Spring 2022 ORGANIC REPORT 34 The Dirt on Organic Farming Podcast OATS Answers Some of the Most Common Skepticisms of Organic Regulatory Mallory Krieger Nate Powell-Palm OVER THE years, I have been asked some really tough questions about organic farming. Whether it’s from my uncle at Thanksgiving who fears that organic can never produce high enough yields or from my neighbor farmer down the road who just can’t understand why organic farmers could be comfortable tilling the soil. My life is full of friends and family who look at my career in organic with puzzlement. Where I see abundance, health, and profits, they see potential pitfalls and missed opportunities. My colleagues and I at the Organic Agronomy Training Service (OATS) are working to bring better access to technical assistance for organic and transitional farmers. One path we are taking is to cross-train conventional agronomists and Certified Crop Advisors in organic production methods. Many of the agricultural professionals we are working with share the same criticisms of organic agriculture that I hear from my conventional farming friends and family. They ask me tough, well-reasoned questions that deserve thorough and honest answers. • With the widespread use of tillage to control weeds, will organics create another dust bowl? • Why does organic farming turn its back on scientific advancements like synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and genetic engineering? • Is organic anti-science? • Organic yields drag far behind conventional, can organic ever hope to feed the continually growing world population? • Is it even possible to get through transition without losing a bunch of money? So, my colleague Nate Powell-Palm and I decided to get curious. We hit the road (so to speak) and gathered up the six most common and hard-hitting criticisms of organic that we could find. Then, we set about answering them in the form of a podcast. “The Dirt on Organic Farming” explores these criticisms and offers honest and fair answers that are driven both by data and real-world experience. We interviewed 20 farmers, researchers, economists, and policy experts to gain a thorough set of viewpoints on each question. What we found are farmers and researchers who have looked deeply at the problems in agriculture and set about to find solutions. Organic is an industry full of innovators who are taking the power of scientific inquiry and putting it to use in a way that enacts their personal set of values. Vince Jaeger, an organic farmer from Fairfield, IA, put it like this in Episode 1: “Well, I love it. It’s changing so fast. The stuff that [organic farmers are] doing this year compared to what we could have done five years ago, it’s unbelievable. The advancement is there. It’s not just a lab where we’re trying to fix the problem that we created when we fixed the last problem. We’re actually coming up with solutions and we’re moving forward.” Listen to all six episodes of the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Google Podcasts, and the OATS website.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Nzc3ODM=