Many of the millions of Californians being threatened with aerial pesticide application over their bodies and homes in the Light Brown Apple Moth scandal are thinking about the difference between organic and conventional farming for the first time in their lives. While the definition of organic is in danger of being watered down by agencies like the USDA, the traditional (read: real) basic meaning of growing organically means sowing and harvesting fruits, vegetables and other plants without the use of synthetic chemicals. This means starting with safe seeds that have been harvested from organic crops that have not been genetically modified, and it means that no synthetic fertilizers, fungicides, pesticides or herbicides have been used in the nurturing of the plants.

Organic farming is traditional farming - the way people have eaten throughout the total history of mankind up until the 1800’s when factory wastes began being marketed to farmers as acceptable or superior alternatives to the natural balance of nature. The industrial revolution and the subsequent world wars created an abundance of nasty chemicals, and rather than trying to bury these away in some hole in the ground, business men hit upon the bright idea of selling them to farmers, and in the year 2008, we have an agricultural ‘industry’ that is so indoctrinated in the belief that growing food depends on the use of synthetic chemicals that the USDA is actually able to keep a straight face telling 7 million Californians that they must be doused with deadly pesticides in order to protect the food supply. Organic farmers know that nothing could be further from the truth.

Eliot Coleman
Skilled organic farmer and author, Eliot Coleman, beautifully sums up the environment of an organic farm in his celebrated book, The New Organic Grower. In his book, he relates an anecdote about a visit to a great organic farm in Germany. He’s traveling with a group of USDA researchers. As Coleman explains:

One member of the group was an entomologist. While the rest of us held a lively question-and-answer session with the farmer, the entomologist walked into the vegetable field. Stooping over and using his hands to sweep the air above the plants, he surveyed the insect population, looking for pests and plant damage. Eventually, the conversation on the side of the field trailed off as our attention became focused on the entomologist. He continued his search, becoming increasingly amazed at the almost total lack of pest damage to the different crops. Finally, he stood erect, turned to the rest of us and said in a tone of stunned admiration, “We can’t even do this well with pesticides.”

This simple quote sums up for me the problem with the so-called agricultural experts in America - the USDA and CDFA. They are so removed from the actual biology of the earth and the miracle of food growing naturally out of the earth that they can hardly believe that food production does not and has never required the use of synthetic chemicals.

Food growers deserving of the honorable title of ‘farmer’ are educated, careful students of nature’s habits and needs. By planting green cover crops, employing crop rotation and creating a diverse, rich habitat for fruits and vegetables to grow in, organic farmers are following the timeless, sustainable methods that have fed humans since the beginning of intentional agriculture.

The Secret of Organic Growing
Nature has always known this secret, but in modern times, it has taken the organic farmers a little while to hit upon what is going on in the garden. Basically, like people, plants become susceptible to disease and death when they are stressed. Just as a poor diet makes for a sickly child, poor soil makes sickly plants that succumb to disease and insects. Lack of care stresses the plant just as lack of care stresses children, so, like good parents, good organic farmers spare no effort to keep the farm a vibrant, diverse, healthy place with soil that is tended with tremendous loving care. If the plants are well watered, well fed and grown in combination with a variety of other plant species, they will want to survive and enjoy life, just like happy people do. They will fight off disease and thrive.

The conventional agribusiness farm is an ugly contrast wherein ignorant, intensive ‘farming’ practices rob the soil of all nutrients. The ‘farmer’ then tries to replace those stolen nutrients with chemicals that neither honor the plant nor the human need for safe, toxin-free foods. Monocrop fields stretch for hundreds of acres and the unhappy, malnourished plants are so neglected and stressed out that a couple of ladybugs seem like a genuine threat because - believe it or not - the plants don’t really care about whether they live or die. They are unhealthy, toxic vegetation, being barely kept alive by constant sweepings and dustings of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides so that the ‘farmer’ can harvest his crop at the end of the season and ship his nasty produce to your local market, and if you buy conventional food, onto your table and into your body.

Little wonder that we’re all witnessing a bunch of freaked out CDFA and USDA agents running around freaking out conventional farmers in the Central Valley about some tiny, harmless moth. Maybe they do realize how weak and sickly their crops are and that if a miniscule moth took even a tiny nibble out of a leaf on a corn plant, the whole acreage would fall down flat. As more than one organic farmer has stepped forward to explain, they’re not in the least concerned about some little moth fluttering around their crops - no big deal. But the conventional farming agencies - the CDFA and USDA - want California to believe that this moth will eat and kill everything and destroy the food supply. It’s absurd.

