Organic Ends and Means

For Times of TW

Weakest Link Breaks Organic Chain

By Kent Barker

            It’s been an excellent harvest this year.  Enthusiastic gap year students have been filling ‘cubie’ bags full of ripe fruit while our ancient tractor lifts them onto trailers to be taken away for juicing and cider making.

The orchard I help to manage has, for the past several years, been fully organic.  Although no pesticides had been used on the land or the trees for probably 40 years before, we still had to undergo a five year conversion process before getting our certification.  When it finally came I was thrilled.  I am not an organic zealot, but I do firmly believe that using fewer chemicals to produce our food will be of substantial benefit to our health.

            Ever since the devastating side effects of DDT became commonly accepted, we’ve known that many agri-chemicals are a public health hazard.  Yet we blithely accept them.   If you can’t see it or taste it, then it must be OK, mustn’t it?  And anyway that’s what the government regulators are there for surely?  To protect us from rapacious chemical companies whose motivation seems driven more by profit than public health?

            OK, ok, enough tub thumping.  But just Google ‘Glyphosates’ and see how long it took before the World Health Organisation concluded they are “probably carcinogenic to humans”.  And then ask what steps are in place to stop the herbicide being routinely used on British crops. (Sorry, that’s a trick question because as far as I know there are NO steps are in place to stop the likely cancer-causing chemical being routinely sprayed on crops.)

            Quick, take me back to my orchard where I can calm down a bit. For here thistles proliferate and insects munch contentedly on the apples because neither herbicides (weed-killers) nor pesticides (bug killers) have been used for decades – and certainly not since we got our organic status.  But now that’s all under threat.

            A condition of our Soil Association accreditation is that the orchard may only be grazed by organic sheep.  (I know, it’s a slightly comical concept.  But if an animal that’s been eating chemically treated grass is moved to our land it will excrete the chemicals there.)  So we looked round for, and found, an organic sheep farmer.  In fact all their meat including beef and pork was also organic. However, to market it as such they had to graze their livestock only on organic pasture, avoid routine use of antibiotics and, crucially, have the meat butchered by an organic butcher.

            All this was fine until their butcher ceased to be organic. The trouble is there’s not another one anywhere within range. So now, even though all their animals are raised and grazed organically, they can’t be butchered organically and the meat can’t be marketed as organic. Well, perhaps that’s not the end of the world.  It’s great meat and they’ll probably get the same price for it as before.  But, if they are not selling their product as organic, why go through the bureaucratic rigmarole of being certified as an organic producer, and pay hundreds of pounds a year to the Soil Association? However, if they cease to be certified as organic, then we could also lose our status if they go on grazing their sheep in the orchard.

            Sadly this chain reaction seems to be happening across the country. Organic certified land is in decline (4% down in the most recent figures) but more alarmingly land being converted to organic fell 24% for the same year.  Meanwhile organic producers and processors also declined by more than 6% - a  trend that’s been in place for at least the past five years.

            Ironically, as Britain’s organic production is declining, our demand for organic products is holding up and even slightly increasing.  Which means imports, and more food miles, with more land in other countries like Spain and Austria going over to organic.

            So our orchard is faced with a serious dilemma. It costs us more than £600 a year to be certified by the Soil Association – more than we make from the sale of our apples.  Yet we don’t sell them to an organic cider maker. And soon we may not have organic sheep because an alternative organic flock could be impossible to find. So it seems there is no financial logic in retaining our organic status.  But I, for one, will be very sad to see it go.  It’s been a badge of pride and goes hand in hand with our ethos of preserving a traditional Kentish orchard and enhancing its biodiversity.  Plus we’d be simply accelerating the trend away from pesticide and herbicide free farming.  Which is all wrong and completely contrary to the growing scientific and medical evidence that we are poisoning our planet and its population. It’s a conundrum.  

ends.