Credit: Jim Wehtje/Photolibrary
I love my local organic food store. From the moment I enter, I enjoy the aromas that greet me and the folksy look of the place. But is organic food really any better for me? The perceived wisdom is that it's more 'pure' and 'natural', devoid of disease-causing pesticides; that organic farming "generates healthy soils" and "doesn't poison ecosystems with toxic chemicals".
Organic food is riding a surge in popularity; across the globe, sales of organic food are burgeoning. The global market in 2006 was estimated at close to an impressive US$40 billion (A$47.9 billion) by Organic Monitor, an industry research body, and growing 20 per cent annually in the U.S. and Canada.
And where consumers go, the multinational food companies follow: everyone from Uncle Tobys to Kraft, Heinz, Kelloggs and even Coca-Cola has jumped on the bandwagon. And developing countries are joining in too: China's organic exports grew 200-fold in a decade to reach US$200 million in 2004. Australia is also a major exporter, and plans to increase its organic produce by 50 per cent by 2012.
But is this belief in organic food based on faith, or evidence?
THE SURPRISING FACT IS that this mass migration to organic food has not been on the back of scientific evidence. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find comprehensive evidence that organic food is healthier – either for us or the planet. Nevertheless, in the public consciousness, organic farming is unquestioningly bundled with the reigning moral imperatives of sustainability, protecting the environment and reducing greenhouse gases.
Certainly there are historical reasons for concern. In the 1950s and 1960s, the pesticide DDT was blamed for the widespread thinning of bird eggs across North America, and the rapid decline of the bald eagle and peregrine falcon. Over-intensive grain farming in the U.S. Midwest led to fertiliser run-off into the Mississippi River that ultimately created a 20,000 square kilometre dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, as algal blooms sucked up available oxygen. Soils that were tilled for decades without crop rotation or replacing organic matter led to dust storms that wreaked havoc across Australia in the 1960s and the American and Canadian prairies in the 1930s, the latter so vividly depicted in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
These days, modern farming techniques have evolved after decades of pressure from the environmental movement and decades of work by a generation of scientists inspired by environmental awareness. In fact, conventional farming is starting to look a lot like organic farming.
The earthworm-rich soils, so prized by organic farmers, are being achieved through contemporary no-till (or no-plough) techniques. In Australia, most farmers use rotation to get crops out of synchronisation with weeds and to return nutrients to the soil. Natural predators are being used to control pests, and companies such as Dow Chemical are producing safe, short-acting pesticides. In fact Dow's latest pesticide, Spinosad, is also happily used by organic farmers because it is naturally produced by bacteria.
"There's been a quiet revolution in Australian farming over the last decade," says Mark Peoples, the assistant chief of the Division of Plant Industry at Australia's national research agency CSIRO.
ON THE OTHER HAND, organic farmers are bound to an ideology that demands they only use natural techniques. In some cases, such purism gets in the way of practices that are better for the environment and more sustainable for farmers. For example, organic farmers will use litres of BT spray (BT is a 'natural' pesticide made by the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis), yet they often demonise the genetically modified (GM) cotton crops that carry an inbuilt supply of BT, and which therefore require less spraying.
However, these GM varieties spare farmers – and the environment – from the risks of pesticide overuse. For instance, according to Richard Roush, the Dean of land and food resources at the University of Melbourne, cotton farmers in India have reduced their use of pesticides and accidental poisonings by 80 per cent since the introduction of genetically modified BT cotton.
The ultimate test of sustainability is whether organic farming could feed the planet. Scott Kinnear, president of Australia's Organic Farmers Federation, believes "it is imperative that the world moves over to organic farming as soon as possible".
Yet many agricultural scientists estimate that if the world were to go completely organic, not only would the remaining forests have to be cleared to provide the organic manure needed for farming, the world's current population would likely starve.
Norman Ernest Borlaug, the American plant geneticist who won a Nobel Peace Prize for breeding the high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties (triggering agriculture's 'Green Revolution'), is despairing of the organic fad. "This shouldn't even be a debate. Even if you could use all the organic material you have – the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues – and get them back on the soil, you couldn't feed more than four billion people."
Provide evidence
How about providing some evidence before making wild claims and trying to discount the evidence backed arguments Ms. Finkel has outlined in this post?
yes
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Science
"Every statement that Ms. Finkel made about the safety of geneticly modified organisms (GMO) and low levels of toxins (pesticides & herbicides) is absolutely false and scientists for decades have been saying that both are dangerous."
You know, scientists said *for centuries* that the earth was flat.
More recently, a Grecian study proposed that the earth is spherical.
It doesn't matter how long something is held as truth. Science is rooted in theory, and these theories can change with the introduction of new evidence.
A small mind is one that resorts to truisms and ignores facts.
Organic farming is a way for the RICH to starve the poor!
It is inefficient and will condemn 4 billion people to die of food shortages!
We have used myriads of examples of technology to advance our lives and futures...if we still relied on penicillin, you would be dead!
Perhaps that is not a bad thing...we could use you for blood and bone if you are not full of parasites!!!!
