Organic Viticulture vs. Better Living Through Chemistry?
Crack is vegan.
This is something I say a lot. What I mean is that just because something is vegan doesn’t mean that it’s healthy for you. You can live on french fries, Oreos, and crack and still be vegan. The same is true of the term “organic.”
Organic just means that the substances used must be naturally, as opposed to synthetically, derived. But, as I also like to say, the plague is natural.* Generally we don’t want to spray that on our grapes.
(*Of course, at least in the realm of what is organic, this is an exaggeration because there is a certifying body who must approve a substance for use in organic viticulture. Presumably they would never approve the plague. )
So while I’m ahuge proponent of organic viticulture and think that literally everygrape should be grown organically, I also want to keep “organic”in perspective. I don’t think it is ever good to see only the good,or bad, in something. Most things are complicated.
Which is why, when I encountered the argument cum accusation recently that the objections against glyphosate are akin to the anti-vaccination movement, I felt I had to re-examine my perspective to make sure I was keeping truth as my guiding principle, rather than a one-sided defense of organic dogma.
The argument came in an article by Jamie Goode from a man named Dr. Julian Little: “We are shifting into this post-scientific phase of deciding what is and what isn’t safe,” he says. “You are heading straight down the line of the anti-vaccine movement. Science is no longer seen as a valid currency for making decisions.”
I had to ask, where does the science take us? What do we know vs. believe? Are the principles of organic viticulture wildly detached from sane, scientific findings?
Organic viticulture is ironically, at this point in U.S. history at least, a very conservative approach to agriculture that is mainly embraced by politically liberal farmers. You can see this by comparing maps of conventional pesticide use concentration with political maps showing how the people voted in the last presidential election.
Politically "conservative” Republican-voting farmers are the most “Liberal” in terms of their agricultural practices – that is, they tend to freely use the full panoply of synthetic chemical herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that have been approved for “conventional” viticulture, even when those substances are known to be highly hazardous and even carcinogenic. That’s crazy liberal!
Organic principles are inherently conservative. There are far fewer options of sprays for organic farmers, and there is an inherent distrust of new synthetic chemicals.
Underlying the best organic viticulture is the principle “Don’t use what you don’t have to.”
If a vine’s health and the quality of the grapes is not affected by grasses and weeds growing amongst them, then why introduce a chemical herbicide into the ecosystem? As “targeted” as an herbicide may claim to be, its aim is to kill plants. And when you spray it around a vine, which is a plant, how could it not affect the vine? Considering that you can just as easily mow, weed-whack, or (less easily) graze the weeds to abate them, why take the chance on an assassin chemical? Especially when the evidence is beginning to show that permanent cover crops may be beneficial to vine health and result in higher quality wines.
Also, the argument that organic proponents are like anti-vaccination people in their rejection of the science around glyphosate is a false analogy.
Over the last hundred years it has been demonstrated that vaccines are necessary to preserve human life. Vaccines are not branded, and are given freely or cheaply to every person, with a motive of increasing the general well-being of the society by eliminating specific nefarious diseases that have no other means of control.
Glyphosate, on the other hand, is a branded convenience, not a necessity of human survival, and it is priced accordingly. There are other, less risky, options for doing what it does. This means that the motivations behind those promoting it are somewhat influenced by capital profit.
We can also see that in many cases science needs time, often lots of time, to determine the relative safety of a new synthetic chemical. Just look at the list of chemicals that were approved for conventional agricultural use years ago and that have now been found to be extremely hazardous or carcinogenic… there are dozens.
This is more understandable when you know that the scientific studies of new chemicals are often funded by the companies that have created, and want to sell, that chemical. The basic mechanics of ulterior motives come into play when analyzing research data. I'm not saying this is intentional, in every case, but it certainly isn't third-party analysis.
Beyond simple ulterior motives, it has become clear that today politics plays a part in how a chemical is viewed, whether it is allowed, the kind of information that is disseminated about it, and the kind of support it receives. We don't have to believe that there are active cover-ups of all the evidence that pesticides are extremely harmful, but knowing that there have been some cover-ups, and the players involved are still in the game and promoting new chemicals, should lead us to a high degree of suspicion of those chemicals.
This track record suggests strongly that we should err, conservatively, on the side of caution when it comes to using synthetic chemicals.
Organic viticulture is not an irrational denial of scientific fact, but really the only sane response from anyone who cares about their own health – not to mention the health of others and the environment as a whole - and from anyone who has been paying attention to the way in which synthetic chemicals have been promoted even when they are known to be very harmful.
Dr. Julian Little is, I should mention, on Bayer’s (the maker of RoundUp) payroll. He's their Head of Communications & Public Affairs for their Crop Sciences division. This fact doesn’t necessarily discredit him, but it certainly casts a shadow of doubt over his motives.
Finding the truth of things is more important to me than being right. So, though I take strong stances on many things, I’m quick to admit I was wrong and change my position when I find out new information that contradicts my arguments. This is one of my most cherished values.
I think we should continue to scientifically test and experiment on glyphosate and other chemicals to determine their efficacy as well as their safety. I just don’t think that they should be allowed to be used in the meantime, before we really know what we’re dealing with.
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