Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dan Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>]

> Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 08:26:08 -0600
> From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
> Subject: [Livingontheland] The great organic myths:
> To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> Message-ID: <200805140826080609.079424E1@mail.lobo.net>
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>
>
> Anyone want to pick this apart?
>
> Organic Farming: Myths and Facts
> <http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/the-great-organic-myt
> hs-rebutted-822763.html>
>
> The great organic myths:
> Why organic foods are an indulgence the world can't afford
> by Rob Johnston
> Independent.co.uk (May 01 2008)
>
>
> They're not healthier or better for the environment - and they're packed
> with pesticides. In an age of climate change and shortages, these foods
> are an indugence the world can't afford.
>
>
> Myth one: Organic farming is good for the environment
>
> Also, organically reared cows burp twice as much methane as
> conventionally reared cattle - and methane is twenty times more powerful
> a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Meat and poultry are the largest
> agricultural contributors to greenhouse gas emissions emissions. Life
> Cycle Assessment counts the energy used to manufacture pesticide for
> growing cattle feed, but still shows that a kilo of organic beef
> releases twelve per cent more greenhouse gas emissions, causes twice as
> much nutrient pollution and more acid rain.
>
> Life Cycle Assessment relates food production to: energy required to
> manufacture artificial fertilisers and pesticides; fossil fuel burnt by
> farm equipment; nutrient pollution caused by nitrate and phosphate
> run-off into water courses; release of gases that cause acid rain; and
> the area of land farmed. A similar review by the University of
> Hohenheim, Germany, in 2000 reached the same conclusions (Hohenheim is a
> proponent of organic farming and quoted by the Soil Association).
>
>
>   
This assumes that we need as much beef as we are raising. Truly, organic 
farming works best when considered as part of the entire Life Cycle of 
the Earth and the human species as a whole, not simply the coddled, 
competitive rich countries. Once nutritional guidelines are followed, 
then much less beef would be eaten overall, and a few local cows eating 
grass and producing methane, butchered at home is less destructive than 
everyone eating McDonalds hamburgers shipped around the world by trucks 
and raised with feed gathered by tractors. The problem is the general 
disconnect which leads to overconsumption in general, not necessarily 
how what is eaten is grown. If the true life-cycle system is considered, 
then we have to consider reducing populations, but the rich won't 
consider reducing THEIR populations, even though they are the worst 
consumers and polluters. Criticism of the 'conventional' farming systems 
and their supporting factories is the same thing as saying "Eat the 
Rich", but the Rich are the ones with the law and the guns on their 
side. Violence always flows downhill, just like the bulls_it.
> Myth two: Organic farming is more sustainable
>
> Organic potatoes use less energy in terms of fertiliser production, but
> need more fossil fuel for ploughing. A hectare of conventionally farmed
> land produces 2.5 times more potatoes than an organic one.
>   
You don't have to plow for potatoes. Ruth Stout taught how it can be 
done, but it takes manual labor. Rich doctors like Johnston don't want 
to accept that the reason we use so many tractors is because he's too 
cheap to pay laborers to grow his food. That's why the rich like to push 
'free market' labor practices and they hate birth control for the 
masses: they gotta keep the poor fighting each other for jobs to keep 
wages low. All of the measurements for 'efficiency' require cheap energy 
to replace cheap (but more expensive) labor. Petrofood is based on 
petroleum. Petroleum creates the same effect as though the Rich get to 
"drill for slaves".
> Heated greenhouse tomatoes in Britain use up to 100 times more energy
> than those grown in fields in Africa. Organic yield is 75 per cent of
> conventional tomato crops but takes twice the energy - so the climate
> consequences of home-grown organic tomatoes exceed those of Kenyan imports.
>
> Defra estimates organic tomato production in the UK releases almost
> three times the nutrient pollution and uses 25 per cent more water per
> kilogram of fruit than normal production. However, a kilogram of wheat
> takes 1,700 joules of energy to produce, against 2,500 joules for the
> same amount of conventional wheat, although nutrient pollution is three
> times higher for organic.
