When conventional farms are bordered by organic crops, conventional growers use more pesticide to keep insects at bay, study says.
To help California fight climate change, air quality regulators would like to see 20% of the state's farmland go organic by 2045. That means converting about 65,000 acres of conventional fields to organic practices every year. But depending on how that transition happens, the change could lead to an overall increase in the amount of pesticide used by growers throughout the state.
In their model, going from no organic fields at all to 5% of cropland being organic was associated with a 9% hike in insecticide use in Kern County. However, if 20% of agricultural land held organic crops — as the California Air Resources Board envisions — total insecticide use fell by 17%. Those figures were based on a simulation in which organic fields were spread out, maximizing the pest-control border skirmishes between organic and conventional fields.
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