Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist

by Patrick Moore

  Fertilizer

  Early agriculture was practiced on fertile lands . River deltas, flood plains, and former sea and lake bottoms are naturally rich in the nutrients plants require. It was soon discovered that applying animal manure and plant compost helped to increase crop productivity. Controlled irrigation was adopted early as a way of getting through dry periods and droughts. Over the centuries selective breeding improved crops and livestock by enhancing desirable traits. But it was not until the advent of the scientific revolution beginning in the 18th century that modern agriculture began to take shape.

  One of the first major advances in increasing productivity in agriculture was the addition to soil of fertilizers other than farm manure and compost. Most people know that the three major nutrients used as fertilizers are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium; they are also called NPK, after their chemical symbols. Plants also require calcium, magnesium, and sulfur in relatively large amounts. The minor nutrients are the elements iron, copper, manganese, boron, zinc, molybdenum, and chlorine. All of these are essential for healthy plant growth. Of course the elements carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, which come from the air and water, are the most important building blocks for plants as they are the components of the carbohydrates: the sugars, starches, oils, and fats.[7] Because they are sourced directly from air and water, they are not normally considered fertilizers, but they are certainly essential nutrients. And we are beginning to recognize that in the context of rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere, it is correct to characterize CO2 as a fertilizer because higher CO2 promotes faster plant growth. There is no question CO2, and the carbon it contains, is the single most important nutrient for plants, and hence for life on earth.

  The first industrial fertilizers consisted of seabird droppings called guano. These were mined on islands in the tropical regions, which contained huge deposits of guano. The largest deposits were found on islands off Peru and Chile, where the Guanay Cormorant and other birds roosted for hundreds of thousands of years. These deposits, which are really just another form of animal manure, were rich in nitrogen and phosphorus. They also had insecticidal and fungicidal properties when sprayed on a plant’s leaves. Guano became a major commercial commodity during the 19th century but declined in importance when other sources of nitrogen and phosphorus became available. Guano is still mined in small quantities for use in organic farming.[8]

  As an interesting aside, guano is also a source of saltpeter, or sodium nitrate, which is a key ingredient in explosives for warfare. This made the guano-rich islands off Peru and Chile into strategic assets, resulting in the War of the Pacific between the Peru-Bolivia alliance and Chile, which lasted from 1879 to 1883. To this day nitrogen fertilizers are one of the main ingredients, along with diesel fuel, used to make car bombs, roadside bombs, and suicide bombs; terrorists employ these bombs to further their evil work. This is but one of many examples of materials and technologies that can be used for both beneficial and destructive purposes.

  One of the primary rules for “organic” farming is that no “synthetic” fertilizers or pesticides may be used. I have placed quotes around these words for good reason. The word organic, as it is used in organic farming, is not a scientific or technically meaningful term. In the context that organic farmers employ the word it is in fact a marketing term designed to sell products. The real definition of organic is both general (it has to do with living things) and specific (it has to do with compounds that contain carbon, as in organic chemistry) Because living things are based on carbon-containing compounds (chemicals), it follows that organic farming should follow suit. But this is not the case. Organic farmers are free to use such inorganic materials as copper sulfate, calcium hydroxide, ferric sulfate, and sulfur, even though they are not organic. They can also use ethylene, which although chemically organic, is a synthesized product of the petrochemical industry.[9] In fact the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National List of Prohibited and Allowed Substances for organic crop and livestock production includes a section titled Synthetic Substances Allowed for Organic Crop Production.[10] Among these are ethanol, isopropanol, calcium hypochlorite, chlorine dioxide, sodium hypochlorite, calcium polysulfide, copper hydroxide, copper oxide, copper oxychloride, chlorhexadine and iodine. Among the few synthetic substances not allowed are strychnine, lead, and arsenic, hardly the staple chemicals of modern nonorganic agriculture. So even though organic farmers claim to avoid synthetic chemicals, the list of the ones they can use is much longer than the ones they can’t. They seem to arbitrarily decide which synthetic substances are acceptable even though they oppose synthetic substances in principle. And the fact that a certain chemical is inorganic rather than organic is not that important even though everything is supposed to be, well, “organic.”

