How I, A Biochemist, Became A Supporter Of Organic Farming

W.C. Tan

I have a Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from Indiana University in 1966. I did post-doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin. I studied theology in England during the Vietnam War. Upon completion of my theological training, I was elected Fellow of the Imperial Cancer Research Laboratory in London. Later, after many publications, I was elected Life Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society in Oxford. I was invited to become a founding faculty member at Lester B. Pearson College in Metchosin, B.C. to teach Biochemistry, until I retired in 1985. During this time, I was an honorary faculty member at the University of Victoria.

In my retirement, I founded the Canadian College for Chinese Studies- the first college in Canada to teach full-time Chinese Medicine, also the first college in Canada to train various types of delegations from the People's Republic of China. Up to the year 2003, we must have trained 100 different kinds of delegations from China.

In 1997, one agricultural delegation from Northeastern China asked to be trained for one month. To this delegation, I turned down the application. The reasons were I didn't know anything about agriculture, I was not a farmer, I was not interested, and Victoria is hardly agricultural. But this Chinese delegation insisted and persisted that they should come, despite all of my reasons. Finally, they said that regardless of whatever program I provided for them, they would not complain. It was on that basis that I issued them a letter of invitation to come to Victoria for one month. So I put on a program for them to the best of my ability. With whatever was available in the Victoria area. My program consisted of the following: two speakers from the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture, visits to a hay farm, two dairy farms, a cattle-breeding farm, a couple of greenhouses, a day trip to Comox, Island Farms for dairy processing, a sheep farm, a farm equipment supplier, some supermarkets, and I acted as the interpreter for them.

As I was interpreting for this Chinese delegation of 17 people, I had to understand myself first, before I could translate. Sometimes, I didn't believe what I heard. Sometimes I had to ask the speaker to repeat before I translated. As I was translating, after a month, deep down I had come to realize that agriculture is in deep trouble in Canada.

After the Chinese delegation had departed, I had tea with Professor Edwin Tollefson and confided in him about my fear and worries for Canadian Agriculture. He told me that his brother Roy is a farmer from Saskatchewan, and he would be in Victoria the following week for holidays. "Why don't you ask him," he said, " and get it from the horses mouth!" The following week, Roy came, and I saw him and poured out my heart to him. Roy was a very wise man. He said very little one way or the other, and simply invited me to come to Saskatchewan to see things for myself. When in Moosejaw, I could stay with him as his guest and he would show me around. So, I lost no time and went to Saskatchewan.

My first stop was the College of Agriculture on the campus of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. They told me it was also the largest agricultural research center in the world, with many research institutes, founded by the government and the industries, including Monsanto. At the College of Agriculture, the first place I went was the Department of Soil Science. The first Professor I ran into, who wrote a book on soil science, I asked point blank, " What are the problems with the soil?" He replied, "There are no problems with the soil." My second question was "What harm do the chemical fertilizers do to the soil?" He replied, "Chemical fertilizers can do no harm to the soil! They can only do good for the crops." He gave me his book to read. The long and short of the story: no one admitted that there was anything wrong with the agriculture in Canada.

I talked to the politicians about problems in agriculture. They said there were no problems in agriculture. The law of supply and demand of the market will resolve all the problems. After my first day of inquiry, I thought I had made a mistake. I thought that I had come for nothing. Then I headed for Moosejaw, and stayed with Roy in nearby Mossbank.

The Age of the Farmers

For the next few days, I talked and visited with the farmers in their fields and in their homes. The first thing that alarmed me was the age of the farmers. Many farmers are still farming in their sixties, and seventy is not uncommon. Occasionally, I ran into farmers that were in their eighties! I asked them, saying they should have long retired, how come they were still farming? Their replies revealed the general nature of the problems, saying, "I cannot stop farming, I have to farm until I die." "Why?" I asked. "I have to keep farming to have income from the crops in order to pay the banks. At any time when I stop paying the bank, they will come and foreclose everything." "But why do you have to borrow money?" I would ask. They said they had to keep on borrowing money because farming is losing money, the grain prices are falling, and the input costs are very high. They have to buy all the chemicals and machinery.

I asked, "Before you die, couldn't you get your children to carry on?" They answered that most farmers' children don't want to farm as they are in the cities making more money. So when they expand their acreage and increase their input, they produce more. But bumper crops bring lower prices, so they owe more to the bank. The only way to stay on the farm is to have government subsidies. The government just lifted the only subsidy that they have, called the Crow Rate, a form of transportation subsidy.

