Subject: Organic-Sustainable (fwd)

From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 14:23:45 -0500 (EST)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 10:35:25 -0600 (CST)
From: Bart Hall <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Organic-Sustainable

The two terms are most decidedly *not* interchangeable.  As an
agronomist who has inspected over 100,000 hectares for organic
certification in half a dozen countries, I have seen a considerable
number of organic farms that are not sustainable.

Row crops (maize, soya, vegetables, and such) are almost always the
core of the problem -- or rather, production of row crops to the near
exclusion of essential (IMO) sod-crops.  Because of their wide
spacing and frequent cultivation (especially in organic systems), row
crop production usually has a very negative impact on soil organic
matter, with all that entails for sustainability. Sod crops reverse
and heal that trend, but too few farmers (organic or conventional)
have any significant area in these soil builders.

The usual reason is financial.  The rub, of course, is that an
unprofitable farm (almost by definition) isn't sustainable.  In the
US, the average net income for farms with under $50,000 in gross
sales is a *loss* of $2,600. Only a handful of organic farms gross
over $50,000, so things aren't terribly optimistic on that front,
quite apart from the agronomic issues.

And what's more, sometimes the most ecological/sustainable approach
does involve judicious application of chemicals.  For example, in
extreme dryland areas where wheat is alternated with fallow (to
conserve moisture) the farmer who seeds a cover crop and subsequently
kills it with herbicide (to make a mat) will conserve more moisture,
more soil, and more organic matter than the "organic" farmer who
black fallows with a disc harrow...

Organic certification standards are increasingly requiring some
degree of agronomic responsibility towards the soil. Things are
evolving amongst the various programs, but a new risk has appeared
here in the US.  The USDA will soon be imposing nationwide standards
for organic production and certification. When government involvement
was originally sought by some sectors of the industry, the intention
was that national standards would become a *floor* defining the
minimum level of organic standards. Current USDA statements, however,
make it clear that such national standards will become a *ceiling*
and certification programs will be prohibited from developing higher
standards -- including in such areas as soil management and
sustainability.

On the other hand, substantial numbers of US farmers and university
types contend that "what we're doing already is sustainable --
there's no problem."  Clearly that is not the case, so what we have
is nearly self-definition of sustainable -- "what I'm doing *is*
sustainable" -- on the one hand, and an increasingly dumbed-down,
Pablum definition of organic (to be kept that way by the USDA) on the
other.

To my mind, it's really quite simple.  Don't waste time with
definitions.  There are good farmers (organic and conventional) and
there are poor farmers (organic and conventional).  We should be
rewarding the good ones and letting the poor ones suffer.
Unfortunately, it seems we are too often doing precisely the
opposite.