From the Ground Up? The Principles of Australian Organic Agriculture - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 219

today's organic farmers assert the healthfulness of their produce. Many of the
pesticides and fertilizers available to farmers today are different to those used in
previous decades but organic growers' aversion to chemicals has changed little since
the campaigns against DDT and superphosphate in the 1950s. Organic standards
prevent the use of all synthesized chemicals that have been created or changed
chemically, particularly those toxic to humans and non-target species (Standards
Australia 2009 ). Prohibition also extends to naturally occurring substances that are
known to be toxic (such as nicotine) (Standards Australia 2009 ).
Organic farmers continue to reject artificially synthesized chemicals as
unhealthy. Organic farmer Anthony Sheldon comments: “I think organic food
would have to be more healthy. If something that is toxic doesn't have to be used
at all it has got to be better. If you had half Chemical and Coke you'd probably
get crook” (Sheldon 2006 ). Brice Douglas reiterates his disapproval of agricultural
pesticides and fertilizers:
It is logical. The residues left from the chemicals and the sprays, they have to affect you. If
you are eating an animal that has been reared using chemicals - treating for worms, eating
grass that has been grown with fertilizers and sprayed with pesticides to kill the bugs and
beetles - the end result is that you are doing exactly the same thing as drinking the chemical
(Douglas 2006 ).

The desire to farm without the use of artificial chemicals is still a significant moti-
vation for growers to convert to organic practices. Organic turkey and macadamia
farmer, Matthew Jamison grew up on a conventional beef property in Queensland
and tells of his experiences of illness due, he believes, to contact with agricultural
chemicals:
All my family has died of cancers. By the time I was thirty-four I was the oldest of my
descent line. I grew up at the stage when everyone was spraying 245 T and everyone in
our rural community had stillborn babies, which I can only put down to all the volatile
chemicals. We used to spray the cattle with some organophosphate. My father would

be on one side and I would be on the other, spraying it on the cattle but also on each other.
We put barrier cream on our hands and were wearing overalls but we'd be soaking wet
(Jamieson 2006 ).
Surveys of organic farmers in the last 20 years confirm that organic farmers'
concerns about the health of their families, consumers, animals and themselves
motivated them to convert to organic farming (Wynen 1992 ; Halpin 2004 ). Stories
abound among organic growers of rashes, itches, flakey skin, cancer and respiratory
ailments, even death - all of which they attribute to agricultural chemicals (Chappel
2006 ; McNeill 2006 ; Smith 2008 ). Telling and retelling stories about chemical
poisoning affirms organic growers' collective aversion to chemicals and the belief
in the comparative healthfulness of organic produce.
Aversion to the unnaturalness of chemical fertilizers and pesticides also under-
pins current organic growers' rejection of genetically modified (or GM) plants
and animals. Australian organic standards prohibit genetically modified or genet-
ically engineered products and processes from any aspect of organic production,
including the use of genetically modified seeds and plants and contamination of
a crop by genetically modified organisms will result in decertification (Standards

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