  Organic growers reject “synthetic” nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium,—the three most important soil nutrients—yet they are allowed to farm with synthetic micronutrients including: sulfates, carbonates, oxides, or silicates of zinc, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, selenium, and cobalt. One can only conclude that organic farming is a rather bizarre superstition.

  Judging by the number of allowed synthetic substances containing chlorine, the so-called devil’s element, you would think Greenpeace would blow the whistle on this situation, rather than badgering Apple and Hewlett-Packard about using vinyl insulation on the wires in their electronic devices.[11]

  The Allowed Substances list also gives the green light to a number of pharmaceuticals that are used in raising organic livestock. These include butorphanol, described as a “morphinan-type synthetic opioid analgesic,” in other words a synthetic painkiller that behaves like morphine and opium.[12] One wonders why they don’t just use morphine and opium seeing as these are derived directly from plants and are therefore organic. Then there is flurosemide, an organochlorine chemical that prevents racehorses from bleeding from the nose during races. I was not aware that there were organic racehorses.

  Perhaps the most curious of all is the provision to allow the use of oxytocin, a mammalian hormone known in some circles as “the love hormone.” Oxytocin is a peptide involved in regulating birth, breast milk production, and maternal behavior, as well as orgasm, anxiety, trust, and love. In livestock rearing oxytocin is used to induce labor when it does not come naturally in a timely fashion.[13] I had always imagined hormones were one class of substance that would be absolutely taboo in organic farming. Otherwise, why all the fuss about using another natural hormone, bovine growth hormone, in dairy cows?

  In 1909 the German chemist Fritz Haber succeeded in combining nitrogen from the air with hydrogen to form ammonia. He did this by using heat and high pressure. The chemical company BASF purchased the technique. At BASF, it fell to Carl Bosch to scale Haber’s lab work up to commercial production. By 1913 ammonia was being manufactured in commercial quantities for use as fertilizer, and then for explosives during World War I. The Haber-Bosch method is to this day one of the most important chemical processes ever devised. Fritz Haber received the Nobel Prize for his invention in 1918, as did Carl Bosch in 1930. Today more than 80 percent of the nearly 136 million tonnes (150 million tons) of ammonia produced annually is used to make fertilizer. The balance is used for cleaning agents, nitrogen chemistry, pollution control, refrigeration, and explosives. Manufacturing ammonia consumes more than 1 percent of global energy production.[14]

  Nitrogen is naturally abundant, as it comprises 79 percent of the atmosphere. But plants cannot take up nitrogen directly as they can other nutrients. Nitrogen is essential for the production of proteins (muscle tissue, for example) and enzymes, the catalysts that make many chemical reactions in plants and animals possible. Enter one of the unsung heroes of living creation: the nitrogen-fixing bacteria. These microscopic wonders are capable of ingesting nitrogen directly from the air and synthesizing nitrogen compounds that can then be taken up and used by plants as a source of nitrogen. Some species of nitrogen-fixing bacteria dwell in the soil, where, as they li
ve and die, they add nitrogen to the soil in a form that plants can take up and utilize. Other species have formed a symbiotic relationship with the roots of certain plants, in particular the pea family, also known as the legumes (Fabacea spp.).

  The roots of these plants have specialized nodules, which are designed to provide a home for the nitrogen-fixing bacteria. There the bacteria produce nitrogen compounds, some of which are shared with the plant. In turn the plant provides some of its sugars to the bacteria, which they use for energy. These plants are commonly called nitrogen-fixers, even though it is actually the bacteria that do the specialized work. Nitrogen fixers are capable of colonizing mineral soil when the organic layer has been washed away by flooding or burned off by fire. Nitrogen-fixers such as alfalfa, peas, lentils, and beans are often used as rotation crops partly because they replenish nitrogen in the soil.

