BiO-Uncaster Farming,
U.S. Farmers Try To Reduce Chemical Dependence
By Pat Durkin
National Geographic
News Service
CHESTERTOWN. Md. The
new com crop unfurling in four
sandy fields on Remington Farms
not far from the Chesapeake Bay
represents a revolution that could
shake the U.S. agricultural com
munity at its very roots.
Responding to nationwide con
cerns about human health and the
environment, agribusinesses are
industriously looking for ways to
farm with fewer chemicals and
still make a profit. They want to
reduce their chemical dependence
before government does it for
them.
“If we don’t, chemicals could
be legislated out of existence,”
says Mike Borel, who oversees the
Remington Farms demonstration
project for DuPont, one of the
world’s largest agricultural chem
ical producers.
Farmers insist that they can’t
raise crops at a price consumers
are willing to pay without using
some chemicals. Chemical com
panies complain that the public
doesn’t understand pesticides.
People point to a legacy of DDT
and more recent scares about alar
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e careful around the bigger animals.
Stay on your side of the fence.
Saturday, May 21, 1994
and cyanide residues on apples
and grapes. Pesticide use has
tripled during the past 30 years.
The National Academy of Sci
ences warned this year that pesti
cides could be a major threat to
young children.
“We used to think in terms of
gallons. Now we think in terms of
grams,” says Adele Logan, of the
Washington-based National Agri
cultural Chemicals Association.
The four fields at the 3,000-acre
Remington Farms, a wildlife pre
serve for deer, ducks and geese
within the Chesapeake watershed,
will demonstrate different
approaches to growing com with
fewer chemicals. The harvest and
the environment will be monitored
for evidence of contamination.
Sponsors hope the project will
help calm consumers and send a
warning to reluctant farmers. It is
considered the most significant
effort yet to try to farm without
contaminating water supplies or
harming wildlife.
“The point is to make it believ
able,” says Raymond Forney, the
agronomist who designed and
manages the demonstration for an
alliance of some of the biggest
Crowning bigger and better cabbages and other vegetables and fruits without rely*
ig on chemicals Is a hope of American agriculture. A few major growers are experl
lentlng with no-chemicals methods. But even advocates concede that organlcally
own produce is too expensive at the consumer level for today’s mass market.
justnesses.
odale Institute, one of the
m’s largest organic fanning
inizations, is a partner along
the U.S. Department of Agri
ire, the Environmental Protec-
Agency and several
-ersities.
One Remington field will be
managed like a conventional farm,
with scheduled applications of
chemicals. Programs for the other
three rely on progressively fewer
chemicals and more biological
controls crop rotation,
nitrogen-fixing cover crops, and
low-till cultivation.
Each field has been sculpted as
separate watershed. Runoff from
jach funnels through its own spill
way, where electronic monitors
mtomatically test for contamin
mts. Pipes and and wells under
each field collect water as it seeps
through the ground.
Each method will be evaluated
for product quality, cost, and
effects on water supplies and
wildlife.
Throughout the United States,
other growers and researchers are
searching for their own ways to
cut chemical dependence. They’re
pitting “good” insects against bad,
developing sensors that determine
soil health, shooting aerial videos
that show weed infestations,
inventing industrial-strength
weed-whackers, and hybridizing
disease-resistant plants.
Chemical companies, for exam
ple, are developing herbicides so
targeted that they can go after a
specific enzyme of a specific
weed, then break down into harm
less compounds within days.
What the agricultural industry
is aiming for isn’t exactly organic
farming, although a few major
growers are experimenting with
the strictly no-chemicals approach
to see how far they can take it.
‘To be successful, it’s got to be
economically driven,” says James
Frevert, president of the Denver
based American Society of Farm
Managers and Rural Appraisers.
At the consumer level, organi
cally grown produce is too expen
sive for the mass market. Even
organic advocates concede that.
“If you have to pay more for
healthier food, that raises ques
tions about who you’re raising
food for,” Rodale’s Michael
Sands tells National Geographic.
The agricultural community
finally settled on an approach
called “sustainable agriculture," a
flexible concept that falls some
where between organic and the
chemical-intensive practices that
have spread through farmlands
since World War 11.
Sustainable agriculture, which
allows fanners a respectable profit
and selective use of chemicals,
became a national goal with the
1985 and 1990 federal farm bills.
The Clinton administration wants
to reduce pesticide use on 75 per
cent of the nation’s farmland by
2000 and reduce the pesticide
residues allowable on fruits and
vegetables.
Not everyone has given up
entirely on die organic approach.
With the right research, ways can
be found to make large-sclae
organic fanning profitable, insists
Bob Scowcroft, executive director
of die Organic Farming Research
Foundation in Santa Cruz, Calif.
Chemical companies and large
universities, he says “just don’t
fund research in organic farming.”