Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist (55 page)

The species of fish and shellfish only recently brought into cultivation in marine aquaculture provide an interesting contrast to the plants, animals, and birds that have been farmed for thousands of years. The salmon, shrimp, tilapia, scallops, oysters, mussels, and other aquaculture species now farmed around the world are still very similar to their wild relatives. They have only been bred for a few generations. As time goes by and they are selected for desirable traits, they too will become distinct from their origins, more suitable for domestication and providing superior nutrition.

Transformation of the Land

Since agriculture began, and in particular during the past few centuries as our population soared, farming has transformed more than one-third of the earth’s land surface into landscapes that produce food.
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About 12 percent is used for growing crops while the balance serves as pasture and grazing lands. Clearing native forests and other natural ecosystems for agricultural purposes has had a significant impact on the earth’s environment, a more significant impact to date, perhaps, than all the CO
₂
we have emitted over the past 100 years. The effect on biodiversity has been particularly severe. In the past, agricultural clearance was one of the primary causes of species extinction. For example, a number of species became extinct in the Western Australian Wheat Belt due to rapid and extensive clearing. It is hardly surprising that clearing and completely altering landscapes for the production of food would have a major impact on biodiversity. One of the most important elements of modern sustainable agriculture is the conservation of as many native species of plants and animals in the agricultural landscape as is reasonably possible. This never includes agricultural pests, however. Any farmer who is crazy enough to try to save the insects that are devouring his or her produce will not have the financing to plant another crop.

There are a few things about agriculture we must accept. Along with air and water it is the primary requirement for our survival. Rather than simply decrying the negative impacts of farming, a sensible environmentalist will recognize the significance of food to our survival. Even today millions of people don’t have enough food, or enough of the foods that keep you healthy. Therefore the overall objective of sustainable agriculture should be to continue to feed the human population while at the same time working to reduce the negative impacts of farming. We must increase the production of food as the population grows, while at the same time developing techniques to minimize impacts on biodiversity, soil fertility, and water quality. This is one of our greatest challenges as agriculture by its very nature radically alters ecosystems. Simply put, we must learn to be better gardeners of this earth.

Intensive Agricultural Production

On April 30, 2002, I joined Nobel Peace Prize recipient Dr. Norman Borlaug, former U.S. senator George McGovern, former president of Costa Rica Dr. Oscar Arias, Dr. James Lovelock, and others in signing a Declaration in Support of Protecting Nature with HighYield Farming and Forestry.
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The signing ceremony took place in Washington, D.C., at the Center for Global Food Issues and received extensive media coverage.

Our purpose was clear. We all wanted the world to know one of the best ways to protect nature is to employ modern intensive agricultural practices; these include the use of fertilizers, pesticides, GPS systems, and genetic science. This is not obvious to many people, who might feel the best way to protect nature would be to adopt organic farming and to reject synthetic chemicals and high technology. The problem with this approach is that it’s simply not possible to grow as much food on an area of land with organic methods as it is with modern farming techniques. The more food we can produce on a given area of land, the less native forest must be cleared to grow it. One benefit of higher productivity is improved economic efficiency but from an environmental perspective the real benefit is that less land is converted from nature to food production.

Over the past 100 years, through advances in technology, chemistry, and genetics, we have learned to produce about five times as much food per unit of land. Imagine if we went back to the practices of 100 years ago; it simply wouldn’t be possible to grow as much food as we do today because, even if we cultivated every suitable place on earth, there would not be five times as much land. But regardless, some people feel genuinely concerned about so-called chemical fertilizers and pesticides and genetic modification. Let’s look at these things in more detail:

Fertilizer

Early agriculture was practiced on fertile lands . River deltas, flood plains, and former sea and lake bottoms are naturally rich in the nutrients plants require. It was soon discovered that applying animal manure and plant compost helped to increase crop productivity. Controlled irrigation was adopted early as a way of getting through dry periods and droughts. Over the centuries selective breeding improved crops and livestock by enhancing desirable traits. But it was not until the advent of the scientific revolution beginning in the 18
^th
century that modern agriculture began to take shape.

One of the first major advances in increasing productivity in agriculture was the addition to soil of fertilizers other than farm manure and compost. Most people know that the three major nutrients used as fertilizers are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium; they are also called NPK, after their chemical symbols. Plants also require calcium, magnesium, and sulfur in relatively large amounts. The minor nutrients are the elements iron, copper, manganese, boron, zinc, molybdenum, and chlorine. All of these are essential for healthy plant growth. Of course the elements carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, which come from the air and water, are the most important building blocks for plants as they are the components of the carbohydrates: the sugars, starches, oils, and fats.
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Because they are sourced directly from air and water, they are not normally considered fertilizers, but they are certainly essential nutrients. And we are beginning to recognize that in the context of rising CO
₂
levels in the atmosphere, it is correct to characterize CO
₂
as a fertilizer because higher CO
₂
promotes faster plant growth. There is no question CO
₂
, and the carbon it contains, is the single most important nutrient for plants, and hence for life on earth.

