Tue March 18, 2008
Farm Chemicals Hard On Environment, Wallets
Posted By: Paul Hanley

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 also make farmers more money.

Summary results from the first eight years of the study, which started in 1992 in Glenlea, Manitoba, show that 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% 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 weed 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% 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.

(This comment first appears in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, March 18, 2008)


Fri February 08, 2008
Rivergreen Ecovillage in Saskatoon
Posted By: Paul Hanley

Ecovillages are new models of community design. They seek to demonstrate better forms of urban and rural planning.

I have been working for three years to create an ecovillage in my city. Rivergreen Ecovillage will be a community of about 150 people located on a brownfield site in downtown Saskatoon. For more information on this exicting venture, visit these websites, www.rivergreen.ca and www.prairie-ecovillage.org.