Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Liz <liz@allslash.org>]

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