[getsmart-l] Farm chemicals hard on environment, wallets

[Kerry Meydam]

Reprinting an article from Canada.Com:
http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/arts/story.html?id=a9c1ab33-1bae-4226-8a46-f31180e40746

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Farm chemicals hard on environment, wallets

Paul Hanley
The StarPhoenix

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Evidence continues to mount that there is no real conflict between
protecting the environment and a strong economy. A case in point is
the results of Canada's oldest organic-conventional cropping study. It
shows that organic farming systems that use no farm chemicals use less
energy, emit less greenhouse gases and make farmers more money.

Summary results from the first eight years of the study, which started
in 1992 in Glenlea, Man., show organic systems had the lowest cost of
production and the highest net returns for all crop rotations, even
though the organic systems were less productive.

It was also found that the conventional forage system in the study
consumed approximately 2.2 times as much non-renewable energy as the
organic forage system, while the conventional annual crop system used
consumed approximately 2.8 times as much energy as the organic annual
system.

When comparing the conventional and organic systems within rotations,
the conventional forage system produced approximately twice as much
CO2, the most important greenhouse gas, as the organic forage system.
The conventional annual system produced approximately 2.5 times as
much CO2 as the organic annual system.

But organic systems were not without problems. In the study, the
fields got progressively weedier and available soil phosphorus
declines in some rotations, so yields continue to go down over time.

The lower productivity of current organic systems may result from the
fact that most farm research over the past 60 years has gone into
systems that depend on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. If the
same effort had been put into chemical-free farming systems, the
results might be quite different and a lot of damage to the
environment might have been prevented.

The University of Manitoba's natural systems agriculture program is
working to resolve the negatives associated with organic farming and
to develop various farming approaches that mimic nature. The program
is experimenting with a number of approaches that promise to increase
productivity while reducing or eliminating farm chemicals.

Diversity provides for resilience in nature, and the same principle
can be applied within an agricultural system. Intercropping different
crops and cultivars in the same field ideally allows for improved
resource use and beneficial biological interactions between the crops.
In other words, light, water and nutrients are used by the crops
instead of weeds, and some plants may enhance the growing environment
for their companion crop plant. Cultivar mixtures can also work to
minimize the spread of plant diseases by reducing the quantity of
susceptible host plants.

Crop rotations, which provide diversity over time, are another
effective way of improving yield. Still another option is to breed
crop varieties specifically for organic production.

Although Manitoba farmers spent 69 per cent more on herbicides in 2000
than they had in 1993, during this same period their realized net
income did not increase, suggesting that chemicals pay off for
chemical companies but not for farmers.

That's why the natural systems agriculture program is also looking at
low-input farming techniques, where instead of using herbicides as a
matter of course, very small amounts of herbicides are used to control
weeds occasionally.

Pesticide-free production (PFP) is a kind of hybrid of organic and
chemical farming being studied by the University of Manitoba. PFP
means that crops are not exposed to pesticide applications from the
time of emergence until the time of grain marketing. Crops are grown
without the use of in-crop chemical pest control methods during the
crop year.

By producing crops in a PFP system, growers may be able to reduce
input costs without sacrificing yield, and so retain more of the
income generated by the sale of their produce. And studies show
consumers are willing to pay about 10 per cent more for food produced
this way.

In studies with about 70 farmers using the PFP system, virtually all
the farmers said they would use the system again, given virtually all
of them made more money by using less chemical.

Over time, this research approach should make it possible to eliminate
or drastically reduce farm chemical inputs in prairie agriculture
while maintaining high levels of production.

(c) The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2008

Copyright (c) 2008 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest
MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.
 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications,
Inc.. All rights reserved.
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