Young People Refuse To Farm

I went to several schools, and asked the children to give me a show of hands of how many would become farmers when they grew up. In a class of 25, two or three hands would go up. The teachers told me afterwards, they had put up their hands for the sake of courtesy.

I went to several agricultural colleges, attended their classes, and then asked the professors; "In this class of thirty or forty, how many will farm when they get out of here?" They said to me, "Zero." I asked them, "Then why are they here at the school for agriculture?" They said because they hoped to become government officials, or work in research, (i.e. for Monsanto), or work for food processing industries. I then asked, "Professors, who will farm fifty years from now?" They said, "You are being too optimistic, the question is, who will be farming twenty years from now? The reply is, when the existing farmers pass on, more and more farms will be consolidated."

Industrial-Scale Agriculture

At the beginning of the 20th Century, farming was based on the family unit of around 100 acres. It was labor intensive, but it could sustain the living of a family. But at the time of my visit, at the end of the century, the average size of a family farm was now 5000 acres. The aging of the farmers indicates the breakdown of the family, where young people refuse to stay home. When fewer and fewer people are farming, and the size of the farm has become bigger and bigger, farming has to rely on bigger and heavier machinery. There is also a greater reliance on chemicals. And so family-unit production has become industrial-scale production. Industrial-scale production means total dependence on science and technology and little or no attention has been paid to environment and health.

While in Saskatchewan, I visited the John Diefenbaker Dam and was told by the scientists there that the reservoir and the river's swift current have been contaminated by chemical pesticides. Then, in Humboldt, I visited the nearby monastery and organic farms. For the first time in my life, I saw real soil: dark, moist and loose, growing wheat and other grains. I was shown how they used clover and buckwheat as green manure to fertilize the ground. For the first time, I tasted organic bread. It had flavor, fragrance, and was, they told me, full of nutrition. On a farm in the surrounding area of Regina, I met some of the first organic farmers in Canada.

From these organic farmers, I have learned how chemical fertilizers have damaged the soil, and how once the land is using chemical fertilizers, they have more problems with the pests. These organic farmers have ceased using chemical pesticides and they have to get rid of the weeds first before they plant. After all this, if weeds still come up, they ignore them instead of spraying chemical pesticides, because it is more harmful to spray then to just let the weeds grow. (When I was in Poland, in July 2003, I was told by the Poles that the only way they could tell if the wheat flour is organic is the detection of the presence of trace amounts of weeds.)

Organic farmers' attitude about weeds is "live and let live". They told me that as time goes on, the healthy soil produces healthy plants, to the point that they can obtain, not pest-free, but a lesser-pest state. What impressed me most was the lifestyles and the attitude of the organic farmers. They are healthier and they are closer as a family.

GMO Contamination

With the wide-spread of GMO into Canada, it is almost next to impossible to keep an organic farm free from contamination. This presents a problem for their certification as organic farms.

Nature's Gifts

After my tour of Saskatchewan, twice, and across the nation once, I came back to Victoria. Someone from the Ministry of Agriculture in B.C., who has since retired, recommended to me that I read a certain book. He told me that he had become a supporter of organic farming after reading this book. The book was entitled "Farmers of Forty Centuries" and written by F. H. King. Professor King was once the head of the Soil Bureau in the United States. He went to visit China around the early 1900s. Upon his return to the United States, he wrote this book.

The book essentially asks one question, that is, "How come the Chinese farmers have been farming the same soil for four thousand years, and the soil is just as good as day one?" The answer, in essence, consists of one word: MANURE. Manure from all animals are collected, fermented and returned to the soil. The soil produces the crops and the crops are fed to the animals. The animals metabolize the grains, the nutrition is used to maintain life, and the remainder, the manure, is excreted, collected, and returned to the soil again. Thus, the cycle repeats itself. This is the cycle of sustainability. It can go on and on for four thousand years.

After having read this book, I firmly became another supporter of organic farming. For me, organic farming is not just refraining from using chemicals. The practice of organic farming is directly maintaining a sustainable process to protect the environment, to conserve natural resources, and to maintain good health. Thus I openly and directly declare myself a supporter of the organic farmer.

I visited China from the year 2000-2001. Out of thirty provinces, I visited twenty-seven, visiting countless villages, at the same time preaching in both Protestant and Catholic churches and lecturing in almost forty universities and colleges emphasizing sustainability between heaven, earth and man. I was often challenged to define what was sustainable. I told my audiences that in the church worship service, there is collection and people put money on the plates. The plates are brought forward to the altar where the priest will bless the gift of the people, and the entire congregation will recite, "All things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee." What we have received from nature, we give back to nature. This is the theology of what is sustainable.