Measure outcomes. Don’t assume outcomes from just a label.

I’ve been paying attention to labels a lot lately. Visit any supermarket and you’ll find them everywhere. Organic. Conventional. Regenerative. Sustainable. All seem to suggest some kind of statement about what you’re purchasing. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized I’ve never been very interested in the labels on packages. I prefer the measurement of results. Or if you’d prefer, I like to walk the acres of fields that grow my food. It has been a privilege to have the chance to visit farms on multiple continents over the last 40 years, and I’ve been able to learn more by walking those operations with the growers than I ever did just reading the front of a package in the supermarket. Walking through a field tells you far more than any label ever could. It tells you whether the ground is alive. It indicates whether there are birds there. It shows you why one field is treated differently from another. It allows you to ask the sorts of questions that never occur to you as you wander through the aisles of the supermarket. One of these questions is how farmers decide which herbicide, insecticide, and fungicide to use. Most shoppers believe that an approved chemical for organic agriculture is inherently less damaging to the environment than a similar synthetic product in conventional agriculture. I understand this line of thinking. It is an easy one to make. The difficulty is that farming is never really that simple. I’ve been using Cornell’s Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ), for example, for years as one of the factors that I consider when I select crop protection products. Most farmers I’ve talked to have never heard of this, which is a shame, as it does actually ask the question I think all of us should be asking. Rather than ask initially whether the pesticide is organic, synthetic, or some other classification, it provides a means of estimating the overall environmental impact of an active ingredient by taking into consideration its impact on the farmworkers, on the consumers, on the birds, the fish, the bees, and beneficials, as well as its persistence. Cornell also created a Field EIQ that takes into account how much of the product is actually applied, as the actual environmental impact of the product is based not just on the material itself but on how it is used. In my opinion, the EIQ is not the answer, but it is an excellent place to start. It gives me a reasonable way to initially consider the environmental impact of any chemical I might use, and allows me to develop a catalog of alternative materials with which to achieve the same result. If two or more materials are effective against the same disease, insect, or weed, why not compare the EIQ of the materials to determine which is the least damaging to the environment before I put one into the sprayer tank? The EIQ, like any model, has limitations and shouldn’t be the sole basis of any decision. Efficacy matters. Resistance management matters. Cost matters. Availability matters. But it has become an additional factor I look to when making a decision that allows me to make more informed decisions, and I believe that makes me a better steward of the farm. Sometimes, the convention answers have low environmental impact ratings, whereas some other organically approved pesticides might. For example, copper fungicides still provide an excellent means of managing critical plant diseases and are essential in certain instances, although copper does not break down easily and has a tendency to accumulate in soil for many years. There are also circumstances where similar disease-management tools carry lower environmental impact ratings. I am not suggesting that organic products are poor or that synthetic products are effective. We use both organic and synthetic inputs on our farms as necessary. What I am proposing is rather simple. If the goal is decreasing environmental impact, then measure environmental impact, and don’t assume what is on a label. This same thought occurred to me while discussing biodiversity. I often hear discussions that suggest organic farming is more biodiverse than conventional farming. There are indeed some papers that show this. That is not the problem with these studies. It is rather that the transition from data to assumptions is simple. Biodiversity is not the result of certification. Rather, it is produced as a result of a lifetime of management decisions. Let me share an example from our farm in northeastern Oregon to demonstrate how biodiversity is created in our own operation. The farm includes a total of 4,500 acres. In that time we have actively cropped 2,000 acres while the rest is composed of timber, steep terrain, and a stretch of riverbed. We do maintain the entire property with active weed control in place, but large segments remain as is because they need to. Most days I see elk. The most common game species we see in the area are mule deer and white-tailed deer. Most days we see coyotes around the farm. Black bears are regularly spotted on the farm. Bobcat, cougars, badgers, bald eagles, wild turkey, quail, and dozens of other small species all utilize our land. I don’t mention biodiversity to suggest that conventional farming supports biodiversity. I don’t claim that organic farming creates biodiversity either. It just serves as a reminder to me that biodiversity is not determined by a certification and should be measured on any farm as such. That same mindset led us to make a rather confusing environmental choice on our farm in Rwanda. We cut more than 700 mature eucalyptus trees. If you had seen our work in action, the immediate conclusion may have been that we are doing the wrong thing from an environmental perspective. Trees get cut down in the process. What you would not have noticed though was we were planting about 4,500 Tephrosia in the area surrounding the grove at least four years earlier. We weren’t trying to substitute for the eucalyptus. We wanted to see the result if the tree stood in that stand. We observed the outcome. It was healthy, but was highly allelopathic. It was difficult to grow plants beneath it. We rarely saw small mammals and few birds used the area, while the understory only had a few species. But Tephrosia did. It put nitrogen in the soil. It was used for botanical pesticides and green manure. We relied less on importing fertilizer. The understory became more diverse. There’s one observation I still smile at. Passing by a fully mature patch of Tephrosia in the daytime, you hear it before you see it. There’s a fairly sizeable native bee in Rwanda that seems to spend the entire day from bloom to bloom because Tephrosia is in near continuous bloom. But first thing you notice is not the trees. It’s the sound. Does that suggest that Tephrosia is more “green” than other options? No. It’s just enough to keep you looking, keep you measuring, and keep you asking questions. After several years of that, the observations became good enough that we adjusted our management. This year we will plant approximately 55,000 Tephrosia trees. We removed more than 700 trees. But what actually happened was we swapped one species for another. Over the course of years of observations and measurements, we felt the data was telling us that our system was healthier and more biologically active, was providing nitrogen and potassium to our crops, was helping us rely less on imported fertilizers. That’s not a label decision. That was a decision based on evidence. There’s no one-size-fits-all definition of “good” farming. Each field is different, each farm is different, and every ecosystem is different. Good farmers observe, they measure, and they learn. The evidence will sometimes support what we thought to be true, and other times, the evidence will change our minds. If you ever get the opportunity to visit the farm where your food was grown, take it. Walk the fields. Ask questions. You will listen more and talk less. And you’ll probably come away after just an afternoon of that more educated than you’d be from years of reading the back of labels. Agriculture’s future won’t be shaped by debating over labels. It will be shaped by measuring, learning from those measurements, and being brave enough to change if the evidence suggests doing so. I’ve learned one thing through farming that no two fields are ever exactly the same, even if they are adjacent to one another. They may have differences in soil, drainage, elevation, fertility, weed and insect pressure, and so many other ways. I’ve never really believed that one philosophy, one standard, one certification, or even one management system could provide the right answer for every field. Stewardship requires knowing your land, the place that’s been entrusted to you. You have to walk in the field. You have to get in the soil. You have to watch and record what’s growing, what lives, what struggles, what prospers. You have to measure when you can and observe when you can’t, and be willing to change your management if you get evidence that suggests a change might be in order. Every field has its own set of problems to be solved. Every field deserves its own unique set of solutions. A good steward doesn’t begin with an answer. A good steward begins with a question. Agriculture’s future won’t be shaped by debating over labels. It will be shaped by measuring, learning from those measurements, and being brave enough to change if the evidence suggests doing so. For the reader who wishes to learn more about the Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ), Cornell maintains an excellent description of the system as well as a searchable pesticide values database: - Cornell Integrated Pest Management – EIQ Pesticide Values - Cornell Turfgrass Program – Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ) Explained Ben Henson is a lifelong farmer and international agricultural consultant with over 30 years of experience in the U.S. and Africa. He currently splits his time between a hay and cattle farm in Oregon and a climate-smart agriculture initiative in Rwanda.