Given that the EPA is now apparently rubber stamping whatever pesticides come across their desk, there is still a health argument, but when it comes to environmental sustainability, nitrogen is an elephant in the room. Crop productivity is as high as it is because of Haber-Bosch nitrogen, and if you remove that as a possible input, your options are:
Haber-Bosch nitrogen obtained by first feeding it to animals in the form of conventionally grown crops and then applied as manure or meat, blood, and bone meal
Naturally fixed nitrogen as concentrated in fish or pasture-raised chickens or cattle
Mined nitrates (naturally mined minerals qualify as organic)
A mysterious fourth thing (on farm nitrogen management with legumes, but that’s a supplement and not sufficient to produce high yields)
I think there’s a case for a sensible system that combines synthetic nitrogen fertilizers with smarter soil organic matter management practices and IPM that doesn’t rely on pesticides as a first resort, but such a system would still be less productive (in terms of gross output) and more complex than commercial farming, so there needs to be a market for it. “We didn’t completely throw the baby out with the bathwater” farming.
Given that the EPA is now apparently rubber stamping whatever pesticides come across their desk, there is still a health argument, but when it comes to environmental sustainability, nitrogen is an elephant in the room. Crop productivity is as high as it is because of Haber-Bosch nitrogen, and if you remove that as a possible input, your options are:
I think there’s a case for a sensible system that combines synthetic nitrogen fertilizers with smarter soil organic matter management practices and IPM that doesn’t rely on pesticides as a first resort, but such a system would still be less productive (in terms of gross output) and more complex than commercial farming, so there needs to be a market for it. “We didn’t completely throw the baby out with the bathwater” farming.