Bill Liebhardt, Ph.D.

Talk about the effect of nitrates on soil.

Nitrates are the form of nitrogen that plants take up through their root system, and then its converted into amino acids and proteins and we get growth of the plant. So, they’re one of the ways that nitrogen gets into the plant. But it’s a very soluble element, and therefore it can leach rapidly, and so if you use fertilizers containing nitrates, one of the problems is that when you get heavy rains, you get runoff and you end up with nitrates either leaching down through the soil or running off into rivers and streams. And one of the effects of it is this dead zone that we have in the Gulf of Mexico, which is expanding every year. And the reason it keeps expanding is that excess nitrogen fertilizers – excess in terms of what the crop needs to grow – are applied by farmers as an insurance policy, often. And with the advent of corn and ethanol, it’s probably going to be even worse.

Do you have any opinion on the impact of continual ammonia application on long-term health of soil?

Well, you kind of asked two questions. If you use anhydrous ammonia, which is a very concentrated form of nitrogen, a gas is injected into the soil, so there’s a narrow band of soil where the ammonia is; that probably wipes out almost everything in terms of bacterial life. Because the ph goes way up, the concentration of ammonia is up. Now it’s a small band but that certainly is very deleterious or harmful in terms of what happens in that local little band.

How does this affect soil after 10, 20, 30 years?

Well, the thing is, after you apply nitrogen fertilizers, there is a natural system in the soil that operates. And so, in a sense, when you apply fertilizers you are bypassing or overriding the natural system. Whereas if you use things like compost, cover crops, that is more of a natural system and the soil will function in a way to provide nitrogen slow-release over time.

The problem with putting on fertilizers often is the way it’s done; it’s put on pre-plant.

So, let’s say we’re talking about a corn crop in the Midwest; it may get anywhere from 150 to 250 pounds of nitrogen per acre in one dose.

It would be like you and I sitting down on New Year’s Day and eating all the food we’re going to eat for the rest of the year. So, instead of eating it slowly over 365 days. That’s kind of what I see as the major problem with the way that is done.

What’s the alternative to using these nitrate compounds?

Alternatives to providing nitrogen for crops, other than providing fertilizers, is the use of cover crops. And we have an example right here; growing these tomatoes. The cover crop was planted last fall, a vetch crop, it grows over the winter, it fixes nitrogen somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 pounds per acre, then it’s returned to the soil and these tomatoes are growing totally on that; nothing else.

It’s a totally natural way of providing it, and the organic matter, the carbon and nitrogen from this cover crop will break down slowly over the growing season, and so it’s not a big flush all at once; it is a much more gradual, slow process than applying fertilizers all at planning time.

Is there a runoff problem with cover crop?

Well, I suppose, there’s potentially a runoff problem with almost anything, but the potential for runoff with this, when you’re putting a cover crop under like a legume, most of the nitrogen is in a complex form; it’s not as nitrate. And so the soil organisms, the worms and the bacteria and the bugs, will digest it and use it and it will be slowly released over the growing season because it’s a very complex form of nitrogen. It does not happen like that.

What’s the long-term problem with pesticides from your point of view?

The problem with pesticides is that it disrupts natural systems. And fundamentally, when you go out and you spray a pesticide, you are intervening in a natural system. And most people have no idea what they’re screwing up. They have no idea whatsoever that they’re eliminating lots of beneficial insects or other organisms.

And so then you get a system that is out of kilter biologically or environmentally, and many people talk about the pesticide treadmill, that the more you spray, the more you need to spray.

That’s in terms of the farmer. In terms of the consumer, particularly little kids, if you’ve got kids that are, say, five or six or younger, their physiological systems are not developed. And so they are taking in pesticides and they do not have the ability to detoxify them. And so, as a result, they are much more at risk to having serious problems from taking these pesticides in than a mature adult.

There is a fellow by the name of Warren Porter at the University of Wisconsin who has been doing research. The way that EPA tests for pesticides is to take one material at a time and test it. And they go through their routine and then they say, okay, it’s okay.

His work in Wisconsin, where he goes out and he has found out that there are certain levels of nitrate in the water, there are certain levels of insecticide, there are certain levels of herbicide; that when he takes water and runs it through feeding trials with small animals — mice and rats — that their growth is less, their immune system is disrupted.

All kinds of other systems in these mice are disrupted; but they’re disrupted when there are nitrates with pesticides or insecticides or herbicides.

