Are they required to be derived from natural sources, or do they just have to be chemically identical?
Depends on how you define “organic”. Since it’s a term d’marketing and one a scientific one, the definition will depend on the people selling it. In scientific terms, DDT is organic (it’s a carbon-based, covalent-bonded chemical compound).
In the U.S., “organic” when applied to food is a legal term with very precise meanings depending on the context. The legal definition does not tie out to the scientific term. This is a great GQ question and I’m interested in the answer.
I believe what qualifies as an organic fertilizer or pesticide differs between crops, so there is a lot of potential discussion here. I’m also interested in whether those organic crop treatments are actually safer or better for the environment than alternative treatments but I’m too lazy to do the research.
I’m assuming the OP is after pesticides that are permitted for use on crops that are labeled “organic” by USDA? Those are covered in CFR §205.601:Synthetic substances allowed for use in organic crop production. That’s a wide range of substances, but AFAIK all made using conventional chemical methods.
I link would have been nice, sorry. https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&SID=9874504b6f1025eb0e6b67cadf9d3b40&rgn=div6&view=text&node=7:3.1.1.9.32.7
I think the issue might be that while it’s easy to say… make something very similar to pyrethrins (i.e. pyrethroid insecticides), it’s probably easier to just make the real thing from flowers instead of trying to exactly synthesize it, so the organic growers use natural pyrethrins, while the conventional guys might use cypermethrin.
Certified organic farmer here. Guess it’s time to quit lurking and log in.
That’s accurate.
Words in English very often have more than one meaning. The word “organic” as used in “organic chemical” has a different meaning than the word “organic” as used in “organic farming”.
Probably not the way I think you mean that.
Some things are permissible for some uses and not others (you can clean your tools with rubbing alcohol, for instance, but you couldn’t dump it all over your fields.) Some things are only sensible for use on some crops, and using even a permissible material in an unreasonable fashion may not be allowed. And, at least in the USA and probably elsewhere, agricultural pesticides (the term includes insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides) are labeled only for use on specific crops and to control specific pests. This isn’t limited to organic agriculture; but following organic rules doesn’t exempt farmers from general rules, so we can also only use a substance labeled for the crop and pest. (To further complicate matters, this in the USA may vary by state.)
But if something’s a prohibited substance for organic use, then it’s prohibited for organic use for all crops.
I don’t think any one person is capable of doing the research, lazy or not. The potential interactions of tens of thousands of new compounds being added to the ecosystem not only with the crop and pest they’re supposed to be used on, but also with each other, with a very large number of other species, with the atmosphere, etc. is, to put it mildly, a huge subject. There are people working on it, of course.
But another point is that it isn’t just that organic growers use different crop treatments; it’s also that we use crop treatments differently. I’ve used copper fungicides, for instance, one year out of over thirty years farming; and then on one crop (tomatoes, in a very bad late blight year) that took up only a very small area of the farm. In order to use any pesticide, even one on the approved list, organic farmers are supposed to show that they’re using other methods – resistant varieties, timing of planting, spacing and pruning of crops for better airflow, encouragement of beneficial insects, et cetera – and are only resorting to the pesticide when/if those don’t work.
Thank you thorny locust. That is very useful information.
Here’s a Scientific American article on the topic: Mythbusting 101: Organic Farming > Conventional Agriculture | Scientific American
TL;DR, it’s complicated, but yes …
Quotes below are from the article cited, except as noted one near the end of the post.
To begin with, they’re wrong on the very first line.
USDA Certified Organic didn’t go into effect until 2010, true. But I’ve been certified organic since 1988, and some people for longer. Private agencies used to do the job; some of the same ones still do, though they now have to use the USDA standards if they’re going to use the word “organic”. Standards before the USDA got into it were occasionally more lenient on specific items, but often stricter, partly in that many of them covered areas (such as treatment of farmworkers) that the USDA refused to include, and partly in that the USDA is often more lenient in such things as treatment of livestock.
Comparing the intensivity of the use of pesticides in terms of pounds per acre is either silly, or deliberately misleading. Toxicity of entirely different materials can’t fairly be compared purely in terms of their weight; it may take much more weight of one than of another to present a hazard. Also, there’s no mention in the article of frequency of use either in terms of a given season or of use over multiple years (I can’t tell whether the study cited mentions this, as the link leads not to any specific study but only to the home page of NCFAP.)
