Or, I Could Literally Write A Book About This
Today, we’re going to really delve into the claims surrounding organic agriculture, and try to get to the heart of some of the claims made in popular media like Food Fight and Food Inc.. Be ye fairly warned: massive wall of text and copious footnotes to follow.
Organic food is a conventional crop that is grown according to a different set of standards. It is exactly the same, genetically speaking, as the same variety grown non-organically. In this sense, organic food is like Kosher or Halal food – identical, but grown or prepared in accordance with an ideological and philosophical standard. Kosher and Halal food standards are set by religious authority and tradition, any food in the United States (that makes over $5,000 annually) that wants to call itself “organic” has to conform to the requirements of the USDA’s National Organic Program, which defines the parameters under which the food in question can be grown and processed before going to your table. If you want to have a look at the standards, they’re available at the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations website, but the details are…numerous, so to give a quick overview, it forbids the use of modern synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, sewage sludge, and (for some really strange reason) ionizing radiation. For livestock, it requires that they be raised without the use of antibiotics. There are other rules too, but the basic idea is to keep synthetic stuff out of the food cycle all the way through. But – and this is something that we’ll come back to, lumping all the disparate concepts that “organic farming” covers under a single “Organically-grown” label encourages overly-simplistic thinking, and a tendancy to embrace a fallacious appeal to nature.
And with this in hand, we can examine some of the claims being made by Food Fight about the food that we eat.
The movie makes three main claims about organic food and food in general: that organic farming benefits small local farmers, and represents a blow to the big evil food companies, that organic growing methods are better for the environment, and that organic food is healthier to eat. These are emotionally satisfying concepts: we all like to root for the underdog, and we all care about the health of our family, and we all care about the environment. (Obvious jokes about the GOP left out for the sake of political neutrality.) But if we actually care about the health of our planet, if we actually care about the health of the other humans sharing this world with us and the health of our families, then we must disregard emotionally-satisfying sound bites, take a critical look at these claims and see what the data actually shows.
Organic food and health
Let’s tackle health first – and right up front, I apologize for the glut of statistics that is to follow. As mentioned previously, organic food is the exact same cultivar of plant grown to a different set of agricultural standards than a conventional crop. This means that an organic carrot is genetically identical in every way to a conventional carrot. One might be bigger if the growing conditions were better, but they are the same plant – the biochemical makeup is defined by a plant’s genes, not by the way it was grown. This is not to say that growing conditions cannot alter a plant – clearly that is true.
And here’s where Food Fight goes off the tracks, right at the outset. Food commentator Michael Pollan and others begin making huge, sweeping generalizations like these:
“The industrial food system is making us very sick.”
“Properly-grown food is healthier.”
“The way you get high-quality produce is growing it organically.”
Pollan specifically mentions diabetes and obesity, which I’ll get around to in a bit. But sweeping generalizations like these are demonstrably false. The nutritional content in food is one of those things that we can easily assess and measure with accuracy, and the data to date shows that the nutritional content of organically-grown and conventional foods are about the same. In a recent meta-analysis of two-hundred thirty-seven papers looking at the nutritional content of organic produce1, Bravata et al. found no strong evidence that organic food is more nutritious than a conventionally-grown crop of the same variety.
For their study, the researchers sifted through thousands of papers and identified 237 of the most relevant to analyze. Those included 17 studies (six of which were randomized clinical trials) of populations consuming organic and conventional diets, and 223 studies that compared either the nutrient levels or the bacterial, fungal or pesticide contamination of various products (fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, milk, poultry, and eggs) grown organically and conventionally. There was no significant difference in health benefits between organic and conventional foods. No consistent differences were seen in the vitamin content of organic products, and only one nutrient — phosphorus — was significantly higher in organic versus conventionally grown produce (and the researchers note that because few people have phosphorous deficiency, this isn’t really significant clinically speaking).
The researchers were also unable to identify specific fruits and vegetables for which organic appeared to be the consistently healthier choice. A few studies, like one at Washington State University2, found that organic strawberries contained higher levels of vitamin C, but here we run into a big problem, and that is variability.
