Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Lots of cogent thinking there.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 5/14/2008 at 3:17 PM Dan Conine wrote:

>> 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>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
>>
>>
>> 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."
>
>
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