Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

 Organic Gardening: Why Organic is Better
http://www.motherearthliving.com/issues/motherearthliving/feature/organic_ga
rdening/13-1.html

What we need is a more holistic approach to our food systems. We need to be
sure that high yields and maximum profits for producers don’t come with
hidden price tags to consumers in terms of nutritional decline or
environmental damage. This approach isn’t anything new to organic farmers
— they’ve been working their farms as holistic systems all along, and
the result is a production system that is better for us, domestic animals
and the environment.

Certified organic growers are not allowed to use chemical nitrogen
fertilizers, ever. Instead they build soil fertility using cover crops,
compost and slow-release natural fertilizers. Because they aren’t grown
with chemical nitrogen, organic fruits and vegetables tend to be smaller,
and yields seem lower compared to non-organic crops. But as mentioned
above, studies have shown that organic crops often contain less water, so
in terms of actual nutrient value (and flavor) per bite of food, organic
often is a better buy than non-organic produce.

The higher dry matter/lower water content of organic produce also impacts
the levels of health-promoting antioxidants such as polyphenols and
flavonoids. In a review of the scientific literature, Benbrook discovered
that smaller fruits had up to five times more of these antioxidants per
unit of calories.

There’s more research that must be done before we can know to what extent
the overall quality of our food is declining, and whether the rapidly
expanding organic industry will be able to consistently produce more
nutritious food than chemical-based agribusiness.
But Benbrook says the public health implications are considerable: “When
you think about the diseases and long-term health problems that are caused
by poor nutrition — heart disease, diabetes, cancer — the value to
society of producing more nutritious crops is enormous.”

Indeed, a 1992 USDA report estimated the following potential health
benefits if everyone in the United States could be convinced to eat a diet
containing the recommended daily amounts of primary nutrients shown in the
table:

• 20 percent reduction in cancer
• 25 percent reduction in heart and vascular conditions
• 50 percent reduction in arthritis
• 20 percent reduction in respiratory and infectious diseases
• 50 percent reduction in infant and maternal deaths

So, it seems to us that the government should be doing more to monitor the
nutrient content of our food, especially organic and pasture-based
products. Currently, the USDA’s National Nutrient Database, which is
widely used as the “official” source for nutrient levels, includes more
than 6,600 food products, including meat; fresh, frozen and canned produce;
and processed foods. They even include candy bars, gumdrops, TV dinners and
hundreds of fast food items in the database. But the agency has not
included a single organic item, nor any entries for products from
pasture-based meat or dairy systems. If they use our tax dollars to report
the nutrients in candy bars, isn’t it time they started including data on
these healthier “alternatives,” too?

If you agree that the government needs to do more to enhance the quality of
our food supply, write your congressional representatives and let them
know. After all, as one USDA secretary whispered while giving us the
mandated brush off, “It’s up to the public. If they really want to
know, they have to press Congress to appropriate the funds.” You also can
send a message every time you shop for your groceries: When you choose
organic or grass-fed products, you are helping support farmers and ranchers
who are offering high-quality foods from sustainable production systems.


Why Organic is Better: Flavor and Nutrition

[Adapted from Is Agribusiness Making Food Less Nutritious? by Cheryl Long
and Lynn Keiley, Mother Earth News June/July 2004]

Growing evidence indicates that today's fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy
products have less vitamins and nutrients than in the past.


American agribusiness is producing more food than ever before, but the
evidence is building that the vitamins and minerals in that food are
declining. For example, eggs from free-range hens contain up to 30 percent
more vitamin E, 50 percent more folic acid and 30 percent more vitamin B-12
than factory eggs. And the bright orange color of their yolks show higher
levels of antioxidant carotenes. (Many factory-farm eggs are so pale that
producers feed the hens expensive marigold flowers to make the yolks
brighter in color.)

Once upon a time, most of us ate eggs from free-range chickens kept by
small, local producers. But today, agri-culture has become dominated by
agri-business. Most of our food now comes from large-scale producers who
rely on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and animal drugs, and inhumane
confinement animal production. In agribusiness, the main emphasis is on
getting the highest possible yields and profits; nutrient content (and
flavor) are, at best, second thoughts.