At the effect sizes that we’re talking about, we start to see the data conflict, and the reason for that is the massive amount of variables involved in studying something like “organic” food. Another meta-analysis3 reviewed the literature examining the differences in nutrient content between organic and conventional foods and broadly grouped these into four types of study design; 1) comparison of produce bought straight from the retailers, 2) comparison of crops treated with synthetic fertilizer vs. manure, and 3) comparison of produce obtained straight from the farm. The fourth category, in which studies compared the effects of organic and conventional foods fed to animals and humans, will not be addressed here as these studies do not look directly at nutrient content. So what did Bourn and Precott find? LET US REVIEW!
1). Retail studies. A few of these studies have reported increased vitamin C and mineral content such as calcium, magnesium, iron, and sodium, in organic foods (mostly fruits and vegetables) as compared to conventional foods. However, while this study design may have its merits since the supermarket is where most consumers get their organic foods from (as opposed to farmers markets and straight-from-the-farm), it also allows for a LOT of variability. Studies performed in this manner essentially ignore details such as growing conditions, harvest maturity, freshness, and even cultivar (!). The produce has likely been grown in different soil types, climates, been harvested at different times, been stored and shipped differently, etc. The authors of one study (and there are likely more) did not even verify that the foods with organic labels were in fact organically produced. For these reasons any differences found in terms of nutritional value cannot be taken too seriously as these differences may well be explained by the factors listed above – basically speaking, the data sucks.
2). Fertilizer studies. One of the most common study designs, because they are relatively cheap and easy to carry out, is to examine the effect of fertilizer type (nitrogen-based synthetic fertilizers vs. manure) on nutritional composition of produce. Some studies have reported that manure fertilization caused decreased nitrates, increased vitamin A, B12, and C in various crops. On the flip side, studies have also found manure fertilization to cause no difference in nitrate content and decreased vitamin C in various crops. Confused yet? Again, we have the problem of lack of control of crop location, climate, growing conditions, etc. Since these factors have been found to be an important factor in response to different fertilizer types, these findings cannot be attributed to fertilizer or manure alone.
3). Farm comparison. The nice thing about these types of studies are that effects of the whole farming system can be compared and therefore more variables can be controlled for, such as soil, cultivar, maturity, etc. But, just because these variables can be controlled for, doesn’t mean they always are. Findings from these types of studies are again, highly variable. For example studies have shown higher, lower, or equal vitamin C levels in several organic crop types as compared to conventional ones. In general, it seems that these types of studies have shown fewer significant differences regarding nutrient content of organic vs. conventional foods, than studies of other designs. This could be a “real” finding, meaning when you get right down to the level of the farm, there just is no difference, or it could be due to so many factors at play at this level that can affect nutritional content…remember, just because some of these factors can be controlled, does not mean they are.
So what does this mean for us? It means experiments trying to isolate the effects of JUST organic growing practices are really, really hard, and the question “Is organic better than conventional?” is deceptive and naive. Ideally, you would grow clones of fruit in laboratory conditions, with identical lighting, temperature, soil types, etc, and vary only the pesticides / fertilizers / other techniques. I haven’t been able to find a study that rigorous (if anyone knows of one, please send it to me) but we do have the next best thing: meta-analyses of the best-quality studies that have been performed. They’re rare, but they do exist, and were looked at in yet another meta-analysis4, and the authors specifically listed their criteria for inclusion in the analysis: 1) clear definition of organic production methods, 2) specification of cultivar or breed, 3) statement regarding which nutrient(s) were analyzed, 4) description of laboratory methods, and 5) statement of statistical methods. Studies were considered to be of satisfactory quality if they met all 5 criteria. This is a very lax standard, scientifically speaking, but even so, out of the 162 studies considered, only 55 were of satisfactory quality for inclusion. Keep in mind these 55 studies would be all over the map in terms of study design, food product analyzed, nutrients examined, etc., so likely comparison between them would be limited.
