Countercultural agriculturalist: Gene Kahn at Fort Casey Farms in Washington, where he grows organic grain--when he's not wearing his VP hat at General Mills.
Yes. I think so. I think those things are happening. But it's going to happen incrementally, along with increased consumer awareness of the benefits of organic. But I'm glad we can't snap our fingers. We'll make sure this gets done right and done in a way that is really sustainable. That enables farmers to have a reasonable return on their investment. That maintains the kind of high level of standards and consumer and environmental benefit that goes along with organic farming. And I would say this: The conversation isn't really about "going organic"--it should be about how we change the world for the better, how we deal with the world as we currently see it. Not about creating some impossible dream. What we really have to fix is agro-chemical use and its impacts on soil, biodiversity, and human health. "Integrated pest management" is the appropriate use of agro-chemicals, to optimize their efficiency and minimize their use--IPM, it's called. Now, the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment claims that if integrated pest management were truly practiced in the United States--if it were widely practiced and widely adopted--there would be a 60% reduction in pesticide use in America. That's a big deal.
The point is not to overuse chemicals. That's a key problem with conventional agriculture. Nobody benefits from the overuse, except the chemical suppliers. Farmers in general use agro-chemicals because they don't have viable alternatives, or viable markets, that would allow them to avoid them. And farmers in general don't like to be polluters--they are people who live on the land, who care about their land. That's what we've got to be focused on--not whether we go organic or not. Organic is part of the solution, but it can't be the solution. I don't want to have a simplistic opposition--the good guys, the organic guys, versus the bad guys, the conventional guys. Everyone has a role in improving our environmental performance, and an obligation to improve it. And that's what's critical: the improvement. Whether we get to 100% organic is not the issue. It's whether we become a sustainable society.
Charles Fishman (cnfish@mindspring.com) is the author of the best-seller The Wal-Mart Effect, published by Penguin Press.
Related Stories
Email
Digg
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Buzz Up!
LinkedIn
Recent Comments | 1 Total
October 24, 2009 at 4:37pm by Eric Shannon
Eating organic is important for many people with chronic health problems of unknown origin, but for most of the country just eating more vegetables would be a big step in the right direction. Unfortunately the food industry has a tight grip on government. There are so many simple things that could be done with food policy that would lower health care costs, but it seems our version of capitalism does not allow for much common sense.
-Eric
NaturalAndOrganicLiving.org