The first industrial fertilizers consisted of seabird droppings called guano. These were mined on islands in the tropical regions, which contained huge deposits of guano. The largest deposits were found on islands off Peru and Chile, where the Guanay Cormorant and other birds roosted for hundreds of thousands of years. These deposits, which are really just another form of animal manure, were rich in nitrogen and phosphorus. They also had insecticidal and fungicidal properties when sprayed on a plant’s leaves. Guano became a major commercial commodity during the 19th century but declined in importance when other sources of nitrogen and phosphorus became available. Guano is still mined in small quantities for use in organic farming.
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As an interesting aside, guano is also a source of saltpeter, or sodium nitrate, which is a key ingredient in explosives for warfare. This made the guano-rich islands off Peru and Chile into strategic assets, resulting in the War of the Pacific between the Peru-Bolivia alliance and Chile, which lasted from 1879 to 1883. To this day nitrogen fertilizers are one of the main ingredients, along with diesel fuel, used to make car bombs, roadside bombs, and suicide bombs; terrorists employ these bombs to further their evil work. This is but one of many examples of materials and technologies that can be used for both beneficial and destructive purposes.

One of the primary rules for “organic” farming is that no “synthetic” fertilizers or pesticides may be used. I have placed quotes around these words for good reason. The word organic, as it is used in organic farming, is not a scientific or technically meaningful term. In the context that organic farmers employ the word it is in fact a marketing term designed to sell products. The real definition of organic is both general (it has to do with living things) and specific (it has to do with compounds that contain carbon, as in
organic chemistry
) Because living things are based on carbon-containing compounds (chemicals), it follows that organic farming should follow suit. But this is not the case. Organic farmers are free to use such inorganic materials as copper sulfate, calcium hydroxide, ferric sulfate, and sulfur, even though they are not organic. They can also use ethylene, which although chemically organic, is a synthesized product of the petrochemical industry.
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In fact the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National List of Prohibited and Allowed Substances for organic crop and livestock production includes a section titled Synthetic Substances Allowed for Organic Crop Production.
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Among these are ethanol, isopropanol, calcium hypochlorite, chlorine dioxide, sodium hypochlorite, calcium polysulfide, copper hydroxide, copper oxide, copper oxychloride, chlorhexadine and iodine. Among the few synthetic substances not allowed are strychnine, lead, and arsenic, hardly the staple chemicals of modern nonorganic agriculture. So even though organic farmers claim to avoid synthetic chemicals, the list of the ones they can use is much longer than the ones they can’t. They seem to arbitrarily decide which synthetic substances are acceptable even though they oppose synthetic substances in principle. And the fact that a certain chemical is inorganic rather than organic is not that important even though everything is supposed to be, well, “organic.”

Organic growers reject “synthetic” nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium,—the three most important soil nutrients—yet they are allowed to farm with synthetic micronutrients including: sulfates, carbonates, oxides, or silicates of zinc, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, selenium, and cobalt. One can only conclude that organic farming is a rather bizarre superstition.

Judging by the number of allowed synthetic substances containing chlorine, the so-called devil’s element, you would think Greenpeace would blow the whistle on this situation, rather than badgering Apple and Hewlett-Packard about using vinyl insulation on the wires in their electronic devices.
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The Allowed Substances list also gives the green light to a number of pharmaceuticals that are used in raising organic livestock. These include butorphanol, described as a “morphinan-type synthetic opioid analgesic,” in other words a synthetic painkiller that behaves like morphine and opium.
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One wonders why they don’t just use morphine and opium seeing as these are derived directly from plants and are therefore organic. Then there is flurosemide, an organochlorine chemical that prevents racehorses from bleeding from the nose during races. I was not aware that there were organic racehorses.

Perhaps the most curious of all is the provision to allow the use of oxytocin, a mammalian hormone known in some circles as “the love hormone.” Oxytocin is a peptide involved in regulating birth, breast milk production, and maternal behavior, as well as orgasm, anxiety, trust, and love. In livestock rearing oxytocin is used to induce labor when it does not come naturally in a timely fashion.
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I had always imagined hormones were one class of substance that would be absolutely taboo in organic farming. Otherwise, why all the fuss about using another natural hormone, bovine growth hormone, in dairy cows?

In 1909 the German chemist Fritz Haber succeeded in combining nitrogen from the air with hydrogen to form ammonia. He did this by using heat and high pressure. The chemical company BASF purchased the technique. At BASF, it fell to Carl Bosch to scale Haber’s lab work up to commercial production. By 1913 ammonia was being manufactured in commercial quantities for use as fertilizer, and then for explosives during World War I. The Haber-Bosch method is to this day one of the most important chemical processes ever devised. Fritz Haber received the Nobel Prize for his invention in 1918, as did Carl Bosch in 1930. Today more than 80 percent of the nearly 136 million tonnes (150 million tons) of ammonia produced annually is used to make fertilizer. The balance is used for cleaning agents, nitrogen chemistry, pollution control, refrigeration, and explosives. Manufacturing ammonia consumes more than 1 percent of global energy production.
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Nitrogen is naturally abundant, as it comprises 79 percent of the atmosphere. But plants cannot take up nitrogen directly as they can other nutrients. Nitrogen is essential for the production of proteins (muscle tissue, for example) and enzymes, the catalysts that make many chemical reactions in plants and animals possible. Enter one of the unsung heroes of living creation: the nitrogen-fixing bacteria. These microscopic wonders are capable of ingesting nitrogen directly from the air and synthesizing nitrogen compounds that can then be taken up and used by plants as a source of nitrogen. Some species of nitrogen-fixing bacteria dwell in the soil, where, as they live and die, they add nitrogen to the soil in a form that plants can take up and utilize. Other species have formed a symbiotic relationship with the roots of certain plants, in particular the pea family, also known as the legumes (
Fabacea spp.).