Nevertheless, analysis of these 55 revealed no significant difference in vitamin C, magnesium, potassium, calcium, zinc, copper, and phenolic compounds. Conventional crops appeared to have higher nitrogen content (due to synthetic fertilizers) and organic crops tended to have higher phosphorous and were more acidic (which may have to do with ripeness at harvest). Of the 55 studies, only 9 of these were livestock product studies and very limited data were reported in these, so we can’t really address the livestock quality question at this time.
What conclusions can we draw from this?
One, that the effect we’re looking for is likely to be small. So far, the effect sizes we can see in nutritional differences are within the error bars of the effect we’re trying to measure, and inconsistent across trials – to put it bluntly, these differences are probably statistical noise. If there was some enormous beneficial effect conferred by organic growing techniques, we should be seeing it through the noise of variability with at least the higher-quality studies. So far, there is no huge effect to be seen, and where an effect is seen, like in the case of phosphorus content, the question I raise is: so what? So there’s a tiny amount of variability in the nutritional content of organic and conventional produce…somtimes. It’s not even consistent. Since you’re going to get a fantastic amount of vitamins and minerals whether you eat an organic or conventional apple, the questions of the growing technique used becomes irrelevant from a health standpoint.
But what about pesticides? The data here (and here I reference the Stanford analysis) showed that organic produce was 30 percent less likely to be contaminated with pesticides than conventional fruits and vegetables, but that said, organic foods are not necessarily 100 percent free of pesticides. And the authors specifically noted that the pesticide levels of all foods fell within the allowable safety limits. As toxicologists are wont to say, “dose makes the poison”. Further, it must still be recognized that simply washing fruits and vegetables effectively reduces pesticide residue. If minimized exposure to pesticide residue is your goal, thoroughly washing your produce is probably the easiest and cheapest way to achieve that end. Further, most studies look for synthetic pesticides – so of course there are more synthetic pesticides on food grown with synthetic pesticides. Generally, however, they don’t look for the “biological” pesticides allowed on organic food, because it is assumed they are safe (based solely on a fallacious appeal to nature as far as I can tell.)
Food and nutrition
Food Fight spends a lot of time not only on the merits of organic food, but a large amount of time bashing “regular” food that you can buy in your supermarket as unhealthy. But the authors of the film make critical mistakes in pointing to modern food technology and the science of food in general as a catch-all scapegoat for every health ill to be found in the United States. And this point is critical, because when we discuss these issues we need nuance, and giant animated machines of industrialized evil raping the earth – as portrayed in the film – are a wee bit over the top.
The nutritional content of food is very important. But as we have seen, the nutritional content of food is not determined by its growing practices. And this is another area where Food Fight gets it wrong. The foods they’re complaining about are generally highly-processed, which for the purposes of our discussion degrades them in some specific ways: generally speaking, more sugar, more sodium, and more calories. And the scientific consensus about the dangers of more sugar, sodium, and calories is pretty straightforward: they’ve been warning the world for years that these are all Bad Things. But the consensus on the causes of the obesity (and co-morbid conditions like diabetes) is that it has nothing to do with the fact that we’re not eating organic produce and meat, it has to do with the fact that we’re eating too much and exercising too little.
In her book Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, Marion Nestle, PhD, MPH, chair of the department of nutrition and food studies at New York University, argues that recommendations about healthy eating are overwhelmed by the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of advertising for junk foods that we’re subjected to at home and even in public schools. And as fast food companies and chains compete with one another by increasing portion sizes, our waists are increasing proportionately. Junk food is clearly unhealthy, but it’s not because it has Corporate Hate Energy coating it or because they used HFCS instead of cane sugar – it’s unhealthy because it has more calories and less good stuff than other healthier foods. Food Fight specifically targets TV dinners and fast food as examples of horrible foods. (Side note: when was the last time anybody on the planet ate a TV dinner out of a 1950s-era foil tray?) And indeed these things are generally not healthy for you – a McDonald’s triple-thick 32-oz milkshake packs a whopping 1,160 calories. (Frankly, even the thought of drinking a 32-oz milkshake makes me nauseous.) Their Deluxe Breakfast will also get you – it delivers 1,1440 calories. We agree that eating these things, at least more than once a month, is not a good thing to do, but is it really because the food was “designed” in a factory somewhere? No, it’s because they’re grossly calorific, and filled with excess sodium and sugars that your body doesn’t need.
