Learning to love, or at least tolerate, weeds wasn't the only adjustment Hall, 74, had to make after a lifetime of growing sugar in his native Hawaii and then citrus in Florida.

Hall was a leader in the citrus industry's fight against the Diaprepes root weevil, which involved experimenting with many different pesticides on his Central Florida groves, including the Bartow grove he now manages. Hall said he feared a weevil explosion when the grove went organic.

But he found using natural pesticides, such as oils, sulfur and copper compounds, and relying on natural predators have kept pests at bay effectively, he said. In the case of Diaprepes, Hall discovered that eliminating pesticides increased the population of underground nematodes, a predator of the weevil that lives underground during its larva stage.

Uncle Matt's Organic Inc. of Clermont has about 1,000 acres of citrus grove that have been certified organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture or somewhere in the three-year process of certification. Benny McLean, 64, an owner and production manager of his family's company, hired Hall to manage the company's 200-acre organic grove in Bartow.

"Not everybody can be an organic grower.'' McLean said. ''Some people literally can't stand to see the weeds."

Another difficulty in converting from traditional agriculture is the restrictions on chemical usage, Hall and McLean said. It's a misconception, however, that organic farming prohibits all chemical substances.

The USDA organic regulations certainly prohibit the use of most fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and other synthetic chemicals commonly used in modern agriculture.

But oils and other substances mined from the ground and applied without processing are compatible with organic agriculture, McLean said.

Still, growing organic requires a major shift away from the chemical-based farming that came to dominate U.S. agriculture in the second half of the 20th century. McLean and other organic growers acknowledged farmers embraced synthetic chemicals for one simple reason - they performed more effectively.

Like Hall and McLean, most farmers convert to organic after growing alarmed with the environmental damage they've observed from the ever increasing use of chemicals.

Kenneth Der, 53, an organic blueberry grower in Plant City, had his farm literally burned by chemicals.

Der was one of the thousands of farmers who sued DuPont over the damage caused by its fungicide, Benlate. He blames the chemical for destroying about 10 acres of blueberries, ornamental plants and palm trees in the early 1990s and putting him out of business.

DuPont denied Benlate was responsible for the widespread crop damage, and it won some of the cases brought against it. Still, it had paid out more than $1 billion in claims and legal fees by 2001. Der declined to discuss his settlement.

The Benlate experience was a major factor in his decision to go organic, Der said. His company, Big Bear Farms Inc., is in the final year of transition to a USDA-certified organic grower.

Big Bear currently has one acre of blueberries, and Der hopes to expand once he gets organic certification.

Der started going fully organic in December 2004.

Since then, farming has gotten a lot more expensive.

Before the conversion, Big Bear used a synthetic fertilizer that cost $7.25 for a 50-pound bag, Der said. The synthetic alternative, a fish oil compound, cost the equivalent of $135 for 50 pounds and is available only in minimum lots of four tons.

Moreover, he said, the organic fertilizer requires more applications because it has lower concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium.

Similarly, organic herbicides cost $25 to $30 a gallon and require more frequent applications than synthetics, which cost about 13 cents a gallon.

"They're really not comparable to sprayable herbicides and sprayable fungicides. They're not a quick fix," said Mickie Swisher, the director of the University of Florida's Center for Organic Agriculture.

Organic herbicides are so ineffective in a grove that it's better to pull the weeds under the trees by hand and mow down the others growing in the rows between trees, Hall said.

"There's more labor required to keep things at a level playing field," said Hall, who estimated labor costs in an organic grove are two to three times higher.

In theory, organic growers recoup those extra costs, and perhaps a bit more, through the price premium organic products get in the marketplace. The farm price for organic commodities ranges from 30 percent to 100 percent higher.

But organic farmers can't get those premiums until their products earn the USDA organic label, which requires a three-year transition period to purge synthetics from the soil.

"For those three years, you face increased cost of production," Swisher said "Sometimes during the transition, yields (production per acre) go down. And you still don't get that price premium."

The costly interim is the major reason traditional farmers give for their reluctance to convert to organic.

''You're saying to the grower, 'Learn new techniques, perhaps experience a reduction in yield, and when you finally get certified organic, you might get a higher price,' " Swisher said. "I think if I were a businessman, that would be a very hard decision to make."

Source: The Ledger