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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Commercial Organic Farms Have Better Fruit and Soil, Lower Environmental Impact
  • Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2010 22:13:49 -0600


Commercial Organic Farms Have Better Fruit and Soil, Lower Environmental
Impact, Study Finds
Washington State University, ScienceDaily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100901171553.htm

Side-by-side comparisons of organic and conventional strawberry farms and
their fruit found the organic farms produced more flavorful and nutritious
berries while leaving the soil healthier and more genetically diverse.

"Our findings have global implications and advance what we know about the
sustainability benefits of organic farming systems," said John Reganold,
Washington State University Regents professor of soil science and lead author
of a paper published in the peer-reviewed online journal, PLoS ONE. "We also
show you can have high quality, healthy produce without resorting to an
arsenal of pesticides."

The study is among the most comprehensive of its kind, analyzing 31 chemical
and biological soil properties, soil DNA, and the taste, nutrition and
quality of three strawberry varieties on more than two dozen commercial
fields -- 13 conventional and 13 organic.

"There is no paper in the literature that comprehensively and quantitatively
compares so many indices of both food and soil quality at multiple sampling
times on so many commercial farms," said Reganold. Previous Reganold studies
of "sustainability indicators" on farms in the Pacific Northwest, California,
British Columbia, Australia, and New Zealand have appeared in the journals
Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

All the farms in the current study were in California, home to 90 percent of
the nation's strawberries and the center of an ongoing debate about the use
of soil fumigants. Conventional farms in the study used the ozone-depleting
methyl bromide, which is slated to be replaced by the highly toxic methyl
iodide over the protests of health advocates and more than 50 Nobel laureates
and members of the National Academy of Sciences. In July, California Sen.
Dianne Feinstein asked the EPA to reconsider its approval of methyl iodide...

Among their findings:

* The organic strawberries had significantly higher antioxidant activity
and concentrations of ascorbic acid and phenolic compounds.
* The organic strawberries had longer shelf life.
* The organic strawberries had more dry matter, or, "more strawberry in
the strawberry."
* Anonymous testers, working at times under red light so the fruit color
would not bias them, found one variety of organic strawberries was sweeter,
had better flavor, and once a white light was turned on, appearance. The
testers judged the other two varieties to be similar...





  • [Livingontheland] Commercial Organic Farms Have Better Fruit and Soil, Lower Environmental Impact, Tradingpost, 09/07/2010

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