Why Would You Compost Pesticide and Herbicide-laced Materials?

A commenter takes exception to my giant bread-filled compost pile:

“@davidthegood, why would one want to introduce GMO wheat which has been sprayed with Glyphosate as an ingredient to compost and then add to that as a top dressing to foods which one will be consuming? This seems like total insanity and a huge contradiction to me if one is supposedly growing organically. You pay attention to the hay you are willing to accept into your garden, so I will ask why are you not applying the same ethics to your compost?”

I responded:

“First, hay with Grazon will literally destroy a garden. This bread almost certainly will not. Second, 99% of Americans are eating this type of bread at some point. Composting it and transforming the waste into a better food is worth teaching. Third, composting it is less destructive than throwing it in a landfill. Fourth, nature is very good at breaking down and binding up various traces of toxins that may be in this bread. That’s my reasoning – start with what you have and do your best. The main point is to grow food, and if we follow the organic purity spiral, pretty soon we’re making gardening almost impossible again.”

My “ethic” on growing food and composting is to, first of all, grow food to feed your family.

If you can’t scavenge for materials to make compost because you’re terrified that they might have some pesticide residues in them, you’re going to be in a bad place. If you are scared to till, so you make a tiny little no-till garden that feeds almost no one, then you are in a bad place. If you are afraid of all chemical fertilizers so you try to only use compost when you don’t have near enough compost, then you are in a bad place.

Grow food first. Even a conventional sprayed garden in a backyard is better than a huge, conventional farm far away, with produce that is transported thousands of miles and handled by unknown people in unknown ways, and then, after aging for too long, is purchased in plastic bags at your local supermarket.

You really can get stuck in an organic purity spiral.

I don’t like GMOs, pesticides, herbicides and other evils, but we have to work with what we have.

And when life gives us a pile of factory bread, we compost it.

My line is drawn at spraying chemical pesticides. We do not do that in our gardens, since we don’t want to eat produce that has been sprayed with poison. The entire idea makes me sick and strikes me as true insanity.

Consider This

When I till a garden large enough to feed our family, I am told we should never till

When I make compost, I am often told it’s the “wrong way”

When I use deep mulch, I am told that “deep mulch attracts slugs and bugs”

When I use commercial fertilizer I am told I’m poisoning my garden

When I used supposedly “organic” manures I really did poison my garden, killing most of my plants

When we use cardboard as a weedblock, we’re told that there are toxins in cardboard

When we use plastic as a weedblock, we’re told that plastics will destroy the earth

When we capture rainwater we’re told it’s contaminated by the roof, the barrel, or by planes spraying poison in the sky

When we don’t capture rainwater we’re told we’re being wasteful and “why in the world would you use city water???”

Obviously, the answer to all of this is to quit gardening, right?

No. Just do your best with what you have, and works towards being a good steward of the land you have. You’ll never please everyone, and you’ll never do anything at all if you listen to all the opposing voices.

Grow food the best you can and let God sort it out.

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