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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Would you like some DDT with that organic cucumber?
  • Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:12:10 -0700


Would you like some DDT with that organic cucumber?
Stephanie Paige Ogburn | Dec 10, 2010 02:10 PM
http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/would-you-like-some-ddt-with-that-organic-cucumber

Consumers might assume that buying organic means the produce they purchase
lacks chemical residues and the farmers and farm workers growing organic
crops aren't exposed to toxic chemicals. This may not always be the case.
Organic farmers across the nation must contend with the possibility that the
land they farm has some of the very chemicals their farming methods are
designed to avoid.

As Rebecca Clarren's recent cover story, Farming's Toxic Legacy, revealed,
many former agricultural lands remain polluted with remnants of now-banned
pesticides. Some, like the chlorinated hydrocarbons dieldrin, aldrin, and
DDT, have dangerous breakdown products that remain in the soil for a hundred
years or more. Others, such as the insect-killer lead arsenate, break down
into the elements lead and arsenic, which never go away unless soil is
removed.

In Oregon, the only state where extensive testing on organic farmland was
ever conducted the certification body Organic Tilth found remnants of those
chlorine-based pesticides on much of the farmland that organic producers now
use. These tests took place in the early years of the organic movement during
the 1970s and 1980s when earnest farmers were trying to figure out what sort
of land they were growing on; ever since the United States Department of
Agriculture codified organic certification in 2002, soil tests for chemical
residues have been voluntary.

"If they [chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides] were ever put on, for any
reason, they're probably still there," says Harry MacCormack, a farmer who
headed up much of the group's soil testing on farms around the Willamette
Valley. In an ironic twist, high quality soils, known as "Class 1," are more
likely to have pesticide remnants, because they were probably used early on
for ag production.

Vegetables in the squash family, like cucumbers, zucchini, winter squash
(frequently used to make organic baby food) and melons all bioaccumulate
chlorinated hydrocarbons in their tissue; if it's in the soil, it's likely
it's in the cucumbers grown in that soil. Root crops like potatoes and
carrots also tend to soak up these pesticide remnants, says MacCormack.

cucumber

Vegetables in the cucumber (cucurbit) family, like squash and melons, all
tend to uptake remnants of certain pesticides. Photo courtesy Flickr user
Larry Hoffman.

The laws governing the transition to certified organic under the USDA require
producers to wait three years before growing certified crops on land that was
once conventionally farmed. While it is true that organophosphates, another
class of popular pesticide that includes malathion and parathion, usually
break down in three to five years, other chemicals are far more persistent.
The only way to really tell if chemicals have left the soil, and if the soil
has built up sufficient quantities of nutrients, microbes, and organic
matter, is to conduct soil tests.

When growers do find their soil has contaminants, there's no real way to
clean it. Growers can remove contaminated soil and bring in new soil, a
pricey undertaking. In Oregon, growers did an experiment trying to use squash
crops to capture the DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons left in the soil.
They purposely grew squash in contaminated soil, harvested and disposed of
the vegetables that had bioaccumulated toxins, and then tested the soil to
see if there was less contamination. This strategy ultimately did not work,
says MacCormack.

If land does play host to long-lasting chemicals, consumers may not even
know. Organic crops are rarely tested for residues [PDF, p.7], a failing the
program has been criticized for, although USDA deputy secretary Kathleen
Merrigan says program officials are trying to implement more frequent testing.

Organic baby food companies like Gerber have responded to consumer concerns
by requiring their organic growers go beyond USDA requirements and conduct
soil tests for toxic pesticide leftovers, so that they are not selling
organic baby food laced with DDT.

Like many political processes, the creation of organic standards was a messy
mix of science and compromise. Farmers today still complain that three years
is too long a time to be in transition, as they suffer yield losses from not
using synthetic chemicals without the price premiums from being certified
organic. But without soil testing these farmers, the crops they grow, and the
consumers they serve all may be exposed to the remainders of agriculture's
toxic legacy.




  • [Livingontheland] Would you like some DDT with that organic cucumber?, Tradingpost, 12/14/2010

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