The Rational Optimist (P.S.)

by Matt Ridley

This is just one example of how the organic movement’s insistence on freezing agricultural technology at a midtwentieth-century moment means it misses out on environmental benefits brought by later inventions. ‘I’m so tired of people who wouldn’t visit a doctor who used a stethoscope instead of an MRI demanding that farmers like me use 1930s technology to raise food,’ writes the Missouri farmer Blake Hurst. Organic farmers are happy to spray copper sulphate or nicotine sulphate, but forbid themselves the use of synthetic pyrethroids, which swiftly kill insects but have very low toxicity for mammals and do not persist in the environment causing collateral damage to non-pests. They forbid themselves herbicides, which means they have to weed by hand, using poorly paid labour, or by tilling and flame-throwing, which can devastate soil fauna, accelerate soil erosion and release greenhouse gases. They forbid themselves fertiliser made from air, but allow themselves fertiliser made from trawled fish.