Dr. Javier Castellanos, Soil Science specialist and Director of INTAGRI, Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico (javier.castellanos.ramos@gmail.com), January 2009.
Organic farming appeared as a notable objective for the human diet: To consume food free of chemicals, and especially free of insecticides. It was born almost 30 years ago and little by little it has been gaining space in the market until recently approaching its limit because of high and unnecessary costs of production. In fact, this type of limit was expected from its very beginning. Most agriculturists foresaw this weakness of organic farming, but just did not pay much attention and did not believe that it was going to grow to the extent that it has.
The objectives of organic farming are noble, but due to the ignorance of those who developed and promoted the original idea, the adopted norms were unrealistic and it became a panacea, expensive and elitist. 1) Panacea, because there are not sufficient amounts of the required organic fertilizers in the whole world to supply the nitrogen and other plant nutrients required, 2) Expensive, because it prohibits the use of innocuous inorganic fertilizers and pushes the farmers to use organic sources that, in practice are very expensive, difficult to apply, and non-profitable for farmers to use, 3) Elitist, because only a few consumers can afford to regularly purchase these costly products.
If we accept the idea that one of the reasons for an increased incidence of human cancer was the lack of control of the massive use of chemical pesticides in the food production chain; particularly the use of chlorinated and phosphorylated insecticides, then the search for a chemical pesticide-free agriculture should have been the central objective of Organic Farming. Wouldn’t it have been a better strategy for improving health and reducing the causes of cancer to encourage human consumption of five or more servings of pesticide-free fruits and vegetables a day? What the world really needed was a chemical pesticide-free agriculture that is environmentally friendly, and even profitable. Instead, organic farming has prohibited all kind of agricultural inputs, except those of natural origin. They demonized fertilizers and pesticides, as if they are similar things.
Recently it has been demonstrated that crops can be profitably produced without the use of chemical pesticides, something that for years the transnational chemical pesticide companies made us believe was impossible. Currently more than 10,000 hectares of horticultural products are produced free of chemical pesticides in Almeria, Spain and they expect to grow to 15,000 has next year. Additional areas are similarly being developed in other countries. The use of beneficial insects and other organisms and the use of natural fungicides can totally defeat pests without the use of chemical pesticides. The struggle is just starting and we already see enormous advances. I have frequently asked myself, how far ahead we would be by now, if 20 years ago organic farming had promoted a chemical pesticide-free agriculture, rather than demonizing fertilizers. We are still on time to correct the course.