Back in my twenties, I went through a phase believing that all chemicals were bad and that organic food was never sprayed.     

Those were the days.  It was so simple to feel good about eating!  All I had to do was look for the word "organic" on the label and I knew I was chemical-free and supporting a sustainable form of food production.

Well, maybe not.  Since returning to the farm, and becoming not just a consumer but a producer of food, my naïve understanding has given way to a more nuanced, if not sometimes confused, attitude. Words like chemicals, sprays, organic, and sustainability are no longer straightforward.

Many people are surprised to learn that most of the organic food we see in the supermarket gets sprayed regularly with chemicals.  True, a different set of chemicals, but still chemicals.  In fact, most organic food is sprayed more often than conventional food.  This is because naturally derived, organically approved sprays are less potent than conventional sprays.  It is true that the less toxic organic sprays are not persistent on the food or in the environment.  But there are certainly downsides to using the organic spray also:  every time a spray is applied, that means more labor needed and more diesel fuel burned to run the tractor through the orchard.

There are other practices in organic production that get pretty sketchy sustainability ratings on the same ground.  Take mechanical weed control in orchards, for example.  Most orchards use a high tech cultivating machine to control weeds underneath the trees, instead of spraying an herbicide such as RoundUp.  Again, using the mechanical cultivator takes much more labor and burns more fossil fuel.   In addition, mechanical weed cultivation burns up organic matter in your soil and adds more carbon to the atmosphere. 

Weighing the complexities of the issue, I’m left at the end of the day wondering where the real focus should be on our farm and in food production.  Organic?  Conventional?  Somewhere in the middle? 

Back in the fifties the answer was easy—better living through chemistry.  The phrase was a spin-off of an ad slogan used by DuPont and it captured the focus of that decade.  After the deprivations of the Great Depression, Americans were understandably eager to make a better life for themselves.  They embraced the technical advances made during the war years and put them to good use in the post-war consumer economy.  In agriculture, for instance, factories and processes used to manufacture war agents could easily be converted toward manufacturing pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.   

One really great chemical arrived on the farm just after the war ended.  It cut down the number of spray applications needed to control coddling moth from ten to three per season.  Plus, it didn’t leave heavy metals in the soil like lead arsenate did.  For the farmer, this new spray meant an amazing savings in time and expense.  Grandpa used it for years along the rest of the apple industry—until someone noticed the birds were dying.

In the decades following the fall-out of DDT, a few people decided to go back to the basics.  The organic movement began, drawing upon the pre-1940’s agricultural science.  Locally, folks like John Brownfield and Ray Fuller set out to produce organic apples.

Fast-forward four decades to today and the next-generation of tools available to organic producers.   Thanks to market and regulatory pressures applied during these past decades, chemical giants like Dow have recently released organic insecticide products that are easy on the environment and quite effective, GF-120 and Entrust to name a few.  These products make it possible to grow premium organic food on a large scale.  True, there is added expense, but it is possible.

When I shop in the supermarket, I still choose to pay the extra money for the organic label as I did in my twenties.  I know now that sprays are a part of food production, but the sprays used in organic production, generally speaking, are gentler.  I want to support the industries and farmers that are helping us move toward less toxic, yet effective insect controls.

I have chosen to go organic as a consumer, but it is a harder decision to make to go organic as a producer—especially on a farm with a long history of successful growing with conventional practices.  This question is rhetorical because all signs in our market point towards going organic.  Whether I have quandaries about the sustainability of various practices or not, you the consumer have spoken and asked for organic.  The only question is how and when to make the transition.  It’s not cheap to grow organically, not to mention it means learning a whole new set of skills and encountering issues we can hardly imagine right now.

As I look back at my twenties, it seems my habit of buying organic was as much about pushing against something old as it was about embracing something new. 

These days it feels like I’m in the middle—two feet rooted in soil farmed conventionally since my youth, two arms opening to a future of organic practices and all the complexity that comes with it.