>It doesn't mean he shuns the use of fertilizer or pesticides.......<
The confusion here, Mary, is that most of us tend to use the word "chemical" as shorthand to mean "synthetic chemical." The fact is, of course, that without chemicals none of us, least of all vegetable plants, can survive. Furthermore, we tend to think that fertilizer, pesticide, fungicide, etc. are all words that are synonymous with the word chemical, which we've already misconstrued.
To put a point on it, plants require a group of 16 nutrients for healthy growth; nitrogen, phosphorus, and potasium are the big three, and the rest in trace amounts. So long as those nutrients are available in soluble forms that they can use, the plants don't care whether those "chemicals" come from compost or from a powder you buy at the garden center.
The real point of organic growing methods is that it's concerned with sustainability, and preservation of the land. Thus the difference between "organic chemicals" and "synthetic chemicals." The former doesn not have long-term negative effects on the soil or its micro-herd, and the latter does. Organic growing concerns itself with much more than what is or is not put in the ground and on the plants.
One example. I referred, above, to the giant, multi-row vacuum machines the factory farms use to control insects. Real gee-whiz technology that impressed the **** out of me the first time I saw one in operation.
Their idea of control is to suck up every critter on or near the plants. True organic growers, however, realize that there are beneficial insects as well as harmful ones, and that throwing the baby out with the bathwater does not show good stewardship of the land.
Similarly, a true organic grower, if he has to use Bt (that's the least destructive of the natural insecticides you referred to), does so selectively, rather than flooding the crop with it on some artificial shedule.
Unfortunately, we do that sort of thing a lot. For instance, any crossing of two plant varieties produces a biological hybrid. But when we say "hybrid" it's shorthand for the proprietary F1 varieties produced by seed companies. You can see the potential for confusion there.  |