Another problem with the movie was the way it presented the layout of supermarkets as some sort of conspiracy to make us eat crappy food. Had they thought this argument through for even a moment, they would have seen its glaring errors. A large produce section is almost always positioned near the front doors of any supermarket – they’re colorful and attractive, so why wouldn’t you want consumers going there first? When was the last time you went to a grocery store where the produce section wasn’t the first place you walked through? Meats need to be near large walk-in coolers which are generally impractical to have just sitting out in the open, so they keep the meats near exterior walls so they can be near the coolers. This also helps with loading – grocery stores generally don’t want to pull huge pallets of meats and produce through narrow aisles, so keeping the coolers for these directly accessible from the loading dock makes sense. Same thing with milk and dairy products – these require large coolers to store large stocks in, generally with rear-loading capabilities for products that sell especially fast (milk especially). The stuff that doesn’t need refrigerated, that doesn’t need any kind of special handling – that stuff can go in the middle, because it’s convenient for the grocery store to put it there.
“Hey, get rid of that. Everybody hates the look of fresh produce.”
The movie also takes an overabundance of cheap corn to task, which has some fair criticisms in it. Cheap corn and cheap soy may not be entirely good for the economy and our waistlines – too much of any one thing is bad, and that is not in dispute. They also take Earl Butz to task for implementing policies that were friendlier to factory farms, monoculture, and drove small farms out of business. He did some of those things, but the narrative that Butz is somehow personally responsible for the over-glut of corn that we have is suspect. Farmers now have better seeds, better machinery, and better means of controlling pests than they did in 1970. All of these things have been a blessing for mankind, and can those result from things that Butz did? He was pretty clearly a raging racist asshole, and implemented policies that may ultimately have been detrimental, but those are economic arguments and have nothing to do with the science of food, and are beyond the scope of this article. Further, statements like “extra calories means extra food going into people’s mouths” grossly underestimate the myriad ways that we use the foods that we produce. We feed animals, we ship food overseas, we make food that has a shelf life, and we use corn in everything from toothpaste to cleaning products. All that stuff doesn’t go directly into people’s stomachs. Whenever we see statements that massively simplify big processes into tiny sound bites, we have good reason to be skeptical.
Organic food and taste
Of course, these arguments do nothing to address the claims that organic food tastes better. When the movie claims that “Convenience foods taste worse”, that’s a claim that’s hard to argue against – of course they taste worse. I spent my first tour eating premade flat-meat and American cheese sandwiches every day, and the thought of it still makes me gag. But does it follow that regular, conventionally-grown and raised foods taste worse?
This is a really hard claim to evaluate, because not only can there be massive variability between foods from the same plant, but people’s taste preferences vary wildly. Personally, I can’t imagine eating my famous (snort) homemade guacamole without a healthy sprinkling of freshly-cracked black pepper, whereas the taste of pepper makes Emily’s mom instantly gag. Even so, it may be possible to make some generalizations about the taste of certain conventional foods versus their organic counterparts.
The best data I was able to come across was (yet another) meta-analysis that reviewed selected studies looking at apples, strawberries, tomatoes, potatoes, juice / milk, carrots, and ketchup. (Yes, really.) The report5 is 110 pages long, and all sorts of fascinating, and I highly recommend that you read it, because it’s fascinating. Here’s a breakdown of what they found: (All non-standard spellings left intact from report, links to individual papers in footnotes.)
