It was the “green revolution” in the 1950s that changed our agricultural landscape for ever and not in the way you may think when you consider what we understand by the term “Green” today.
Dr. Norman Borlaug, an American agronomist often called the “Father of the Green Revolution” was awarded the Nobel peace prize for his work in 1970, that led to the aversion of famine in many poorer countries.
But where this Green Revolution led, I don’t think anybody could have fully imagined, and it was this very industrialisation of agriculture that led to Rachel Carson publishing “Silent Spring” in 1962 which was a remarkable reflection on the damage that the widespread use of chemicals wrought on our planet.
Today we use chemicals to force nature to behave in the way we want, we have tried to impose factory type controls onto the natural environment that we rely on for our food. But nature is not a factory, and the same rules do not apply, you cannot indiscriminately apply chemicals to our food and not expect a fall out.
I have been pulled up many times for the use of the word “chemicals” and people rightly point out that everything is made of “chemicals”. In fact, I have spent a good portion of my life studying chemicals, having a Ph.D. in organic chemistry. In another twist I left this life to pursue a belief that chemicals do not belong in our food system by becoming an organic farmer.
When I speak about chemicals, I mean synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. My purpose in this is not to alarm, and I believe that we are all better off eating more fresh food, organic or otherwise than some of the crap that lines the supermarket shelves, that is an absolute given. But when it comes to fresh produce, I firmly believe that if you can at all organic is the best option for so many reasons, to protect biodiversity, to keep chemicals out of our bodies and to be kinder to animals.
Another point that has been raised recently is that organic farmers use “chemicals” just the same as conventional farmers, well let me put that one to bed straight away. That is nothing short of rubbish.
If I speak for our farm, we don’t use any “synthetic chemicals”, we may use natural products at times, such as sulfur or magnesium, or boron, all of which are chemicals, but not pesticides, or herbicides, they are also not systemic meaning they are not absorbed into the plant, like many of those used in conventional agriculture.
Something we do use is biological controls at times, and we see more and more of this being adopted by our conventional farming brethren. Right now we are doing very interesting trial working with William Deasy in Teagasc as part of their “Growing organics programme”, using a mite to eat the red spider mite (if you grow cucumbers this little red guy can be devastating). We release a predator mite to eat the pest mite, not a chemical in sight, and by all accounts the trial looks really promising.
As we head into Holiday season now, we also head into harvest season, so if you can at all please support us, right now over the next few weeks we need your support more than ever.
Thank you
Kenneth