  Dr. Norman Borlaug is known as the father of the Green Revolution for his work in India and Pakistan in the 1960s, where he developed improved varieties of wheat, thus saving millions of people from starvation.[15] He estimates that the nitrogen fertilizer made from synthetic ammonia is responsible for the survival of nearly five billion of the nearly seven billion people on earth today. In other words, without the nitrogen we harvest from the air there would only be enough natural nitrogen in soils, compost, and manure to feed about two billion people.[16] This is a sobering point. It highlights both the fact that it would not be possible to have a population of seven billion if Fritz Haber had not invented a way to make ammonia, and the fact that we now depend on this process. Extreme greens might argue the world would have been better off if there were only two billion people. They may have their opinion, but the fact is there are nearly seven billion of us and unless we wish to see a calamity like no other we must recognize the importance of the Haber-Bosch process for our continued survival.

  For the life of me I do not understand how nitrogen harvested from the atmosphere can be characterized as “artificial” or “unnatural.” The nitrogen in the atmosphere is entirely natural and not artificial in any way. It is true that through science we learned how to synthesize ammonia from the nitrogen in the air. But we also learned to produce (synthesize) steel by blending iron with other metals, yet organic farmers are happy to use a steel hoe for weeding their fields. One can only conclude the ban on “synthetic” nitrogen in organic farming is either a kind of superstition or an illogical rule based on faulty information about the origin of the nitrogen.

  The story of phosphorus use as a fertilizer is not quite as fascinating as that of nitrogen. Phosphorus comes from phosphate rocks of sedimentary origin. These were laid down in ancient seas and are mined in a number of countries, chiefly the United States, China, and Morocco. Phosphorus is a constituent of DNA and the phospholipids, which form all cell membranes, and is thus central to the existence of life. Organic farmers use phosphate rock as a fertilizer, despite the fact that it is an inorganic mineral.

  Potassium has a source that is similar to the source of phosphorus; it is mined from massive potash deposits that are also of sedimentary origin from ancient seas. The province of Saskatchewan in Canada produces nearly 25 percent of the world’s potash from huge underground deposits. These were formed when the North American prairies were a great inland sea. Organic farmers use mined potash as a fertilizer even though it is an inorganic mineral, like phosphate rock.

  It is time consumers recognized that the premium they pay for foods marked “organic” is not doing them any good from a nutritional standpoint, or any standpoint, for that matter. This was made clear in an independent 2009 study, funded by the UK Food Standards Agency and carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. It concluded, “There is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.”[17] While organic farm groups routinely dispute this, they do not supply any evidence to back their claims.

  My conclusion on the issue of fertilizer application is that the so-called synthetic nitrogen fertilizers are obtained from the atmosphere and are therefore perfectly natural, that “organic” growers actually use quite a number of inorganic and synthetic substances, and that eating foods labeled “organic” has no nutritional benefits. In addition, more land is required to grow the same amount of organic food as conventional food and therefore there is a serious environmental downside to these production methods.

  Pesticides

  In the same way that human health and longevity has been greatly improved by modern medicine, crop and livestock health has been greatly improved by the use of pesticides and through veterinary science. Indeed the use of medications in agriculture is at least as important as fertilizer and genetics, which in combination have increased yields up to five times during the past hundred years.

  Most of us think nothing of taking medicine to cure an infection or a disease. We don’t think of it as taking pesticides in relatively large doses, right into our bodies. Many human medicines are designed to kill pests, otherwise known as bacteria, parasites, and viruses, in our bodies. The term pesticide comes from pest, as in pestilence (the most famous of which was the Black Death, or Great Pestilence, which killed about one-quarter of the human population in the 14th century), and cidium, from the Latin meaning “a killing.” [18] [19] Pests, diseases, weeds, and vermin are all categories of biodiversity that can destroy our food and our health, and we’d rather they didn’t exist.

  The general term for a substance used to kill living things is biocide, the literal meaning of which is “to kill life,” in other words, a poison. In medicine we use the term antibiotic (anti-life), which means exactly the same thing as biocide. Pesticides are used to kill living things that we judge as harmful. More specific terms for pesticides are: fungicide, herbicide, insecticide, rodenticide, algicide, germicide, and spermicide, depending on the category of living things one is trying to kill. The main reason chlorine is the most important element for human health is precisely because it is toxic to many of the pests and diseases that can harm us. It turns out that poisons, also known as medicines and pesticides, are essential for our survival.