Apples
“Postharvest quality and sensory attributes of organically and conventionally grown ‘McIntosh’ and ‘Cortland’ apples stored at 3°C in ambient air or in controlled atmosphere were evaluated…No significant differences due to production methods were found for core browning or weight loss in storage. However, senescent breakdown, ‘the browning and softening of apple flesh beginning immediately under the skin associated with ageing and advanced maturity’, tended to be less in the organically grown than the non-organically grown apples. Organically grown ‘McIntosh’ were perceived by sensory panellists as firmer than conventionally grown ‘McInstosh’ at harvest but not after storage. No significant differences were perceived in juiciness, sweetness, tartness, and off-flavour of apples at harvest or after storage.” 6
“In spite of a slight increase in ascorbic acid in organic ‘Fuji’ apples, no differences in total antioxidant activity were found between organically and conventionally grown apples at harvest. In contrast, organic ‘Fuji’ apples showed higher values of firmness, acidity, SSC, and L* and a* values but lower weight values. Similarly, the organic grown ‘Golden Delicious’ apples exhibited the same increases but only when the fruits were picked later. At both harvest dates, organic ‘Golden Delicious’ apples were significantly less mature (lower starch index), but not the ‘Fuji’ apples. Collectively these results showed that organic management may delay on-tree fruit ripening and also improve the fruit eating quality.” 7
Strawberries
“Using hedonic/intensity ratings, consumer-sensory panels found organic ‘Diamante’ strawberries to be sweeter and have preferable flavor, appearance, and overall acceptance compared to conventional ‘Diamante’ berries (Table 3). Organic and conventional ‘Lanai’ and ‘San Juan’ berries were rated similarly. Sensory results of sweeter tasting ‘Diamante’ strawberries were confirmed by higher soluble solids content measured in the laboratory.”
Potatoes
“Some sensory differences were noted between different kinds of potatoes but no clear statements could be made on the whole in favor of one kind of cultivation or another.”9
“…research at Ohio State University, triangle tests were used to determine if taste panellists could distinguish cooked wedges of potatoes grown organically, either with or without compost, and conventionally (Wszelaki et al.,2005). When the skin remained on the potatoes, panellists detected differences between conventional potatoes and organic potatoes, regardless of soil treatment. However, they did not distinguish between organic treatments with or without compost when samples contained skin, or between any treatments if wedges were peeled prior to preparation and presentation.” 10 (Side note: the analysis did not specify whether the potatoes were sampled raw or cooked.)
This is also a good place to mention tomatoes specifically. Anyone who has cooked or prepared food with tomatoes from your average supermarket knows how lacking in flavor they are – and there is a good reason for that, and it has nothing to do with organic versus conventional growing – it’s a genetic change called the GLK mutation that is the root cause of bad-tasting tomatoes, and the story of how it came to be is a tale of the unintended consequences of giving consumers exactly what they want. You can read all about it over at Discovery – it’s a great read, but beyond the scope of our discussion here – the takeaway is that the cardboard taste of most tomatoes has nothing to do with organic or conventional agriculture.
So does organic produce taste better than conventionally-grown produce? The maddening, typically-cautious scientific answer is “it depends”. Strawberries appear to be one case where organic produce really does taste better, though I put forth the typical caveats that this was not a huge study, and again is testing something subjective. My own personal experience is that organic strawberries from our local “local produce” store down the street taste better by far than the strawberries I can by from the big supermarkets, and I much prefer the organic variety.
But you don’t have to take my word for it! Go buy some organic produce, and some conventional of the same variety, and administer your own blinded taste test. Cut up some apples or strawberries or oranges or whatever, mix them up, blindfold yourself, and see if you can tell the difference between the organically-grown and conventional varieties. If you have a few helpers, go all the way and make it a double-blinded trial. Assign the samples a letter, make sure they’re all cut the same way, remove any variables that might tell you which is which so you can only tell by taste alone, and make sure whoever is doing the analysis doesn’t know which samples are organic or conventional until the very end, then see what you came up with.
Organic food and the environment
Right away, you’re probably going to guess that the answer to the question of environmental harm or beneficence is “it depends”. It depends on the specific practice we’re talking about, it depends on what we’re measuring (efficiency, water table safety, or what have you), it depends on the environment in which we’re measuring (Are there groundwater supplies close to the surface? Nearby streams?), and it depends on the crop that we’re talking about.