In addition, copper and sulfur, which the article criticized organic farmers for using as pesticides, are both essential nutrients for crops (and humans), and may be applied as such by either conventional or organic farmers as soil amendments/fertilizers.
https://nrcca.cals.cornell.edu/soilFertilityCA/CA1/CA1_print.html
There is such a thing as copper toxicity; like boron and other micronutrients, while you need it, you don’t need much of it, and too much is indeed a bad idea. That’s why copper is a restricted material in organic use and “must be used in a manner that minimizes accumulation in the soil” if used as a pesticide, and requires soil testing to determine actual deficiency if to be used as a soil amendment.
Wilcox has a point, there. But that issue has more to do with monocropping, selection of varieties for yield and shipping quality rather than flavor and nutrition, treatment of livestock (especially considering the USDA’s unwillingness to enforce the original intention of the standards), and destruction of habitat.
It’s also the way the pesticides are used, as I explained in my earlier post in this thread. I won’t go into it again in this one, which is already a very long post.
Rotenone hasn’t been allowed for use in organic production for a number of years now. As the author appears to acknowledge later in the paragraph – but why then bring it up in the first place? Is the implication that organic farmers think all naturally occuring substances are nontoxic? That’s nonsense. We don’t allow lead arsenate, either – and, in fact, because my farm had an orchard back in the 1920’s, I was required (clear back in the 1980’s) to test for lead in the soil before I could become certified organic. There would have been no such requirement for a conventional farmer.
The stuff’s in the rain, folks. And they found less of them in the organic than in the conventional.
Here’s Consumer Reports on the subject (the second link’s a pdf):
https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/health/natural-health/pesticides/index.htm
https://article.images.consumerreports.org/prod/content/dam/cro/news_articles/health/CR_FSASC_FromCroptoTablePesticides_Mar2015.pdf
Raw manure is forbidden in organic use within 90 days of harvest of a crop whose edible portion does not contact the soil, and within 120 days of harvest of a crop whose edible portion does contact the soil. Composting standards for organic use require heat sufficient to kill pathogens. The implication that organic growers are dumping raw manure on your lettuce is entirely untrue. Many organic growers don’t even use manure.
The one study cited by the article for an increased level of e coli and salmonella in organic produce uses 32 farms claiming to be organic, only 8 of which were actually certified. There are both good and bad possible reasons for farms who say they’re using organic methods to not be certified; one of the bad reasons is a failure to understand or maintain the standards. All the organic farms chosen for the study did use manure, which strikes me as odd for produce farms, especially if they’re not including dried, pelleted, and heat treated forms; certainly mixed farms that also have livestock may be using manure, but this is also true of conventional farms.
(I note that most E coli are neutral or actively beneficial. Your gut is full of E coli right now. None of the study’s samples, organic or conventional, contained E. coli O158:H7, which is indeed dangerous.)
– ah, here’s an article on that study that gives more detail than the abstract the link went to:
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2004/05/study-yields-mixed-findings-about-microbes-organic-produce
and that article states that the certified organic farms did indeed have less contamination than the non-certified farms claiming organic practices; says that it was the first year of a three-year study, and the second year found no salmonella and still no O157:H7; and quotes the paper as saying
– there’s a good deal more to the Atlantic article, but that’s all I’ve got time to deal with right now (actually, rather more than I had time to deal with.) Based on the above, though, I’ve got serious doubts about the rest of it.
Excellent, and a post worthy of the occasion.
Indeed, it is legal here to promote bottled water as being organic.
From the perspective of a scientist, the only thing organic is the plastic bottle.
That might not be enough to protect consumers from dangerous E. coli strains.
“Research conducted by Doyle’s team has shown that E. coli O157 can persist in soil containing compost or contaminated water up to six months. ’The duration of contamination by E. coli O157 on produce grown in these fields varied depending on the type of produce. Greatest persistence (around 170 days) occurred on parsley and carrots, whereas least persistence (around 75 days) occurred on onions and lettuce’, he comments.”
There’s also the threat of mycotoxin contamination, which some scientists think is a greater concern in organic farming.
I wouldn’t have qualms about eating organic produce coming from farms where good practices were used. I do have doubts about spending up to twice as much (or even more) for organic food that doesn’t have proven benefits as far as added safety and nutrition compared to regular foods.