  Why is it that we generally wish to take pesticides (medicine) to cure disease yet many of us fear the slightest residue of pesticides on our food? Are the chemicals we use to kill crop pests and cure livestock more dangerous than the medicines we take? Is there any evidence that pesticide residues on food damage our health? The answer to the last two questions is no, therefore the answer to the first one is that the fear of agricultural pesticide residues is largely irrational. Of course, as with many medications, it is possible to overdose, but the amount of pesticide residues on our food is thousands of times lower than any amount that would harm us.

  In the 1990s, the Cancer Research Institutes of the U.S. and Canada collaborated on a multi-year study of all scientific publications about the connection between cancer in humans and pesticide residues on food.[20] They could not find a single piece of evidence connecting the two. And yet they concluded 30 percent of human cancer is caused by tobacco consumption, from a perfectly natural plant, and 35 percent of cancers are caused by poor diet, mainly too much fat and cholesterol, which are also natural substances.

  The concern that pesticide residues may do harm often causes parents to avoid or buy fewer fresh fruits and vegetables for themselves and their children. The authors of the article pointed out the irony of the fact that one of the best ways to stay healthy and prevent cancer is to eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. So, the people who listen to the scare campaigns about pesticide residues are liable to adopt eating habits that put them at higher risk of getting cancer than they would have been had they ignored the campaigners and eaten more fresh fruits and vegetables.

  Dr. Bruce Ames received the U.S. National Medal of Science in 1998 for his lifelong research into the causes of cancer.[21] [22] He developed the Ames Test, which is used to determine the relative carcinogenicity of v
arious chemicals. For much of his life he has worked to live down the legacy of this test. [23] What he found was that many otherwise harmless substances, if administered in huge doses, resulted in tumors and mutations in bacteria, rats, and mice. This led to the conclusion among many scientists and activists that these substances were therefore carcinogens and should be banned. They tended to forget the first rule of toxicology: the poison is in the dose.

  Take simple table salt, sodium chloride, for example. It is essential for our health. It regulates the electrolyte balances in our bodies, and without it we would die. Yet it is possible to take too much salt and if you overdose on salt it can kill you. Many chemicals behave in a similar fashion. At low doses they are essential, beneficial, or harmless, while at higher and higher levels they become harmful and even fatal. It is a matter of degree.

  For me, Dr. Ames’s most interesting work involved comparing the relative carcinogenicity of a number of synthetic pesticides with a number of natural pesticides. Largely because plants can’t run from danger or swat flies they produce natural pesticides to ward off predatory bacteria, insects, and fungi. The chemicals they produce are either toxic or extremely unpleasant to the pests that want to attack them.

  Dr Ames administered large doses of a number of common synthetic pesticides and a similar number of natural pesticides extracted from plants. He found the synthetic and natural pesticides had virtually identical effects. At high doses about 50 percent of both the synthetic and natural pesticides produced tumors in white mice. He then calculated the doses of the synthetic and natural pesticides we would be exposed to by eating a typical diet of conventionally grown fruit and vegetables.

  When synthetic pesticides are applied to crops there is a period of time required after the final application before the crop can be harvested and consumed. During this time the pesticide biodegrades so that at the time of harvest there is an undetectably low or negligible level of pesticide on the food. This is not the case for the natural pesticides, however. The plants keep producing these defensive chemicals right up until they are harvested. Dr. Ames estimated that when the food from these crops is consumed it contains about 10,000 times as much natural pesticide as synthetic pesticide residue. In other words, there is about 10,000 times as much risk of getting cancer from the natural pesticides as from the synthetic ones. And this risk is very close to zero in the first place. To quote Dr. Ames, “The effort to eliminate synthetic pesticides because of unsubstantiated fears about residues in food will make fruits and vegetables more expensive, decrease consumption, and thus increase cancer rates.” [24]