Sometimes you need to look more at the credibility of the author
Sometimes you need to look more at the credibility of the authors. I did a google search and found:
Elizabeth Finkel is a cofounder and contributing editor of Cosmos magazine. She holds a PhD in biochemistry and spent ten years as a professional research scientist before becoming an award-winning journalist. She has written for Science, Lancet, Nature Medicine, New Scientist and The Age, among others, and has broadcast for ABC Radio National. Her numerous awards include the Amgen and MBF awards for medical journalism and the Michael Daley award for best radio feature broadcast. In 2007 she was a finalist in the Eureka Award for Medical Journalism and won the Bell Awards' categories for 'Best feature writer' and 'Best analytical writer' for her article 'Organic Foods examined'.
In 2005 her book Stem Cells: Controversy at the frontiers of Science won a Queensland Premier’s Literary award. It was also a finalist for the Australian government Eureka award for promoting the public understanding of science. She is currently working on a popular book on Genomics to be published by Melbourne University Press in 2009.
I did another google search to find out about the author of "Seeds of Deception", Jeffrey M. Smith. I could not find anything on his educational background but I did find:
Mr. Smith was the vice president of marketing communications for a GMO detection laboratory
I'm not sure a background in marketing for a company that profits from the GMO fear campaign will get my confidence. It also appears that Jeffrey Smith's only job is to fear monger on GMOs.
Organic farming
The further we get from the natural growing process the more long term health and environmental factors we will encounter. As the human body develops and grows it reacts to miniscule levels of hormones and chemicals in the body. To think that trace elements of foreign chemicals and slight variations in genetic makeup of our food will not effect long term development is nieve. Already we see the effects of a culture that is told to rely on mass produced sugar and wheat products, and exposed to daily bombardment of pollution. With increased obesity, continued relyance on mood altering medications, the growing diagnosis of allergic reactions and increased cancer diagnosis there is obviously something wrong with the way we are currently living. Moving farther away from the natural way of living is not a solution. It is only compounding the problem.
Chemicals are scary, let's pretend they don't exist!
so the more time goes on and we move away from the "natural way of living" the worse off we are? have average life expectancies been going down the last couple centuries? are people getting smaller, their growth stunted by chemicals? you're yearning for a time that never existed.
people are too selective with what science they want to believe, and what they don't. the majority of environmental scientists say that global warming is real, therefore it is. food scientists, universities, and the government have been studying genetically modified food and these chemicals and say that they're safe, but we don't want to believe it.
I guess they common thread between the two is cowardice. people are afraid global warming is real so it scares them enough to admit it's real. anything not "natural" scares them so they refuse to believe a pesticide could possibly be safe. i'm sure the people charging double price for organic fruit are the smart ones, as they buy their regular produce from wal-mart, go home, and laugh their asses off.
Where's your Evidence?
Organic fans make lots of claims, but one has to ask- where's the evidence? And for what evidence they have, is it good evidence?
"The further we get from the natural growing process the more long term health and environmental factors we will encounter."
Prove it. Hell, define it. Modern agricultural methods have one massive long term health effects- fewer people starve to death. That's a pretty significant, positive effect. And "natural growing process" is a dangerous word- there is, after all, nothing natural about agriculture. Every crop, every livestock has been genetically modified by thousands of years of selective breeding to be conducive to agriculture.
Cows and carrots don't occur in nature.
So your "natural growing process" is flawed in concept- unless you have some other definition.
"To think that trace elements of foreign chemicals and slight variations in genetic makeup of our food will not effect long term development is nieve.(sic)"
Really? I would think the opposite- to think that foreign chemicals and GM foods have a statistically significant effect on human development is naive. But, instead of tossing derogatory terms at each other, we could just look for evidence. Where is yours?
Finally, the most likely reason for the increased cancer diagnoses has nothing to do with diet or chemistry- and it's far more likely to do with better detection, diagnosis and longer life spans (the longer you live, the more chance you have of getting cancer). Fifty years ago, most cancer went undiagnosed. A hundred years ago, nearly all cancers were undiagnosed. That doesn't mean they weren't there.
In conclusion: where is your evidence?
Yeah, right...
...let's all go back to the times of natural living, when median life expectancy was about 30 years old and people died of simple diseases, like tuberculosis and pneumonia - guess they didn't got the time to develop some form of cancer. Maybe I should point out that people were thinner because there was actually not that much to eat, and they had to spend all they plogging fields afterwards.
If that seems to you a nice way to live, be my guest.
However, I'd agree that organic vegetables and meat taste better. But that's all.
(yeah, right..) visitor you are talking rubbish!
may i ask which period of the past are u referring to?
aren't u a bit exaggerate in your inaccurate description?
nobody is thinking they wold prefer to dress middle-age clothing, but while we ridged a quite high standard of life you seriously believe that been more sustainable for the planet will make us all die at the age of 30? we can reduce non-natural chemicals without changing much of our everyday life apocalyptic descriptions of what world will be without those chemicals are ridiculous. the only reason we still in this path is money. big companys will lose money if the way we produce change. is not an issue on being modern or not.