To the Editor:
Do you hate mosquitoes? And do you hate it when someone from the organic community pretends something will have an economic impact when really it won't?
As reported in the Western News, Erica Kroeker made a presentation on mosquito control at a recent RDOS meeting in which she asserted that "organic farms will lose their status" if larvicide is used on them. Apparently Certified Organic Association of BC (COABC) told Kroeker that "The product used is not approved for use on Organic farms." Well, someone's either lying or seriously confused.
As anyone working for COABC should know, organic farmers will NOT lose their certification if mosquito larvicide is applied on their property. The only way an organic farmer could face any backlash for allowing authorities to apply larvicide on his property is if someone at the tax-subsidized offices of COABC decided to give such a farmer a hard time. This would be unconscionable, not to mention illegal.
Larvicide is the best way to control mosquitoes. A biological alternative is available, Bacillus thuringiensis serovar israelensis (Bti), but it dissipates rapidly. Since mosquito larvae hatch in ponds whenever water levels are raised by rain, Bti has to be applied every time it rains. Bti also kills non-biting midges that serve as food for fish, so it's far from being a natural panacea when compared to conventional larvicide. Every solution, whether natural or synthetic, has unintended side effects.
So, why is RDOS giving COABC the opportunity to help come up with an "acceptable" solution? It's like negotiating with vegetarians to come up with an "acceptable" alternative to running a slaughter house. COABC might have its place in this province's agricultural sector, but it has no business whatsoever impeding or in any way misleading tax-funded authorities like Kroeker who are charged with the duty of protecting the public from disease-vectoring mosquitoes.
Organic farmers can only lose certification if they themselves apply a prohibited substance to their crop. COABC could claim that any trees on an organic farm that are in close proximity to a pond where larvicide is applied cannot be harvested as organic. But it must be stressed that if COABC did this, their ruling would only apply to trees within eight meters of said pond. All other trees would be perfectly fine and would remain certified organic.
But, MUCH more to the point, since mosquitoes don't attack trees, the application of larvicide is actually a moot point as far as organic certification is concerned. In other words, since larvicide won't benefit an organic crop, its application cannot affect certification in any way shape or form.
So even if someone at COABC decided to make trouble for an organic farmer who allowed authorities to apply larvicide to a pond on his property, the farmer would be exonerated. And anyone pretending otherwise is either misinformed or lying.
Why is COABC making a fuss? No organic farmer has ever lost certification as a result of his convention neighbour spraying which routinely results in a modicum of spray drifting over the property line onto an otherwise "clean" organic field. This is known as "spray drift" and the organic industry accepts this as a fact of life and guarantees consumers (within reason) only that the organic farmer himself did not spray, or use synthetic fertilizer, in an attempt to surreptitiously benefit his crop. If the organic industry was as absolute in opposing chemical "spray drift" as they're pretending to be about mosquito larvicide, there would quite simply be no organic industry!
Someone's being duped here! Kroeker for certain, but how about the rest of the RDOS board? Haven't any of them read Canada's organic standards?
To repeat, no rank-and-file farmer will lose his organic certification if he allows mosquitoes to be controlled on his property by existing, conventional means, and no one should pretend otherwise.
Mischa Popoff, IOIA Advanced Organic Inspector and author of "Is it Organic?"