This shift in production methods is clearly giving us less nutritious eggs
and meat. Beef from cattle raised in feedlots on growth hormones and
high-grain diets has lower levels of vitamins E, A, D and betacarotene, and
twice as much fat, as grass-fed beef. Health writer Jo Robinson has done
groundbreaking work on this subject, collecting the evidence on her Web
site, www.eatwild.com, and in her book Pasture Perfect.

Similar nutrient declines can be documented in milk, butter and cheese. As
one researcher writing in the Journal of Dairy Research explained, “It
follows that continuing breeding and management systems that focus solely
on increasing milk yield will result in a steady dilution of vitamins and
antioxidants.” (Today’s “super-cows” are bred and fed to produce 20
times more milk than a cow needs to sustain a healthy calf.)

How much, and why, the nutrients in vegetables and fruits may be declining
is less clear. Comparisons of 2004 data from the USDA’s National Nutrient
Database, with numbers from 1975, show declines in nutrients in a number of
foods.

WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY
Many things can impact the nutrient content of a vegetable or fruit.
Variety type, soil quality, fertilizers, crop rotations, maturity at
harvest time and the distance from farm to table all play a role in
determining the vitamins and minerals in our food. We asked sustainable
agriculture expert Charles Benbrook, Ph.D., if reliance on chemical
fertilizers and emphasis on high yields might reduce the nutrients in
fruits and vegetables. Benbrook has been studying the pros and cons of
conventional and organic agriculture for more than 15 years. He explained
factors that make organic foods rich in nutrients:

Fertilizers. Non-organic farmers use highly soluble nitrogen fertilizers,
and keeping this nutrient in their soils is difficult. To be sure they get
high yields, they often apply more nitrogen than the crops actually need.

This dependence upon chemical nitrogen fertilizers means we’re getting
less for our money, says Benbrook. Numerous studies have demonstrated that
high levels of nitrogen stimulate quick growth and increase crop yields
because the fruits and vegetables take up more water. In effect, this means
consumers pay more for produce diluted with water. “High nitrogen levels
make plants grow fast and bulk up with carbohydrates and water. While the
fruits these plants produce may be big, they suffer in nutritional
quality,” Benbrook says, “whereas organic production systems [which use
slow-release forms of nitrogen] produce foods that usually yield denser
concentrations of nutrients and deliver consumers a better nutritional
bargain per calorie consumed.”

Benbrook says the USDA has a tacit policy to avoid discussions of
differences in food quality and safety that may be a function of how food
is grown and processed. “The Department made a political decision when
they finalized the national organic rule; they declared that ‘organic’
food was not nutritionally superior or safer than conventional food, even
though there is solid evidence suggesting otherwise.” This would
certainly explain the response we got from Johnson’s office.

What it all comes down to, Benbrook says, is that you can’t buy soil
quality in a bag any more than you can buy good nutrition in a pill.
Organic farmers work to support the complex natural relationships between
crop roots, soil microbes and minerals, but “scientists only understand a
few of those relationships. Unless we understand much more fully what the
critical balances are, it’s very difficult to import them to the farm in
a bag or a bottle.”

Vitamin C. High nitrogen levels reduce the concentrations of vitamin C in
crops such as lettuce, beets, endive, kale and Brussels sprouts. Similar
effects have been detected on fruits such as apples, oranges, lemons and
cantaloupe. Swiss studies have shown similar impacts on potatoes and
tomatoes, as well as citrus fruits — which are major sources of this
important vitamin.

Harvesting and storage. The fact that the average supermarket apple travels
1,500 miles from farm to table only adds to the problem. “Most fruits
reach best eating quality and peak nutrition when fully ripened on the tree
or plant,” explains Julio Loaiza, Ph.D., a research scientist at Texas
A&M University’s Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center. “However,
fully ripened fruit may not withstand the harsh handling typically involved
for travel to distant markets, which leads to a compromise in optimum
maturity and nutritional quality.”

Breeding for high yields. Plant breeders could maintain and even increase
the nutrient content of most crops, if they were asked to do so. But this
goal usually takes a back seat to economic issues: “Large-scale growers
want size and fast growth so they can harvest early. These factors feed
into sacrifices in nutritional quality,” Benbrook says.
WHY ORGANIC FOOD IS THE WINNER

Little doubt remains that when we choose organic food, we are helping to
protect the environment. It’s also clear that organic food contains much
lower levels of pesticide residues than non-organic crops. Scientists have
been slow to fully study claims that organic food is richer in nutrients,
since research agendas and funding are so often driven by dominant
non-organic commercial interests. Here’s what we know so far, though,
thanks to a comprehensive review of more than 400 scientific papers that
compared the quality of organic and non-organic foods. The review,
published in 2001 by the non-profit Soil Association of Great Britain, is
titled “Organic Farming, Food Quality and Human Health: A Review of the
Evidence.”