>   
Why do people need hothouse (or imported) tomatoes? I put them in the 
same class as air travel: unnecessary and wasteful. Dumb to compare the 
efficiency of one dumb idea to an idiotic idea. The other statements are 
pure bluster. Nutrient pollution is related to practices that are 
neither organic or conventionally specific. If you dump manure on frozen 
ground, it washes into the streams. We haven't been using conventional 
agriculture long enough for the soils to completely fail, so the 
depletion and compaction issues of burning out the humus have not been 
considered yet by government agencies. Some comparisons are just common 
sense, and using bad examples for one while using selective examples for 
the other is cheating. Nobody likes a cheater.
> Myth three: Organic farming doesn't use pesticides
>
> Food scares are always good news for the organic food industry. The Soil
> Association and other organic farming trade groups say conventional food
> must be unhealthy because farmers use pesticides. Actually, organic
> farmers also use pesticides. The difference is that "organic" pesticides
> are so dangerous that they have been "grandfathered" with current
> regulations and do not have to pass stringent modern safety tests.
>
> For example, organic farmers can treat fungal diseases with copper
> solutions. Unlike modern, biodegradable, pesticides copper stays toxic
> in the soil for ever. The organic insecticide rotenone (in derris) is
> highly neurotoxic to humans - exposure can cause Parkinson's disease.
> But none of these "natural" chemicals is a reason not to buy organic
> food; nor are the man-made chemicals used in conventional farming.
>
>   
Few small organic operators are using rotenone on all of their crops, 
while virtually ALL conventional farmers use pesticides, and usually not 
according to label directions, either.
Copper is only used as a fungicide, and fungus problems are generally 
sporadic, not ubiquitous. Copper itself is a basic necessary mineral to 
all life. Saying it is toxic in the soil forever is an outright lie. 
Areas with a shortage of copper are susceptible to prion diseases.
> Myth four: Pesticide levels in conventional food are dangerous
>
> The proponents of organic food - particularly celebrities, such as
> Gwyneth Paltrow, who have jumped on the organic bandwagon - say there is
> a "cocktail effect" of pesticides. Some point to an "epidemic of
> cancer". In fact, there is no epidemic of cancer. When age-standardised,
> cancer rates are falling dramatically and have been doing so for fifty
> years.
>
> If there is a "cocktail effect" it would first show up in farmers, but
> they have among the lowest cancer rates of any group. Carcinogenic
> effects of pesticides could show up as stomach cancer, but stomach
> cancer rates have fallen faster than any other. Sixty years ago, all
> Britain's food was organic; we lived only until our early sixties,
> malnutrition and food poisoning were rife. Now, modern agriculture
> (including the careful use of well-tested chemicals) makes food cheap
> and safe and we live into our eighties.
>   
This guy is a DOCTOR? If a farmer only uses one type of pesticide, why 
would the cocktail effect show up in farmers first? Vitamin D is the 
biggest contributor to lowering cancer that I've seen, and farmers get 
more of it from the sun (and the right kind), so of course, their cancer 
levels are lower. The real danger of conventional pesticides (or 
rotenone) is the destruction of local fauna balance and the killing of 
soil organisms. THAT's what should be considered as part of the holistic 
diet of humans, not whether they are exposed to something less toxic 
than their cell phones.
> Myth five: Organic food is healthier
>
> To quote Hohenheim University: "No clear conclusions about the quality
> of organic food can be reached using the results of present literature
> and research results". What research there is does not support the
> claims made for organic food.
>
> Large studies in Holland, Denmark and Austria found the food-poisoning
> bacterium Campylobacter in 100 per cent of organic chicken flocks but
> only a third of conventional flocks; equal rates of contamination with
> Salmonella (despite many organic flocks being vaccinated against it);
> and 72 per cent of organic chickens infected with parasites.
>
> This high level of infection among organic chickens could
> cross-contaminate non-organic chickens processed on the same production
> lines. Organic farmers boast that their animals are not routinely
> treated with antibiotics or (for example) worming medicines. But, as a
> result, organic animals suffer more diseases. In 2006 an Austrian and
> Dutch study found that a quarter of organic pigs had pneumonia against
> four per cent of conventionally raised pigs; their piglets died twice as
> often.