To address the OP:
My impression is that organic pesticides are generally produced the same way as other pesticides - using reproducible reactions, extraction and purification methods to assure a standardized product.
It’s not (at least I hope it isn’t) a case of individual farmers or small outfits adding pyrethum flowers to a saucepan and home-brewing their concoctions. That could easily cause major problems with contaminants and too little/too much of the active ingredient(s).* Farmers and consumers would be at increased risk.
*this problem plagues users and sellers of herbal remedies. Often, when you buy stuff from Fly-By-Night Botanicals you have no idea what you’re actually getting.
Thanks, Zyada and penultima thule.
True. Research is ongoing. It’s possible that the requirement might need to be for longer restricted times, at least for some crops; those using raw manures might need to be applying only during a year when the field’s in cover crops, or crops for livestock feed, or crops that are cooked before eating.
One of the advantages of the old private-agency certification process was that it was actually more responsive to new information. NOFA-NY, for instance, used to go through the entire standards every year and rewrite where it seemed necessary. There is of course a process for changes in the USDA standards; but it’s slower, more unwieldy, and more affected by politics.
I’d note that nothing done (or not done) on the farm is going to entirely protect consumers; food can also be contaminated during the packing and/or transportation process. Because many people in the USA are eating food that was mixed from multiple sources and then bagged up together, one sick worker, one unclean piece of equipment, or, yes, one bit of contaminated field, can make many people ill, quite possibly in multiple states.
Some studies do indeed show such benefits. Others don’t.
I think much of the problem is that there are very many factors that affect both safety and nutrition; and studies generally aren’t done in such a way as to even attempt to rule them out.
In order to really settle the question of whether organic methods produce greater nutrition, for example, what you’d need to do would be to pair as closely as possible a number of specific organic and conventional farms: same soil types, same sun exposure, same microclimate, etc.; but, for a decent sample, a number of pairs in different parts of the country having different soil types, sun exposure, microclimate, etc. Then you’d need to get them, or at least to get each pair, to grow the same variety/cultivar of the same crop – and try to find varieties that do equally well under organic and conventional culture, which limits the choices – and to plant on the same day (so they’d be exposed to the same weather and daylength), and to harvest at the same degree of ripeness, and to otherwise do everything that’s not specific to organic or conventional agriculture in the same way. Then you test the results for nutrition; and you’d have some actual answers.
You can’t use different small strips in the same field, because that would disrupt the buildup of beneficial organisms on the organic strips. And both farms need to have been in either organic or conventional management for at least several years, for the same reason, and because soil tilth is likely to be affected and that takes years. And you’d need to run the experiment for several years once started, to minimize the effects of any particular year’s weird weather.
To the best of my knowledge, nobody’s even attempted to do it that way. The Rodale Institute is working on the subject; but that’s only one location.
Not usually, no. Most people are buying a product of labeled specific strength that was indeed produced in a factory. And anyone who’s certified organic who’s producing their own home brew is going to have to list that for their certifying agency; and the agency ought to be requiring details of the means of any such home production, and only allowing the results if the method’s not going to be liable to such problems.
Certified organic growers have to list every material expected to be in use on that farm, along with the manufacturer; and can only use items that particular farm is approved to use, and only in accordance with the overall organic plan, and any restrictions the certifier puts on the use. And that is very specific items: sometimes one formulation of the same general product is allowable and another is prohibited. Sometimes one manufacturer won’t release complete ingredient info, or includes a prohibited “inactive” ingredient, and so their product isn’t allowed when the same basic ingredient from another manufacturer is permitted.
What some of the people who say they’re ‘using organic methods’ but aren’t certified may be doing is another question. Again, there are perfectly good reasons for doing this. The expense both in money and in paperwork time is significant, especially for very small farms; and a farm marketing to people who can talk with the farmer directly, and/or who don’t much care if the product is certified as long as it’s good, may quite reasonably be unwilling to certify. Some people also have major issues with the specific USDA program, and are unwilling to certify for that reason, though they may be certified with one of the alternatives which are now required not to use the word “organic”. But some people who aren’t certified are using the claim in bad faith; and some others are using it in good faith but with really limited understanding – they may be doing any of a number of things which would disqualify them, under the mistaken impression that those things are perfectly fine.