And so, what it leads you to is that what the EPA does is not valid; it doesn’t tell you what’s going on in the real world that we’re all confronted with. And so, that, to me, is a serious ticking time bomb. Some of the pesticides are known as endocrine disrupters. We have all kinds of examples of endocrine disrupters changing the sex of species. Frogs are kind of the canary in the coalmine in this whole thing.

Atrazine, which is a very commonly used herbicide in the Midwest, at very low concentrations has been responsible for changing the sex of frogs.

So, to me, there are all kinds of disadvantages to the pesticide load that we’re putting on ourselves. To me, it does not make sense, and particularly for little kids it does not make sense. And we don’t approve stuff, we don’t do testing to determine what is safe for little kids. That is the fallacy of the EPA.

Are farmers given misinformation about the yield increases they’ll get using these chemicals?

Well, it’s very common knowledge that farmers are often given information that if you don’t use these materials, your yields will suffer. Lots of research across the country and on many farms that are organic prove that that’s not correct, that you can farm without all these things and that you can have good yields, not in every case and not in all cases.

But several years ago, I summarized up research from 169 years of data from all these different states of long-term experiments comparing conventional and organic farming systems. And if you took all the crops, corn, wheat, soybeans and tomatoes — because this experiment was part of it; if you put them all together and you compared the yield of this succotash, the yield of the organic crops was 95 percent of the conventional, and that was across many, many different years. Five percent; statistically, you wouldn’t hardly even talk about it.

So, to me there is no question that you certainly can do lots of things, you can grow lots of crops without them, in many cases you can do better. And this experiment here, and we find it in other experiments, that after you gone to a system where the organic matter management is different — where you use cover crops, where you use compost, you use manure — changes take place in the soil. And what happens is the organic matter starts to build up, and often the water infiltration capacity, the ability of the soil to absorb moisture in a heavy rain, will be anywhere from two to five times higher than in a conventional plot. The water-holding capacity in the soil will be increased.

And so, when you get into a dry year, the organic crops will often yield far better. The yield stability in these systems is much better than in the systems without that kind of organic matter management.

Can you speak to the long-term health of the soil?

Well, there’s no question that if you’re not using all these materials — the pesticides and the heavy dose of chemicals — and you’re not assaulting the organisms with this complex mixture, that the system is much more able to behave in a natural way.

In terms of the 95 percent or the 5 percent difference, some people would say, let’s go for it. But you have to say, at what cost? The economics of using that extra fertilizer and pesticides economically doesn’t pay off for farmers. It doesn’t pay off for the environment, and the other thing that we’ve found out with organically produced crops is that they are higher in antioxidants, which is beneficial in terms of people being able to resist cancer and other diseases. We really don’t know all there is to know about the difference in the ways these foods are produced, but I think we know enough at this point, certainly, to say there are added benefits.

The other thing, I think, is the stability of the yield that you get when the soil is managed in an organic system. And that stability is important in terms of the farmer’s economic survival and it’s important in terms of them being able to continue to farm. We also know that the energy use in organic systems is somewhere between 40 and 50 percent less than a conventional system. And we all know the cost of energy is rising, so there are a lot of different things that go into figuring the total system benefits. It’s not just the 5 percent difference in yield.

Some of these farmers will say that if they’re not getting rid of weeds with mechanical cultivation, that’s going to cost more money than buying the chemicals.

There is no question, if you look at fields that are Roundup Ready soybeans, let’s use that as an example. I’ve seen farmers go out and they plant almost in a weed bed. And they come back and they spray over the top of it, and the first year it looks wonderful; it’s clean, it’s simple, it’s damn near idiot-proof farming. And so, now, what do we see coming out of the Midwest? We see that where farmers have used Roundup Ready technology year after year, we now have resistant giant ragweed.

So, in the long term, just exactly as we did with Atrazine, where we got resistant species. We could say we knew this was coming. There’s no way. Because what happens when you spray for something, there’s going to be a few escapes; they produce seed, they multiply, and so now we have giant ragweed in the Midwest which resists round-up.

So what’s their answer to it? Use more Roundup and spray other herbicides. So the costs are going to go up and up. You’re tinkering with nature, you’re messing with nature, and there’s an old saying, “Mother Nature bats last,” and in this case, that’s certainly true.