Higher dry matter? Dry matter represents the non-water component of food
— a lower dry matter content indicates a higher water content, which is
undesirable for consumers in terms of the dilution of nutrients and flavor,
and the price per pound. Ten studies have demonstrated a trend toward
higher dry matter contents in organically grown crops, averaging 20 percent
higher. One study showed slightly higher dry matter content in a
non-organic crop (bananas), and eight studies found inconsistent or
non-significant differences.

Higher mineral content? Out of eight studies, seven demonstrated a trend
toward higher mineral content in organic crops; one showed a trend toward
higher minerals in non-organic crops that also used crop rotations and
manure for fertilizer.

Higher vitamin C? Seven studies comparing vitamin C content in fruits and
vegetables showed a trend toward higher vitamin C (from 6 percent to as
much as 100 percent more) in organic crops. No studies have found higher
levels in non-organic crops, and six studies found inconsistent or
non-significant results.

SIGNS OF NUTRIENT DECLINE
Here’s a summary of the evidence that nutrients in non-organic
factory-farm foods are declining:

• Many vegetables appear to contain lower levels of vitamins and minerals
today than they did in 1975, according to official USDA nutrient data
reviewed by health writer Alex Jack. Jack has reported that a random sample
of USDA data on a dozen vegetables showed that calcium has fallen an
average of 26.5 percent, vitamins A and C have dropped 21.4 percent and
29.9 percent, and iron has plummeted by an average of 36.5 percent.

• The concentrations of eight essential minerals in 20 fruits and 20
vegetables in Great Britain has declined, and water content has increased
in fruits over the last 50 years, according to a paper by Anne-Marie Mayer
in the British Food Journal (1997, Vol. 99, No. 6). She found that average
calcium content had dropped 19 percent, iron was down 22 percent and
potassium declined 14 percent for the 20 vegetables studied.

• Fruits and vegetables grown using synthetic chemical nitrogen may
contain an average of 20 percent less dry matter and more water compared to
organic crops fertilized with slower-release natural sources of nitrogen.
Higher water content means lower nutrient concentrations per pound of
produce (and weaker flavors).

• Meat and dairy products from animals raised in feedlots or cages on
high-grain diets contain lower levels of nutrients than meat from animals
that are raised on their natural diet of grass, or, in the case of poultry,
grass and grain.

• According to the USDA’s Nutrient Database, factory-farm eggs contain
20 percent less iron and 59 percent less vitamin A than they did in 1975.
The USDA data also show that today’s eggs contain 3 percent more water
than in 1975. (See MOTHER's Chicken and Egg Page.)

• These factory-farm eggs contain significantly less health-enhancing
carotenes than eggs from pasture-raised chickens. This difference is easy
to see because the more carotenes, the more orange in color the yolks are.
Factory-farm eggs also are lower in vitamin E, vitamin B-12, vitamin A,
folic acid and omega-3 fatty acids, according to a remarkable collection of
studies assembled by journalist Jo Robinson on her Web site,
www.eatwild.com. Robinson also documents that not only do factory-farm eggs
contain less vitamins, they have more fat and cholesterol than eggs from
pastured poultry.

• And last but certainly not least, there is this: Because of the last
few centuries of human industrialization across the globe, today’s
atmosphere contains 30 percent more carbon dioxide than it did during the
millions of years that plants, animals and humans have been evolving
together. And the CO2 levels are predicted to increase even more
unless/until we reduce our CO2 emissions. CO2 is the basic building block
for photosynthesis; when plants are exposed to higher levels of CO2, they
produce a higher proportion of carbohydrates than normal and this may lead
to reduced levels of other nutrients, per calorie. A startling literature
review published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2002, Vol 17, No. 10),
reported initial studies have found that the concentration of every
measured element except potassium declined when wheat was grown at high
levels of CO2, and four out of five elements in brown rice declined. Global
CO2 levels are predicted to continue to increase, and this could be yet
another factor that is damaging the quality of our food.