Organic farming isn't any better than regular farming

I visited my favorite supermarket the other day and got lost in the produce section. The price of apples had gone up 50 percent.

They were from New Zealand and sported green “organic” labels. They were supposed to have been raised according to nature’s way and healthier than those costing much less. I ended up buying some because I couldn’t find any at the regular price. They tasted just like the regular ones I bought last week

When I was a kid growing up on the farm, we used only organic methods. It wasn’t because Grandpa was a purest; it was because he had no other option. We were a small, family operation with dairy cows to keep us from starving to death, and row crops to buy new shoes for the winter.

Back then, farming was much more time and labor intensive than it is today. We used a roll-over plow followed by a disc to prepare for planting. So by the time we got seed in, we had been over the ground three times.

Weed control required three more passes with a cultivator. Thus, harvest was the seventh time we worked the field while emitting three gallons of gas fumes into the atmosphere each hour we worked. We had no fertilizer other than a limited supply of animal manure, so we had to leave part of our ground idle in order to replenish our soil. We were organic before it was fashionable, or profitable.

Organic is supposed to be healthier because there are no chemicals used in crop production. Organic growers are allowed to replenish nitrogen with chicken manure but not with commercial fertilizer.

I live in farm country, and most modern farmers have college degrees and small laboratories to test their soil to determine exactly what it needs. Then they apply the nutrients specially designed for that particular soil. The most common soil requirement is nitrogen. Nitrogen is found in nature, makes up 80 percent of the air we breathe and is fairly simple to extract. I don’t understand why nitrogen from chicken poop is healthier than the nitrogen produced in a sanitized factory.

Pest control probably causes the most scare among consumers. Who would want to eat an apple that has been sprayed with bug poison? On the other hand, no one wants the wormy apples we had when I was a kid.

None of the apples at the market with green tags seemed to have worms, and I wondered how they could do that, so I researched the requirements for being labeled organic. The internet told me that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has an office staffed with bureaucrats who publish the rules. These bureaucrats must walk a fine line between standards that are either too strict or too lenient. Too strict and no one can grow worm free apples. Too lenient and anyone can claim to be organic. Either way, the bureaucrats lose their jobs.

So, some manufactured chemicals are deemed organic, and some are not. For example, apple growers are allowed to spray crops with rotenone or spinosad, both found to be toxic to humans. These chemicals are found in nature so must be OK, but nature doesn’t have sufficient quantities, so they are manufactured.

Cyanide, however, is not organic even though it is found in the seeds of the apples being sprayed. Cyanide and arsenic, also common in nature, are too well known to be acceptable to shoppers.

My research concludes that organic labeling is a scam. Produce labeled “organic” is no more chemical free than the apple tree in my back yard that I spray three times a year with manufactured chemicals. All the housewives I know wash their produce before they eat it, even if it does have a green label.

Organic labeling is pure propaganda benefiting only the bureaucrats in the USDA and those food producers who can raise prices 50 percent or more.

Frank Watson is a retired Air Force Colonel and long-time resident of Eastern Washington. He has been a free-lance columnist for over 19 years.