Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[<activism98201@verizon.net>]

IMO the article was suggesting that no one can be blamed for not measuring.  
But again, I challenge the premise that no one was measuring.  I believe, I'd 
have to do some checking up (and I just don't have time to do it right now- 
sorry), that there was in fact a report done in the 70s(?) that compared 
nutritional values against those of the 50s(?).

It might be that no one was specifically measuring organics vs. standard 
crops, or that measurements hadn't been done recently, but this isn't the 
same as no measuring happening.  Which leads me to the real trouble I have 
with this, and that's that, IMO, the industry didn't want to perform 
measurements; if this is the case then I'd suspect it's because they didn't 
want such information out there.


-Mark Nagel
Everett, WA


=====================
From: yarrow@sfo.com
Date: 2007/09/14 Fri PM 11:52:52 CDT
To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] As giant crops flourish, vitamins, minerals 
and taste

At 9:50 PM -0500 9/14/07, <activism98201@verizon.net> wrote:
>To answer my own question/challenge... What this article 
>(http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/331421_bigfood13.html) noted 
>that I found extremely hard to believe (so much so that I didn't 
>believe it) was that no one foresaw the nutrient decline in our 
>foods:
>>

But that's not what the article (or the report it's based on) says. 
It's not saying no one foresaw, it's saying no one measured it, and 
now that we have, it's a clear trend. But I also suspect the Organic 
Center's spokesperson is being disingenuous in the quotes used in the 
article, because it has been the mission of the Organic Center to 
find this kind of information. Look in the mainstream press, though, 
and you'll still find lots of people pooh-poohing organics, seeing 
only a higher price and perceiving no benefits -- that's his 
audience. He's not talking to the people who already know that 
organics offer better nutrition, he's addressing all the skeptics who 
think labeling something "organic" is just another marketing scam or 
luxury label.

On another level, I think he's also saying that the hybridizers and 
industrial-scale farms have been short-sighted, in being focused only 
on yields and paying no attention to nutritional quality or taste. 
Yet they're the ones who own the market. (An aside: "everyone" seems 
to know that those tasteless tomatoes sold in the winter are not 
worth eating. So who buys them? Is it institutional/restaurant 
buyers, mostly? Or are they the test case for anyone who wants to 
prove that people will eat anything if it "looks" like something that 
once had some flavor?)

I think most organic growers have for a long time **suspected** that 
organically grown produce has more nutrients, but that's not the same 
thing as doing the measurements. Now the science has been done, so we 
have something to point to when challenged about the "supposed 
benefits" of organics.