We've never adopted chemical use here, for some very specific reasons:
1) All of our products (hay, meats, veggies and herbs) are sold directly to
the end consumer.  I look that consumer in the eye for almost every single
purchase, which is wonderful and fulfilling in some ways, but a lot of
pressure in others.  Amongst other requirements, the vast majority of my
customer based wants to know their food was raised without chemical
additives.  Frankly, it doesn't matter what their reasons are, and it
doesn't matter if their reasons are rational, imaginary, or based on
something the tooth fairy told them.  They're the ones ultimately signing my
paychecks.  If they don't want it on their food, the customer is always
right.  It's much too easy for them to go find someone who doesn't use
chemicals, than for me to argue with them about the subtleties of GMO
metabolization and seed coating residue breakdown.
2) chemical usage is just one more cost we have to pay up front, out of
pocket, before we ever get a harvest.  Yes, we save our income from our
previous harvest to pay for the next year, but that money gets stretched
just as far as we can manage.  If my yields are down by 10% as a result of
not using some chemical, but my overall crop costs are reduced by 20% as a
result of skipping that chemical application, I'm going to skip it and come
out ahead.
3) I came of age when the "Green Revolution" was supposedly going to solve
all our problems.  Lo and behold, it didn't.  I'm working with the same
issues now that have plagued mankind for eons.  Lesson learned - the
promises made by chemical salespeople are created to do one thing and one
thing only - sell product.  Those claims are going to be based on ideal
conditions, under a very narrow set of conditions, and often don't look very
far down the road in terms of implications.  In my working lifetime (about
30 years so far, with a hoped-for 30 years yet to go), I've already seen
multiple generations of "this is the big magic bullet we've all been waiting
for", only to see those claims fizzle out.  Meanwhile, tried and true
methods may not get the up-front spectacular results that first year, but
they work pretty well, year after year after year. 
4) The regulatory climate around chemical purchasing, application, disposal
and monitoring is getting more complex every year.   There comes a point
where the time/effort required to keep up with each new set of rules, simply
doesn't pencil out anymore.  

 Someone asked if farmers still use crop rotation, companion planting, IPM,
disease or pest-resistant varieties, etc.  Yes many of us do.  It's rare to
find someone with the time/knowledge/energy/equipment to use all those
methods all the time, but many (most?) of us are using at least some of them
each year, depending on what our particular situations are.  For me, the
flexibility of having multiple tools in the toolbox, which have been proven
to be "pretty good" over centuries, trumps the latest chemical wonder every
single time.  Add consumer concerns (whether founded or not) and regulatory
requirements (whether founded or not), and I don't expect to see ag-chemical
usage get any easier anytime soon.
Kathryn Kerby
Frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA

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