By Marina MelloFarmers yesterday welcomed an apology from Tom Wadson for calling them “the Chemical Guys” in a magazine article and suggesting they used too many pesticides on their crops.Members of the Bermuda Farmers Association were left fuming after Mr Wadson’s comments in the recent Going Green issue and had demanded he correct inaccurate information he gave in the article.They said Mr Wadson had made the public believe he ran an organic farm.In a Letter to the Editor published yesterday, Mr Wadson issued an extraordinary apology to local farmers saying he had used a “poorly selected term” in describing them as “the Chemical Guys” and admitting that his Southampton farm was not an organic farm.He heaped praise on local farmers saying Bermuda was “fortunate to have such hard-working and skilled people performing the often, thankless job of farming in our community”. He said local farmers were so productive they grew 20 varieties of lettuce and had 20 tons of carrots in storage.Mr Wadson said that while he applies organic principles to his farming and tries to keep pesticides to a minimum, his produce was not 100 percent organically grown.“The article really ticked us off,” said Roger Pacheco of Pacheco & Sons Farm. “Honestly I think we do a really good job in terms of the chemicals we use and him putting himself above the rest of us was offensive.“He uses fertilizers and snail bait and Roundup (weed killer) just like us, yet he labels his stuff organic. I think the article set fear on people when the fact is the little chemicals we use are so soft I think the worms and fungus just laugh at us.”Carlos Amaral said the Association had been shocked by Mr Wadson’s “slandering” comments - noting Mr Wadson was supposed to be president of the Association.He said farmers had been waiting for the apology and were glad he finally made it - mostly for the sake of consumers.“We were tired of customers coming to us with concerns about pesticides in our produce,” Mr Amaral said.He added: “The Farmers Association took issue with how he marketed himself as being organic and the products he was using in his operation were not. The onus was on him to come clean. We felt he had an obligation to let the consumer know what was going on. It was not a matter of us against him at all.”Another farmer, Manuel DeSilva said: “He was making him look good and us look bad. The farming community is small and we are all in this together. So what he did was not very nice.”Mr DeSilva said he tried to use safe treatments and fertilizers for his crops, but that was not always possible especially given the summer droughts and types of pests Bermuda has and difficulty in controlling them naturally.In his letter, Mr Wadson wrote: “Throughout the article I referred to my peers (who all run excellent operations) as ‘the Chemical Guys’ which was on reflection an inappropriate and unjustified choice of words on my part.“The handful of local farmers who consistently work land in Bermuda are an industrious, highly talented and skilled group for whom we as a country should be very thankful. For me to refer to them as the ‘Chemical Guys’ really gives the wrong impression for which I absolutely apologise.”He said he did use chemical fertiliser to get his pastures to grow and has also had to use chemical herbicides on weeds.“Additionally we, like the rest of Bermuda, have been completely overrun with snails for several seasons now, and have not been successful in controlling these using an ‘organic’ approach. Again we used a chemically based poison bait to try and alleviate this serious situation. While every care is taken using this bait, it is still not an organic solution to the problem. I might add that we still hand pick snails on a regular basis.”Mr Wadson said, in fact, many of the “chemicals” used by local farmers are often biologicals that are approved by OMRI, The Organic Materials Review Institute.And he said “world-class sweet potatoes and sweet corn” and a significant amount of potatoes, broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower were grown in Bermuda plus 20 varieties of lettuce.“We are really lucky to have such a dedicated group of talented farmers,” Mr. Wadson said.He added that in any event there currently no authority in Bermuda that can certify that produce grown here is organic.