 |
|
|
|
BROWSE THE
SITE:
|
IN MY OPINION: BY STUART DAW Potatoes Can't Run© 2003 Stuart Daw "Nature,
to be conquered, must be obeyed." (Francis
Bacon). This was one of British Empiricist Bacon's more profound statements of
truth. It was written a few hundred years before modern environmentalists came
into being, and is deceptive in that it doesn't mean what it appears at first
glance. He accepted that man's proper right is to create the values he needs to
exist and prosper, bending the environment to his purpose, nature being there
for his benefit. But Bacon also in the above quote acknowledged that man, in so
doing, must respect that all things in the environment can only act in
accordance with their nature. What
has all this to do with potatoes and coffee beans? One of the early jobs for a
young farm boy, as I once was, is tending the family garden. Farmers' incomes
may be lean, but much of farm life can be self-sustaining, with cows, chickens,
and hogs to complement the cornucopia of fruits and vegetables that flow from
the garden. One of those vegetables is the potato. When
it came to potatoes, one unpleasant job for me was picking little red potato
bugs off the leaves. The bugs can make short work of the plant, and they have a
way of coming on in waves. Farmers are traditionally frugal and likely to avoid
buying pesticides when they have young kids on the farm to do the job for
nothing. They also try to save on fertilizer by using the byproduct of the farm
animals. Something
that old-time farmers probably never thought of was that with no fertilizer or
pesticides they were actually producing organic food, but receiving nothing
extra for it. Today, with the organic movement in full sway, including in the
coffee business, it might be useful to take an analytic look at that whole
phenomenon. Let's
start with the potato. It can't flee from the garden to escape the bugs, for it
has no legs to run, and no arms and hands with which to swat them. It can't
shout to scare them off, for it has no voice. The bugs are maddeningly silent,
but the potato couldn't hear them coming anyhow, for it has no ears. How
then does nature protect its little potato? There surely must be some way to
give it a chance for survival. Nature found a way, by giving it a natural
defense. Left to its own devices, it actually manufactures a cancer-producing
substance, a carcinogen that repels and can actually kill the potato bug. That
works to a point, but in the long run the potato bug usually wins the battle (as
a humorous aside, I should mention that a northeastern university did an
experiment in which a potato was developed that was so loaded with natural
poisons that when an adult human ate two of them he had to be rushed to
hospital. Let's hope no one tries to bring that item to market). But
what happens when the farmer applies pesticides? The pesticides win hands down,
saving the potato for human consumption. Our potato soon thinks it has no
enemies, becomes real cool and laid back, because it doesn't have to produce its
own, inefficient anti-bug medicine. So when dug up from the garden, it is in
that sense "pure." What
significance does this hold for the consumer? The "organic" potato
still contains its carcinogenic (and mutagenic) material, an unpleasant thought,
for it can find its way right into our unsuspecting tummy. But where a pesticide
has been applied, of course only on the outside, and when it has also been
carefully washed before cooking, no such material is present. And so it would
seem to be safer than its "organic" counterpart. And
what does this mean when applied to the coffee bean? Does coffee need the
protection of man, as does the potato? First, the presence of coffee pests is
much lower at high altitudes, so organic farming is much easier there than
further down the mountain or on the plain. And since the quality of coffee
varies directly with the altitude at which it is grown, the odds are in favor of
genuinely organic coffee from higher ground meeting a high taste profile. Of
course a non-organically grown coffee at the same altitude will taste just as
fine. For
the farmer making his living (i.e. achieving his values), to use or not to use
pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer can be, figuratively speaking, a life and
death matter in the struggle for survival. Although the available data varies
from region to region, in general, unprotected coffee trees may only live half
as long as carefully husbanded ones, and the annual yield will likely be cut in
half. The farmer also faces the expense of organic certification. And
unfortunately more organic coffee is sold than is grown, a neat trick and a
challenge to good ethics. The
cost of the organic effort can hardly be recovered in selling prices, as the
consumer, all other things being equal, can not perceive any higher value in
terms of flavor. It will only be the coffee drinker-cum-environmentalist who
will attribute an extra value to something that is not intrinsically a better
product. At the same time, many of the same people express concern about the
plight of the poor farmer, the very one who loses by growing organic. The
only possible explanation can be that such people place their idea of what is
best for "nature" above that which is best for human beings. I take
the liberty of quoting from Richard F. Sanford, Ph.D., writing on the issue of
DDT and the Environmentalists. "There has been no environmental policy
quite as disastrous for human life as the banning of pesticides, specifically
DDT. That policy, combined with the more recent movement to preserve wetlands,
creates a nightmare of massive scope. "What
I am referring to is the death of some 300,000 people per day from diseases
linked to water, especially in swamps, fashionably known today as wetlands. The
World Health Organization estimates that 100 to 400 million people are infected
with malaria each year. Five million people die each year from malaria." There
is presently a massive amount of scientific material refuting claims made by
people such as Rachael Carson in her 1970's book Silent Spring. Now,
after the disaster caused by the elimination of DDT,
|
|
Copyright © 2000-2006 |
