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  • From: Liz <liz@allslash.org>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] The great organic myths:
  • Date: Fri, 16 May 2008 01:08:07 -0400

At 10:26 AM 5/14/2008, you wrote:

Anyone want to pick this apart?

Organic Farming: Myths and Facts

There are some things in this that don't apply to the US, but I'll have a crack at it anyway.



Myth one: Organic farming is good for the environment

The study of Life Cycle Assessments for the UK, sponsored by the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, should concern
anyone who buys organic. It shows that milk and dairy production is a
major source of greenhouse gas emissions. A litre of organic milk
requires eighty per cent more land than conventional milk to produce,
has twenty per cent greater global warming potential, releases sixty per
cent more nutrients to water sources, and contributes seventy per cent
more to acid rain.

Where are the sources for this claim? Seventy per cent more contribution to acid rain?? From burping cows? Why would pastured cows release sixty percent more nutrients to water sources? These claims don't make sense, but unless you really look at them and ask why they would be true, the numbers sound so official.


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.

Same response as above. Also, who says cows burp methane? I'd like to know where that comes from. Methane is a product of decomposing manure, not burps.


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).

Again, where are the numbers? You can't argue with something like this when the claimant doesn't produce their sources.



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.

No reason that you'd need more energy to plow a field for organic potatoes than for conventional ones. And of course it's a good argument for no-till anyway. What about the fertilizer run-off from that conventional field? The energy costs for producing and transporting the fertilizer?


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.

This is one of the few valid arguments in the whole article, but it rests on an invalid conclusion--that it's necessary to eat fresh tomatoes year round. Choose seasonally available foods (and preserve them for the winter when they're plentiful) and you don't need to transport them.


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.

Sigh. No sources.



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.

Another claim that makes absolutely no sense if you read it carefully. Something is so dangerous that it has to be "grandfathered" and not pass safety tests? Nonsense. I don't know which pesticides are permitted in the UK, as opposed to the US, but I would be astonished if they're permitted because they're too dangerous to undergo 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.

This is one of those areas where US law is more stringent, apparently. I have a friend in the South Pacific who uses an automatic spray device in his home to keep insect populations under control. It sprays out rotenone at programmed intervals, which would not be permitted in the US. I was astonished to find out that this is common all across the former and current English possessions of the South Pacific.

Of course, the best method is to build up the soil health so applications of any kind of pesticide is unnecessary.


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.

What a particularly nasty bit of illogic. He makes one statement about the alleged cocktail effect of pesticides. And then he brings in cancer and claims that cancer rates are falling, implying that this refutes the argument about the cocktail effect of pesticides. Perhaps overall rates of cancer are falling (and standardizing for age has nothing to do with that). Such an argument says nothing about the variability of individual cancers. Which ones are less likely now, and which ones are more likely? If the rate of lung cancer is falling due to fewer smokers, but the rate of another cancer is increasing because of pesticides in people's bloodstreams, the combined rate might be lower. But the combined rate wouldn't say anything at all about how pesticides affect the rate of the other cancer.


If there is a "cocktail effect" it would first show up in farmers, but
they have among the lowest cancer rates of any group.

Again, overall cancer rates don't tell us anything about which cancers are caused or influenced by specific factors.

Carcinogenic
effects of pesticides could show up as stomach cancer, but stomach
cancer rates have fallen faster than any other.

I don't know whether this is true, but I've read that a major reason for the fall in stomach cancer is the dramatic decrease in the amount of pickled foods people eat, compared to a couple of generations ago when pickling was a major way of preserving food.

Regardless of that, this argument makes the implicit claim that if pesticides aren't causing stomach cancer, they must not be causing other cancers either.

Sixty years ago, all
Britain's food was organic; we lived only until our early sixties,
malnutrition and food poisoning were rife.

Organic food caused food poisoning? That's an interesting leap of logic. There definitely were food shortages in the UK for a brief period after World War II, because the country's assets were so depleted by the war. But that didn't last long, and it had nothing to do with organic farming methods. And again, this kind of statistic says nothing at all about the reasons for individual variations in lifespan.

Now, modern agriculture
(including the careful use of well-tested chemicals) makes food cheap
and safe and we live into our eighties.

He must have written this before the food scares from China and the recent sharp increase in prices.


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.

Magic words: "Using the results of present literature and research results." Translation: there isn't any research right now that demonstrates one way or the other whether organic food is better. But the way it's phrased here, it sounds as though this prestigious university is saying there isn't any difference.


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.

Um, I'll bet these weren't pastured flocks. If you raise chickens in conventional overcrowded dirt-floored buildings, you do have to saturate them with antibiotics to keep them all from dying. Raise them on pasture and then test them for campylobacter.


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.

Again, look at how he picks out one thing and makes it seem the opposite of what it is. "Organic farmers boast that their animals are not routinely treated with antibiotics . . . " Well, yes! Of course they do. It's getting to be common knowledge, thank God, that routinely taking antibiotics isn't good for us. Nor is eating animals that have been routinely treated with antibiotics. But if you don't pick this apart, you get the impression that it's bad for organic farmers to make this claim. Regarding the Austrian and Dutch study, I'd like to know what the conclusions of the study were. Without knowing those, there's no way to know whether not using antibiotics routinely had anything to do with the mortality rate.


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.

Who says organic animals are only half the weight of conventionally reared animals? That's ridiculous, which of course is why he doesn't have a source for it.



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.

Dehydration in humans is bad. Dehydration in a fruit or vegetable that is being preserved with dehydration is good. He makes no distinction between accidental dehydration due to some undesirable cause, and the deliberate dehydration used to preserve food, just conflates them and hopes the reader won't notice.


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.

What study was this?? Who funded it, and for what purpose? Even if the statement is true, it ignores multiple possibilities. An excess of nitrogen may cause a plant to continue growing, and also cause larger fruiting. That doesn't mean this is the optimum condition for this particular plant. If the natural life cycle of a tomato is to use up the available nitrogen and then produce flavonoids, why would that be bad? Notice also the labeling that is going on--characterizing flavonoids as "defensive" chemicals.



Myth seven: The demand for organic food is booming

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.

Where is the source for that number?


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.

I couldn't address the popularity of organic farming in the UK. But I think it's interesting how he associates it with fascists and blackshirts. Classical example of smearing and mudslinging.


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.

No comment on that one.

Liz in SW VA
http://life-as-a-spectator-sport.com




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