before leaving I did ask him to consider why we continue to use vast quantities of chemicals and who are the real beneficiaries. Have we been encouraged to believe that the only way to produce enough food to efficiently feed our growing population is by using chemicals? A practise actively encouraged to help the dearth of homegrown food production available following the 2nd World War but one which once post-war stability was established should in my opinion have been limited not applauded. Had more financial resources been invested into rejuvenating homegrown food production through natural farming methods we may not be experiencing many of our current environmental problems.