{"id":59276,"date":"2021-09-11T14:05:26","date_gmt":"2021-09-11T19:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59276"},"modified":"2021-09-11T14:05:26","modified_gmt":"2021-09-11T19:05:26","slug":"everything-is-chemicals-the-myth-and-fear-of-chemical-free-gardening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59276","title":{"rendered":"Everything is chemicals: the myth and fear of \u201cchemical-free\u201d gardening"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Everything is chemicals: the myth and fear of \u201cchemical-free\u201d gardening<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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\u201cChemical-free\u201d \u2013 a term I\u2019ve seen several times attributed to many products, especially food and produce at farmers markets and even in gardening circles these days.\u00a0 This term is often misused to describe plants grown without the use of any pesticide, either conventional or organic. I have my thoughts that I\u2019ll share later on that subject but first let\u2019s talk about this \u201cchemical-free\u201d that gardeners, farmers, and others use and why its not only a myth, but a dangerous one at that.<\/p>\n

Ain\u2019t such a thing as \u201cchemical-free\u201d anything<\/strong><\/p>\n

At face value, the term \u201cchemical-free\u201d would literally mean that whatever the label is applied to contains no chemicals.\u00a0 That the entire item, whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral is devoid of any and all chemicals.\u00a0 Factually this can never, ever be true.\u00a0 Everything that exists is made of chemicals.\u00a0 Oxygen, water, carbon dioxide, and any simple molecule, by definition, is a chemical.\u00a0 Plants and animals are organized structures filled with complex chemicals.\u00a0 Even you and I, as humans, are walking, talking bags of chemicals.\u00a0 The air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink are all composed of a great mixture of chemicals.\u00a0 The use of the term \u201cchemical-free\u201d to describe anything is uninformed at best, and intellectually dishonest at worst. But a bigger problem, as we\u2019ll discuss later, is that using the term can cause confusion and even fear of things as simple as food and as complex as science and medicine.<\/p>\n

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\"Expert
The \u201cingredient list\u201d of a peach.
\nSource<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

What most people intend to say when they use the term \u201cchemical-free\u201d in relation to plants or produce is that they are produced without use of pesticides or conventional \u201cchemical\u201d fertilizers.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everything is chemicals: the myth and fear of \u201cchemical-free\u201d gardening \u201cChemical-free\u201d \u2013 a term I\u2019ve seen several times attributed to many products, especially food and produce at farmers markets and even in gardening circles these days.\u00a0 This term is often misused to describe plants grown without the use of any pesticide, either conventional or organic. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[128,319,1912,4579,31361],"class_list":["post-59276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-chemicals","tag-food","tag-food-production","tag-minerals","tag-the-garden-professors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59277,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59276\/revisions\/59277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}