There’s another school of thought about monocrops, that a lack of diversity is what causes certain types of infestations.

The lack of diversity is a problem. I can tell you a little story that happened many years ago; I was giving a talk at Purdue University back in the ‘80s, and I was talking about soil testing and fertilizers, but there were a lot of people there talking about where you have continuous corn, you have to put out an insecticide before the corn’s planted to guard against rootworm diseases, or rootworm insecticides.

God! Rootworm insects. And so, there was a graduate student up there, a PhD candidate, giving a talk on all his research and all the different compounds you could use to avoid this build-up of this, and at the end, almost as an afterthought, he said, “Of course, we wouldn’t need any of these if we had a rotation.”

So, simply having a corn-soybean-wheat rotation eliminated the need for continuous corn and to have to apply this insecticide. So, what happens is we plant the same thing, year after year, the insect complex builds up, the disease complex builds up, the weed complex builds up. And so the way around that in an annual cropping system is to have a rotation. You have weed seeds that germinate in the cold season, and you have weed seeds that germinate that are hot season species.

So, if you change the mix of plants, you’re always a step ahead of them.

What are your thoughts on these commodity crops in the Midwest — corn and soybeans? Who benefits? Does it benefit the average consumer?

Yeah, I have a pretty damn strong opinion. The corn-soybean system in the Midwest is a disaster, in my opinion. I grew up in Wisconsin on a diversified crop-livestock-dairy farm. Now you’ve got people planting fence row to fence row corn and soybeans.

So, the problem with the subsidies, and we’ve had them at least since the ‘40s or ‘50s now, is that instead of the market sending a message to the farmers, the government’s sending a message to the farmers. And it’s the most asinine thing. If you’re a corn grower in the Midwest, the way the present system works, is if a target price is set — and let’s say it’s three dollars a bushel, it’s not that high, but let’s say it is.

Well, let’s say you get two dollars a bushel, then the government provides you with a dollar per bushel. Even if it was zero, you’d get your payment. So, there’s absolutely no incentive for farmers to cut back on their production, there’s no incentive for them to change their farming system, there’s no incentive for them to do anything but what they’ve been doing, and that’s the Farm the Government Program.

The problem is, historically we’ve produced way more corn than we need. We produce way more everything than we need, and so what happens is we pay out these massive subsidies of billions of dollars; the problem is the money goes to very few crops and about two-thirds of the money goes to 10 percent of the farmers, who are mostly large corporate-type farms.

So, the subsidies are ruining Midwestern rural America. If you drive through the Midwest, which I’ve done many times, and you look at the towns that are going down the tube economically; the schools are closing, there isn’t a viable economic base to keep them anymore. And I think we can thank the Farm Program for all of that.

Who benefits, though? Why are they doing it? Why would the USDA continue to provide this?

My gut feeling is that it’s because of the politics of money, that these commodity groups support senators and congressmen with big amounts of campaign money; the commodity groups are in Washington lobbying all the time, it’s part of our sick political system. And so the farm bloc will trade its votes for something else. Historically, the people in the urban areas will ask for more food stamps, so the food stamp people will vote for the Farm Bill.

But the problem with it is, really is it’s not in the national interest –

It’s not in our national interest to continue this. There’s very few people that are benefiting from this, and millions of taxpayers are paying into this to the benefit of very few, often the very wealthy. We don’t need to continue that thing. The other thing is that it totally distorts the farming in the Midwest. If we want to use the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico as an example; the commodity groups support it, all the people that sell inputs support it, all the people that market it support it, because it keeps them going.

If we got rid of these subsidies, we would have a farm program that was based on the reality of what’s needed.

Many years ago, I visited New Zealand. And in the late 1980s, they had a change in election and overnight they eliminated all their farm subsidies. The first year was a tough year for lots of people, but it changed what was produced. The sheep production went way down, wool production went way down; dairy, vegetable, and fruits increased because that’s what was in demand in the market.

So we could do it, we just don’t have the political guts to do it.

Well, I tell you, when you’ve been around it for 50 years, it gets you pissed off.

Some say you can’t feed the world without the input of these chemicals.

They don’t know it, and I don’t know it. Nobody knows because nobody’s tried it. The only way you’re going to get an answer to that is to have lots of research around and lots of farmers. My suspicion is, based on the research that I’ve seen over the years and being on organic farms is yes, it could be done. But I can’t prove it. But neither can they.

