Fertilizer for thought: What organic means

They can use what?

I asked a friend of mine to read one of my previous posts, in order to make sure it was comprehensible to actual human beings and not just my techno-babble infused brain. As he was going through it, he looked up and asked me, surprised:

"Wait - organic farms can use fertilizer?"

Having been deeply immersed in the details of organic leek farming, I was tempted to brush off the comment with a semi-dismissive 'of course' and move on. But thinking about it, if someone had asked me that question a little while ago, would I have had the same immediate response? I've been buying organic pretty heavily for several years, but could I actually have rattled off what that entailed, and what that didn't entail? Being honest with myself, the humbling answer was no. 

Even while reading the leek paper I had been surprised as I worked through the table discussing the different processes for the conventional and organic farms - a line by line comparison of how they started their seedlings, tilled, fertilized, plowed, harrowed, planted, weeded, sprayed, and harvested. There were a lot of parallels in the processes - more than half the line items were identical. And yes, even the organic crops were sprayed - treated with a natural pesticide (bacteria) to deter moths. There were differences, for sure, particularly in the types of fertilizer and pesticides, and in the much greater amount of weeding needed for the organic farm, which incidentally takes a lot of extra fuel.

Labels vs. ideals

What organic means - as a technical thing you can put on a label and use for marketing purposes - is actually quite specifically defined. Synthetic pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, genetically modified crops, and sterilization by radiation are covered - that's about it. Not to denigrate that - those items are meaningful and make a real difference on farm impacts. Still, the core point I'm talking about is that you can be organic and look a whole lot like a conventional farm. 

When talking about organic, I know that I at least have a whole bunch of associations with the word that go beyond the items that are actually measured for something to be certified organic. There is a philosophical or ethical dimension to it. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements agreed, and took a swing at defining what organic means in a set of principles. They break it down on four axes:

• Health: the relationship between the health of people, communities, and ecosystems
• Ecology: the importance of learning from and harmonizing with existing ecological cycles and systems (holy crap! Is that biomimicry I smell?)
• Fairness: to people and beings present and future
• Care: using the best knowledge we have to make decisions and exercising due caution

Obviously, though, it's a lot tougher to measure these things than it is to measure which pesticides a farm is using. I've talked about this a lot with my old friend, the scientist, who has grumbled a lot about large scale organic operations and how they may or may not be any better than conventional farms. This is a sensitive subject for me, what with my fondness for a particular now-big organic brand which a) started out not too far from where I grew up, and b) produces my very favorite granola. (wow, my inner hippie feels exposed right now.)

Maybe my scientist friend is right, and now that my beloved granola-maker has scaled, they are organic in name but no longer in principle. The issue I have is, how do we know? Just because a farm is bigger or run by a major company doesn't tell you anything empirical about that farm's health, ecology, fairness, or care.

Next up: more on this subject, from a group of scientists who seem very annoyed at their social science counterparts jumping to conclusions based off the 'wrong' measurements:

Ika Darnhofer, Thomas Lindenthal, Ruth Bartel-Kratochvil and Werner Zollitsch. “Conventionalisation of organic farming practices: from structural criteria towards an assessment based on organic principles. A review.” Agron. Sustain. Dev. 30 (1) 67-81 (2010)