The ignorant, unskilled farmer either doesn’t understand or doesn’t believe that he can grow food without help from Suterra, Monsanto and the other shrewd chemical corporations which have spent billions of dollars over the past century turning conventional farmers into hooked pesticide junkies. In the end, it is only these corporations who are being served…not the misguided farmer, not his workers who are being paid to die in a constant pesticide bath, not his neighbors who are breathing in the substance of his guilty practices, not the consumer who can’t afford anything but the cheapest conventional foods and certainly not the plants themselves that are treated without the slightest respect for their needs or nature.

Paying The Price
Organic farmers have sort of gone their own way over the past 50 or so years. Shrugging their shoulders at their pesticide-addicted counterparts, they’ve gone about their fields quietly harvesting delicious, safe foods that command top dollar at the farmer’s market because of their superior taste, quality and nutritional value.

But now, in California, we have reached a showdown. The conventional farming agencies have announced that in order to sustain their backward, moronic growing practices, it will now be necessary to spray human beings with pesticides and synthetic lab chemical insect pheromones. They are billing this ‘necessity’ as the trade-off for us having food on our tables. Get sprayed or no dinner tonight. It’s complete nonsense, of course. The Light Brown Apple Moth might chew a tiny hole in a leaf on your cucumber plant, but it won’t gobble up your cucumber and certainly won’t kill any healthy plant. But the junkie agencies are flipped out and demanding that we all cover their backs and submit to being coated in pesticides so that they can keep growing their disgusting, toxic conventional crops.

And though 31 cities have now said ‘no’ to this deal, the agencies intend to do it anyway. They will spray you, your kids, your grandparents, your pets, your water, your house and the air you breathe, against your will and in violation of the California constitution. They care about ’saving’ their pesticide farms that much.

If they aren’t stopped, one by one, Californians will fall quietly ill in their homes, dying of pesticide-induced illnesses. Agricultural chemicals are the world’s #1 offender in the pollution of our soils and water and in the extinction of countless animal species. And Ag. Secretary Kawamura has announced that he views the spraying of pesticides over human beings, wildlife and their watershed as a new national industry. It will pay well to poison us.

The Real Fight
If the LBAM public health crisis is your first exposure to the concept of organic vs. conventional farming, chances are, you have begun to realize that taking on this battle against the CDFA and USDA is only part of a much bigger war. And I don’t call this a war lightly. Conventional farmers are poisoning and killing people and animals for profits. Every box of conventional apples sold to Safeway represents the loss of health and lives just as much as the sale of carton of bombs would. And, the truth is that the mass application of pesticides to California will kill off the organic farmer and his vital harbor of safe food for humans. The aerial spraying of California is an assault on people and their food supply, ironically being billed as a program to protect our food.

Pesticide application does not protect my food. Pesticide application protects sickly conventional plants that I wouldn’t eat if you paid me. Never before has it been so clear that California needs to have a showdown. The moment the conventional farming agencies suggested that they have the right to spray babies with pesticide in order to keep growing their toxic crops, they crossed a line in the sand. We’ve somehow tolerated them carrying on the way they do in the Central Valley with their pesticide planes crossing the endless monoculture fields on a daily basis, perhaps because so few of us live there? But now they are bringing their ignorant practices into urban areas and declaring that they have the right to force us to breathe their chemicals and, in my eyes, them’s fighting words.

The polar icecap is melting and you know what’s in the melted water? DDT. We know now, we’ve known for at least a couple of generations, that pesticides cause disease and death and we need to to use this hard-won knowledge to shape the future of food growing in California. Conventional agriculture has been tolerated, perhaps because we’ve been too involved with other concerns, but now that the proponents of these unskilled farming practices are coming to your town on the California coast, there’s nothing more important for us to be focusing on.

Californians are declaring in no uncertain fashion that we refuse to pay the price for the ignorance of these chemical-dependent agencies. We’d as soon give up our lives so that drug addicts in a crack-induced rage can shoot us down. Organic farmers, following the ancient and surefire methods of traditional agriculture, can grow all of the food we’d ever need. Conventional farmers and the agencies that represent them need to kick their habit and stop killing innocent people in order to produce food that no one should be eating in the first place.

Letting California go any other way is an act of suicide, and never before has the been so clear.

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