September/October 2019 5
Editorial
Soil & Health Association of NZ Inc
Organic NZ is published bi-monthly by the Soil &
Health Association of NZ Inc, a registered charitable
society established in 1941 to promote sustainable
organic agricultural practices and principles of good
health based on sound nutrition and the maxim
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Membership
Soil & Health Association members automatically
receive Organic NZ six times per year. See page 59
Chair of Soil & Health
Marion Wood
National Councillors
Steffan Browning, Jodie Bruning, Jenny Lux,
Bailey Peryman, Michael Ryan, Peter Wells
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3RVWDO PO Box 9693, Marion Square
Wellington, 6141
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Lucy Blackbourn: [email protected]
Enquiries and membership support
Florence Lundon-Moore: [email protected]
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Editor
Philippa Jamieson: [email protected]
Phone 03 473 9293
Proofreader: Peta Hudson
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Editorial Contributions
We welcome any story submissions and ideas.
Contact the editor for guidelines: editor@organicnz.
org.nz. Copyright © 2019 The Soil & Health
Association of New Zealand (unless otherwise
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ISSN 1175-*XHVWHGLWRULDOE\Marion WoodW
e need your help. This year
Soil & Health is campaigning
to phase out glyphosate from
our food, streets and parks, and our 2019
annual appeal is focused on this.
Please consider making a donation to
our appeal, and tell others about our work.
More details about the campaign and how
you can donate are on page 10, and on
our website at organicnz.org.nz/make-a-
donation.
I’m writing this in Fair Trade Fortnight,
thinking about a presentation I’m about
to give on the links between fair trade and
organics. It will be a university audience
and I’m guessing their main concern will
be climate change.
They were born long after the so-
called Green Revolution of the 1970s,
but that was the point when the world’s
farming changed in a way that paved the
way for climate change and biodiversity
destruction.
Farming used to be a way of life caring
for the soil and saving and adapting the
best strains of seeds to the local conditions.
Then it flipped to a business model based
on chemical interventions and a belief that
men could manipulate the land in any way
they chose in order to drive a short-term
financial profit. This was the era when
glyphosate came onto the market. It is now
one of the most widely used pesticides in
the world.
In Asia, Africa and South America
farmers were lured into the new models
only to discover that the chemically treated
seeds initially produced high yields but
soon cost them their profits and then the
ownership of their land.
Those who still had room to moveturned back to traditional methods of
farming and worked with the fair trade
movements (Trade Aid was one of the first
in 1973) to establish a different model of
trade. And here’s the link with organics –
the traditional methods were organic and it
became clear that their products not only
qualified for fair trade certification, but
also organic certification which developed
globally at the same time as the fair trade
certification.
Meanwhile the industrial model of
agriculture has become the victim of its
own assumptions of human dominance
over the environment. But instead of
recognising this and returning to a
humbler relationship with the land, there
is a denial of the toxic effects of pesticides
like glyphosate and a desire to invest in
GMOs and gene editing; the assumption is
that there must be a technological ‘fix’.
We certainly need to use all means at
our disposal to combat climate change and
build up our soils, but this has to be within
the environmental limits of the Earth.
The model of intensive industrial farming
is imposing unintended consequences
of destruction of our waterways and
biodiversity, and is now a leading source of
greenhouse gas emissions.
Our methods of farming must
change, and fair trade organic farmers are
modelling a different way of caring for the
land that sequesters carbon, regenerates
biodiversity and is part of the solution for
climate change.Marion Wood is chair of Soil &
Health, and executive director of
Commonsense Organics.We need your help
for healthy soils, healthy food
and healthy people