slow food nations 165David’s communion with his cornfield is part meditation and part biology.
The plants, insects, birds, mammals, and microbes interact in such com-
plicated ways, he is still surprised by new discoveries even after a lifetime
spent mostly outdoors watching. He has seen swallow populations fl uctu-
ate year by year, and knows what that will mean. He watches cliff swal-
lows following the mower and binder in the fields, downwind, snapping
up leafhoppers and grasshoppers, while the purple martins devour crane
flies. The prospect of blanketing them all with toxic dust even once, let
alone routinely, strikes him as self- destructive, like purposely setting fi re
to his crops or barn.
David and Elsie were raised by farmers and are doing the same for an-
other generation. Throughout the afternoon their children, in-laws, and
grandchildren flowed in and out of the yard and house, the adults con-
sulting about shared work, the barefoot kids sharing a long game of cous-
ins and summer. Now we stopped in to meet the son and daughter- in-law
oped herbicides have now become ineffective for controlling some weeds.
Some 300 weed species resist all herbicides. Uh-oh, now what?
The standard approach has been to pump up the dosage of chemicals. In
1965, U.S. farmers used 335 million pounds of pesticides. In 1989 they used
806 million pounds. Less than ten years after that, it was 985 million. That’s
three and a half pounds of chemicals for every person in the country, at a cost of
$8 billion. Twenty percent of these approved- for-use pesticides are listed by the
EPA as carcinogenic in humans.
So, how are the bugs holding out? Just fine. In 1948, when pesticides were
first introduced, farmers used roughly 50 million pounds of them and suffered
about a 7 percent loss of all their field crops. By comparison, in 2000 they used
nearly a billion pounds of pesticides. Crop losses? Thirteen percent.
Biologists point out that conventional agriculture is engaged in an evolution-
ary arms race, and losing it. How can we salvage this conflict? Organic agricul-
ture, which allows insect predator populations to retain a healthy presence in our
fields, breaks the cycle.STEVEN L. HOPP