Of course, I would also say that some very large certified operations are also using the term in bad faith; and the USDA is letting them.
If possible, try to know where the food is coming from, and to talk with the farmer. I understand that this is impractical for a lot of people all of the time; and for just about all of us some of the time.
Welcome to the boards, thorny locust! I appreciate your addressing the questions here. With your input, this has quickly become one of the most informative threads I’ve read.
I buy organic produce to support three goals: (1) reducing my and farm workers’ exposure to toxic chemicals, (2) reducing environmental degradation due to factory farming methods, and a distant (3) because the produce might actually be nutritionally superior. Unfortunately, I’m less than reasonably certain that I am accomplishing these goals by buying organic produce.
As best I can figure out I am reducing my exposure to toxic chemicals but there is some chance that I am increasing my risk of e coli exposure and (as Jackmannii’s link suggests) maybe to mycotoxins as well. I don’t know if the former outweighs the latter.
It seems generally accepted that organic farming is better for the environment, so that’s good at least.
As for whether organic produce is nutritionally superior, my personal experience is that organic strawberries taste like berries and conventional strawberries taste like straw. Other than that, I don’t have any evidence that organic produce offers more nutrition.
Thanks for the explanation. I vaguely understood that certain treatments were used only on certain crops but not why.
That seems like pretty slipshod analysis to me too and I appreciate your offering a counterpoint to the whole article.
The article was corrected to say that Rotenone was re-approved for organic use in 2010. Has it be re-de-approved?
I don’t think that’s so clear.
(Although some crops are better than others.)
Counterpoint: A response from the Rodale Institute:
Thanks!
– and you’re, sort of, right. I just checked again, and it was theoretically approvable for organic use for some of those years; but it was in effect unavailable, because there was no formulation containing rotenone that was EPA listed for use on crops. This apparently got translated into my head as the certification agency informing growers that rotenone was not approved for use; which, in practice, it wasn’t, though the lack of approval was coming from the EPA (and therefore binding on everyone in the USA) rather than from the NOP. The EPA apparently does allow it to be used for killing fish.
In any case, it has indeed been re-de-approved for organic use, as of December 2018:
markn+, thanks for including the Rodale counterpoint. That addresses a lot of what I would have said.
I’ll add that the highest total nutrient yields per acre are most likely from farming systems that mix multiple crops together in one field. While the yield from any single crop in these systems is generally less than in a monocrop, the total nutrient yield, in addition to being more diverse, is likely to be higher, especially over time and in varying weather. – cites are a little difficult to sort out, because not much work has been done with these systems, and most of what I did find seems to have been done with perennial grains, which is a fascinating field in itself but not a good example for most crops. Here’s a few samples, though:
https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1985/8512/851207.PDF [pdf]
These systems are far more suitable for organic management than for conventional management, because conventional herbicides and other pesticides that are suitable for (and labeled for) one crop are very likely to damage or kill other crops in the system; and/or to not be able to be applied according to proper directions because of varying times of flowering (hazards to pollinators) and/or harvest (days-to-harvest requirements intended to protect consumers), etc.
They’re also, of course, mostly not well suited to machine planting, cultivation, or harvest; at least aside from machinery designed for such situations, of which there currently isn’t much; and what little machinery will work in them is very small-scale.
So they need a great deal of hand work. While they’re most efficient per acre, they’re not most efficient per human labor hour; which is the metric that’s mostly been used by modern agriculture when it talks about “efficiency”. However, if we’re talking about long term sustainability of agricultural systems on a planet with a high human population level, that may well be where we need to go. And I note both that very many of the people who’ve been driven out of farming over the past century didn’t want to go; and that many people do such work, in their home gardens, voluntarily. Much of the trick is being able to farm for oneself/with one’s family, of course, rather than for distant landowners on land one stands no chance of ever being in charge of.
Sorry to double post; but the edit window on this board is so short that I can’t type a change fast enough to beat it, unless it’s a one-or-two word change that I spot instantly.
I forgot that I also wanted to address the above. I have seen price premiums of twice or more occasionally; generally on meats (for which the issue is likely to be humane treatment as well as otherwise organic management) and occasionally on processed foods. IME the premium on fresh produce is much less than that; and is sometimes much less than that also on meats and processed items. Might depend on where you shop, of course.