The idea that we absolutely need all these pesticides and all these fertilizers to feed the world is an unknown fact. Nobody knows whether that’s true or not; nobody knows if it would work feeding the world with organic agriculture. My suspicion is that you could do it. I’ve been on enough organic farms, I’ve seen enough research to show that organic systems function well, and they have yield stability. If you’re talking about a place like Africa, that’s what you need; you need yield stability.

So, yes, I think it could be done. But organic farming is not simply growing conventional corn and removing all the inputs. That is not good organic farming, and that’s what they often bring up.

What is it, then?

I think that’s a wonderful question, because if you look at the USDA law, or the USDA rule, it’s all about what are the inputs that you can use and what are the inputs that you can’t use. But organic farming, or sustainability, when we talk about that in a broad, philosophical way, we’re talking about how is the planet going to be managed.

Conventional agriculture and conventional science is based on the philosophy of overriding and dominating nature. Organic farming is based on the principle of working with natural systems, that you don’t go in and disrupt everything because when you don’t know what you’re disrupting, you disrupt lots of things that you have no idea about. So, organic farming, or sustainable agriculture, or having a less heavy imprint on the land, works with natural systems. It’s a very complex interaction; we haven’t any idea of all the organisms we’re dealing with, we haven’t any idea of how they interact together, and so it just seems like it’s prudent not to screw it up and not to interrupt it, and maybe to farm with a humility and not be so damn arrogant about everything.

What percentage of all the arable land that’s cropland in the U.S. is devoted to organic?

Well, it’s very low in terms of the total amount of land that’s being farmed. At one point, there was way less than there is now. When I worked for Rodale Press, I can remember Bob Rodale sitting out in the shade of a big tree one time and saying that his father, J.I., after World War II, sent out 10 thousand letters to farmers about organic farming, and he got back less than 10 responses. So there was almost no interest right after the war in that.

And so it’s been a long, slow, gradual process. In fact, it was so slow that it was almost imperceptible. But what’s happened is that we have now a system of producing foods that are vastly different. We have a conventional system, an industrial agricultural system, which is based on massive use of inputs, massive capital, concentration of power in few hands, and this system is bankrupt. It certainly has not been good for farmers and it has not been good for rural communities.

But that has been the predominant system and it’s supported by government policy, it’s supported by, agribusiness, it’s supported by the people who market food, and so it’s a very strong, powerful system. Given that that is the case, however, we see that sales of organic crops and products, has been growing at the rate of 20 percent a year for many years. That’s a huge growth. It’s the fastest growing segment in the food supply, and the reason is that consumers now know that there is a difference in the food that they eat. Do you want food produced with pesticides, sewage, sludge, GMOs, irradiated products, antibiotics? We know that these things are not meant to be in food, and so consumers are purchasing, in fact, it’s more important that they purchase these things than who they vote for, because that’s something they’re doing every week.

So, organic is growing; there’s no question it’s growing, and we don’t know how long it will continue to grow, but as long as there is this perceived difference in the quality of the products, and people not wanting to risk their child’s health and well-being with things that are adulterating to food, I suspect that’s going to continue.

Is the current agricultural policy sustainable?

No. The current policy is not sustainable. The Farm Bill, as it’s been perceived, is a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to a few large farms; that is not sustainable. The whole industrial agricultural system with the feedlots and thousands of sows at a site is not sustainable. To me, it’s like the person who’s jumped off the Grand Canyon, and they’re fine until they hit the ground. And so, the industrial system may be partway down the slope, and so far, so good.

How about in terms of agricultural resources – water, soil, and oceans? Is it sustainable in the long term?

No. I don’t believe that the conventional system is sustainable. I suspect that within 50 to 100 years we will be looking at a very different way of producing food and fiber, one that is much more in tune with natural systems.

What’s at risk with the continued application of these chemicals? Is the soil at risk?

Well, we know that erosion and runoff is a major problem in the Midwest and around many other areas; we know that pesticides getting into our food supply puts at risk younger children, it puts at risk maybe their ability to develop and learn. We don’t know that, but there are indications that there are some problems there. So, there is a lot at risk by continuing down this road.

Do you think there’s a connection between farm, food, and health policy?