>
> Disease is the major reason why organic animals are only half the weight
> of conventionally reared animals - so organic farming is not necessarily
> a boon to animal welfare.
>
>   
No, animals with lower caloric intakes are healthier. Weight is no 
measure of the health of an animal unless it is starving. Badly raised 
organic animals suffer more diseases, but the same applies to badly 
raised conventional animals. Also, some parasites are actually 
beneficial to immune systems, and there have not been enough studies on 
holistic practices to be able to make definitive statements about death 
rates, etc. My father raised animals with very few or none of the 
conventional practices for his whole life. His animals were always in 
better shape than other people who got their advice from the latest 
university studies or from the drug salesman. Clean stalls, plenty of 
fresh air, low population densities.
Almost all of the examples that Johnston is citing are one confinement 
system to another confinement system.
Try comparing homeschool kids to conventional kids for disease rates....
> Myth six: Organic food contains more nutrients
>
> The Soil Association points to a few small studies that demonstrate
> slightly higher concentrations of some nutrients in organic produce -
> flavonoids in organic tomatoes and omega-3 fatty acids in organic milk,
> for example.
>
> The easiest way to increase the concentration of nutrients in food is to
> leave it in an airing cupboard for a few days. Dehydrated foods contain
> much higher concentrations of carbohydrates and nutrients than whole
> foods. But, just as in humans, dehydration is often a sign of disease.
>
> The study that found higher flavonoid levels in organic tomatoes
> revealed them to be the result of stress from lack of nitrogen - the
> plants stopped making flesh and made defensive chemicals (such as
> flavonoids) instead.
>
>   
And this is a problem? No, it's the way plants grow naturally. What 
doesn't kill them makes them taste better. I'm sure that now this 
wonderful bit of Johnston's wisdom is out there, Monsanto will come out 
with a spray to stress tomatoes and increase their flavinoid levels.

> Myth seven: The demand for organic food is booming
>
> Less than one per cent of the food sold in Britain is organic, but you
> would never guess it from the media. The Soil Association positions
> itself as a charity that promotes good farming practices. Modestly, on
> its website, it claims: "... in many ways the Soil Association can claim
> to be the first organisation to promote and practice sustainable
> development". But the Soil Association is also, in effect, a trade group
> - and very successful lobbying organisation.
>
> Every year, news outlets report the Soil Association's annual claim of a
> big increase in the size of the organic market. For 2006 (the latest
> available figures) it boasted sales of GBP 1.937 billion.
>
> Mintel (a retail consultantcy hired by the Soil Association) estimated
> only GBP 1.5 billion in organic food sales for 2006. The more reliable
> TNS Worldpanel, (tracking actual purchases) found just GBP 1 billion of
> organics sold - from a total food sector of GBP 104 billion. Sixty years
> ago all our food was organic so demand has actually gone down by 99 per
> cent. Despite the "boom" in organics, the amount of land being farmed
> organically has been decreasing since its height in 2003. Although the
> area of land being converted to organic usage is scheduled to rise, more
> farmers are going back to conventional farming.
>   
This can have many causes, most likely the credit bubble and lack of 
cheap labor to farm organically, plus the hassle factor of all the 
paperwork which is only necessary to get certified, which is only 
necessary for larger organic farms who need to ship things anonymously 
someplace. The anonymity of the commodity system is the original 
problem. It is one thing to buy wheat from a grain elevator, quite 
another to buy it from your neighbor.
> The Soil Association invariably claims that anyone who questions the
> value of organic farming works for chemical manufacturers and
> agribusiness or is in league with some shady right-wing US free-market
> lobby group. Which is ironic, considering that a number of British
> fascists were involved in the founding of the Soil Association and its
> journal was edited by one of Oswald Mosley's blackshirts until the late
> 1960s.
>
> All Britain's food is safer than ever before. In a serious age, we
> should talk about the future seriously and not use food scares and
> misinformation as a tactic to increase sales.
> _____
>
> Rob Johnston is a doctor and science writer
>   
And apparently, an attack dog of the pesticide and processing consortium 
fascists....? "Our fascists are better than your fascists."