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“So many people were taken in by the pesticide-herbicide propaganda,” David said. “Why would we fall for that?” He seemed to carry it like an old war wound, the enduring damage done to this field. By “we” he means farmers like himself, though he didn’t apply the chemicals. He came of age early in the era of ammonia-based fertilizers and DDT, but still never saw the intrinsic logic in poisoning things to make a farm.

As we crested the hill he suddenly motioned for us to stop, get out, and look: we’d caught a horned lark in the middle of his courtship display. He shot straight up from the top of a little knoll in the corn and hovered high in the sky, singing an intense, quivery, question mark of a song, Will she, please, will she? He hung there above us against the white sky in a breathless suspense until—zoom—his flight dance climaxed suddenly in a nosedive. We stood in the bronze light, impressed into silence. We could hear other birds, which Elsie and David distinguished by their evening songs: vesper and grasshopper sparrows, indigo buntings, a wood thrush. Cliff swallows wheeled home toward their bottle-shaped mud nests under the eaves of the barn. Tree swallows, wrens, bluebirds, mockingbirds, great horned owls, and barn owls also nested nearby. All seemed as important to David and Elsie as the dairy cows that earn them their living.

Elsie and David aren’t Audubon Club members with binoculars and a life list, nor are they hippie idealists trying to save the whales. They are practical farmers saving a livelihood that has been lost to many others who walked the same road. They spare the swallows and sparrows from death by pesticide for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that these creatures are their pesticides. Organic farming involves a level of biotic observation more commonly associated with scientists than with farmers. David’s communion with his cornfield is part meditation and part biology. The plants, insects, birds, mammals, and microbes interact in such complicated ways, he is still surprised by new discoveries even after a lifetime spent mostly outdoors watching. He has seen swallow populations fluctuate year by year, and knows what that will mean. He watches cliff swallows following the mower and binder in the fields, downwind, snapping up leafhoppers and grasshoppers, while the purple martins devour crane flies. The prospect of blanketing them all with toxic dust even once, let alone routinely, strikes him as self-destructive, like purposely setting fire to his crops or barn.

Losing the Bug Arms Race

* * *

What could be simpler: spray chemicals to kill insects or weeds, increase yields, reap more produce and profits. Grow the bottom line by spraying the current crop. From a single-year perspective, it may work. But in the long term we have a problem. The pests are launching a counterattack of their own.

Within one field, an application of pesticides will immediately reduce insect populations but not eliminate them. Depending on the spray density and angle, wind, proximity to the edge of the field, and so forth, bugs get different doses of the poison. Those receiving a lethal dose are instant casualties.

Which bugs stay around? Obviously, those lucky enough to duck and cover. Also a few of those who did get a full, normally lethal dosage, but who have a natural resistance to the chemicals. If their resistance is genetic, that resistance will come back stronger in the next generation. Over time, with continued spraying, the portion of the population with genetic resistance will increase. Eventually the whole population will resist the chemicals.

This is a real-world example of evolution, and whether or not it’s showing up in textbooks, it is going strong in our conventional agriculture. More than 500 species of insects and mites now resist our chemical controls, along with over 150 viruses and other plant pathogens. More than 270 of our recently developed herbicides have now become ineffective for controlling some weeds. Some 300 weed species resist all herbicides. Uh-oh, now what?