Well, the system that we have now, certainly up to this time, before we got into the corn and ethanol deal, we were producing way more crops than we needed. We were producing way more corn than we needed. So what do we do? We turn around and we feed it to animals, we have high fructose corn syrup, and so we’ve got little kids drinking 64-ounce samples of Pepsi and Coke. We have all these little kids that are at risk from our farm policy. And whether the government’s going to do anything about that, I don’t know.

How is organic food every going to be affordable?

The question of affordability of organic and conventional food, and when you often go to the supermarket, you do see a difference in price, there is a premium for organic produce because it is perceived to have higher value. You’re not getting all the things you don’t want in this food.

And so, it costs more, probably, to produce it right now. There’s a lot of research that needs to be done to make these systems work better. My guess is that in time, the premium, will narrow as more and more people do it.

The other odd thing to me is if you’re organic, you have to be certified by the government, but if you produce food that’s loaded with all kinds of things, there’s no certification for that. It’s ass-backwards.

Although organic farmers are not happy with the subsidy system, they could use a little help with the costs of the learning curve and getting started, and there’s more time involved. Is enough money being spent to promote this kind of agriculture?

No, there isn’t enough money being spent in that area. The three-year transition is an important thing, and I’ve worked with lots of farmers making the transition, and it’s a very different thought process that you go through. When you start working with the farmer, in regard to the transition, you have to start where they are. And so, what you talk about is how are you going to — let’s say if we’re talking about corn production in the Midwest — do it without fertilizers and pesticides? How are you going to make your farming system work?

So, you have to approach it first from a standpoint of replacement of inputs. That’s the first couple of years that we talk about; how are we going to develop a system? So I know, for example, that if I were to go into the Midwest and I were to grow soybeans, I know that I don’t need nitrogen fertilizer right away. So that’s one way around that, or it can grow wheat, which requires less, or it can grow oats.

But after you get through that, then what you find is that farmers start to ask way more complex system; they don’t think of it in terms of input replacement, but they talk about the philosophy of how do I manage this complex organism that is a farm? It’s very different and they have to look at it as a system, not as “this is a cornfield and this is a soybean field,” but you have to integrate a lot more about it.

And timing of operations often becomes very important. So it’s a very different mentality.

We talk about the three years of the transition, but the biggest transition is right here, right between the ears, in terms of attitude. And I’ve worked with farmers who have a very positive attitude, and if they think they can make it work they often do. But if they go into with, “Ah, this goddamn thing. I hate this system,” it won’t work that way.

Is there enough money being provided that’s going to help nudge agriculture in a sustainable direction?

Not unless they change their policy. If their policy stays the same, if the government is going to pay these commodity prices, my guess is that things will stay pretty much the same. If they would take some of that commodity money out, as many countries in Europe do. Europeans pay for farmers to manage in a more sustainable fashion, and that’s what they get. We haven’t moved to that level yet.

How are we going to change this farm policy?

As long as our political system stays as it is, I think it’s going to be very difficult to change. The campaign contributions are such an important part of a senator or congressman’s survival, meaning that they want to be re-elected and re-elected and re-elected. I think there are a lot of groups in the Midwest; there are environmental groups, agricultural groups that are putting lots of pressure on it to change. We may see change this next year of some magnitude. I don’t think we’re going to get all the way there, it’s going to be a long-term thing. I suspect that 20-odd years from now we will have a very different system. But how rapidly we’re going to get there, I have no idea.

What’s the trend with agribusiness funding research, building projects, and other initiatives? Is that a problem?

Yeah, I think it’s a significant problem. It’s a problem all across the country, and the thing that is so insidious about corporate money coming into a university is that the taxpayers are basically paying for the salaries, they’re paying for the labs, often, so they’re paying for all the infrastructure, and corporate money comes along with a small amount of money, relatively speaking, and changes or redirects the research agenda.

That is what I think is wrong. And you have some cases where corporate money became a huge part of a program, for example, the money that Novartis put into Berkeley. I think it violates and goes against the principle of academic freedom and does a disservice to the university, broadly speaking, in the long run.

There’s no question that people have to have money to do their research, but it should not change the nature of what’s being done. Years ago, I did a study of a comparison of bovine growth hormone, the hormone which is injected into cows, versus rotational grazing, where you just put the cows out on pasture. I did a study of this with 10 different scientists from around the country.

And I went to three universities. I wanted to know how much money was coming in from the pharmaceutical industry at Vermont, Wisconsin, and California. I could not get that information. Nobody would release it.

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