The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan [84]
Through these partnerships, the Goodmans have helped convert several thousand acres of prime Salinas Valley land to organic; if you include all the farmland growing produce for Earthbound—which has expanded beyond greens to a full line of fruits and vegetables—the company represents a total of 25,000 organic acres. (This includes the acreage of the 135 farms that grow under contract to Earthbound.) The Goodmans estimate that taking all that land out of conventional production has eliminated some 270,000 pounds of pesticide and 8 million pounds of petrochemical fertilizer that would otherwise have been applied, a boon to both the environment and the people who work in those fields. Earthbound also uses biodiesel fuel in its tractors.
I expected a field of spring mix to look a lot like the stuff in the bag: a dozen varieties tossed together in happy profusion. But it turns out the mixing comes later. Each variety, which has its own slightly different cultural requirements and life span, is grown in a monoculture of several acres each, which has the effect of turning this part of the valley into a mosaic of giant color blocks: dark green, burgundy, pale green, blue green. As you get closer you see that the blocks are divided into a series of eighty-inch-wide raised beds thickly planted with a single variety. Each weed-free strip is as smooth and flat as a tabletop, leveled with a laser so that the custom-built harvester can snip each leaf at precisely the same point. Earthbound’s tabletop fields exemplify one of the most powerful industrial ideas: the tremendous gains in efficiency to be had when you can conform the irregularity of nature to the precision and control of a machine.
Apart from the much higher level of precision—time as well as space are scrupulously managed on this farm—the organic practices at Earthbound resemble those I saw at Greenways farm. Frequent tilling is used to control weeds, though crews of migrant workers, their heads wrapped in brightly colored cloths against the hot sun, do a last pass through each block before harvest, pulling weeds by hand. To provide fertility—the farm’s biggest expense—compost is trucked in; some crops also receive fish emulsion along with their water and a side dressing of pelleted chicken manure. Over the winter a cover crop of legumes is planted to build up nitrogen in the soil.
To control pests, every six or seven strips of lettuce is punctuated with a strip of flowers: sweet alyssum, which attracts the lacewings and syrphid flies that eat the aphids that can molest lettuces. Aside from some insecticidal soap to control insects in the cruciferous crops, pesticides are seldom sprayed. “We prefer to practice resistance and avoidance,” Drew Goodman explained. Or, as their farm manager put it, “You have to give up the macho idea that you can grow anything you want anywhere you want to.” So they closely track insect or disease outbreaks in their many fields and keep vulnerable crops at a safe distance; they also search out varieties with a strong natural resistance. Occasionally they’ll lose a block to a pest, but as a rule growing baby greens is less risky since, by definition, the crop stays in the ground for so short a period of time—usually thirty days or so. Indeed, baby lettuce is one crop that may well be easier to grow organically than conventionally: Harsh chemicals can scorch young leaves, and nitrogen fertilizers render lettuces more vulnerable to insects. It seems the bugs are attracted to the free nitrogen in their leaves, and because of the more rapid growth of chemically nourished plants, insects find their leaves easier to pierce.
From the moment an organic lettuce plant is ready for harvest, the rest of its journey from field to produce aisle follows a swift and often ingenious industrial logic