There is, however, a major issue with organic farming that nobody really disputes – and that is land usage. The per-acre yield of organic farmland is – depending on the crop – abysmal compared with conventional, and in no cases better. A recent meta-analysis11 (we just love those things) in the journal Nature looked at only studies that assessed the total land area used, allowing them to compare crop yields per unit area. This is important because previous lower-quality studies have showed large yields for organic farming because they ignored the size of the area planted — which is often bigger than in conventional farming. And the results are pretty damning: crop yields from organic farming are as much as 34 percent lower than those from comparable conventional farming practices. And organic agriculture performs particularly poorly for vegetables and some cereal crops such as wheat, which is one of, if not the most important cereal grain on the planet. And the reason is simple – wheat and other cereals need, nay…crave nitrogen, so using nitrogen-based fertilizer is going to result it better yields.
See, the water represents the nitrogen, and she represents a stalk of wheat.
And here is where I have the biggest issue with the pesticide / fertilizer regulations that organic demands – I like nature and outdoor spaces. Me and my fiancee regularly go camping in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which we both really enjoy. What I don’t want to do is need to clear more forests and outdoor spaces for more farmland, and that is exactly what would have to happen to supply the world with organic staples such as wheat. I’m not making this up, the simple fact is that organic farming produces less food, and requires more acreage. It absolutely drives me nuts when I see environmentally-minded people promoting organic farming who then turn around and protest deforestation to make more room for agriculture. How do they reconcile these two views? If you want to feed a growing population – and it IS growing, then you cannot do both. If you support rainforest preservation, logically you should oppose organic farming, particularly in developing world. On the other hand, if you demand organic wheat and corn and produce, then you should have the moral courage to stand up and say that you don’t care whether black and brown people around the world have enough to eat. And don’t say that “they can use conventional, and we’ll do organic”, because not only we do export huge amounts of food aid to other countries, but now you’re demanding higher prices for poor and underprivileged people here at home, too. One third of the world is used for agriculture right currently. One third. Anything that helps us produce more food on less land is better for the planet, and better for people.
The study, however, did not find that organic farming is terrible in all circumstances – it doesn’t always perform poorly. According to the study, organic strawberries have yields only 3 percent less than conventional, and oilseed crops like soybean have only 11 percent less. That’s still a big yield difference, especially over a large acreage, but that’s still a far cry from the 34 percent losses of more important crops. The authors of the analysis also noted that yields can be somewhat improved through good land-management practices, such as rotating in legumes that fix nitrogen into the soil.
And as we said at the beginning of this section – the answer to most hard questions is “it depends”, and of course we have some significant downsides with conventional farming, like the not-insignificant problem of fertilizer, and particularly nitrogen runoff. This is not a small problem, nitrogen runoff is terrible for the environment: it can cause algal blooms and fish die-offs by depriving the water of oxygen, and it’s a significant problem in certain areas of the United States. Nitrate pollution is clearly bad, and this is why the authors of the study recommended:
Looking forward, I think we will need to deploy different kinds of practices (especially new, mixed approaches that take the best of organic and conventional farming systems) where they are best suited — geographically, economically, socially, etc.
Organic farming and the small local farmers
I don’t want to spend too much time on this one, because these arguments so often devolve into ideological anti-corporatism. So, for the moment, let’s take for granted the dubious proposition that major food producers deserve to be dealt a blow. I’m sure the starving millions in Africa appreciate the sentiment.
Make no mistake, organic food is big, big business. The small local farmer days are largely gone, except in the sense of the tiniest boutique farms, and there’s good reasons why – reasons we will examine in further detail in part three of this series. California alone produces over $600 million in organic produce, most of it coming from just five farms, who are also the producers of most non-organic produce in the state. Around 70 percent of all organic milk is controlled by just one major milk producer.
For instance, Trader Joe’s is a supermarket chain specializing in organic and vegetarian food with hundreds of locations around the United States, centered in organic-happy SoCal. Shoppers love its focus on healthful food in a small-business family atmosphere. In 2005 alone, Trader Joe’s racked up estimated sales of $4.5 billion. (with a B!) The company is owned by a family trust set up by German billionaire Theo Albrecht, ranked the 22nd richest man in the world by Forbes in 2004. He’s the co-founder and CEO of German multi-national ALDI, with global revenue in grocery sales at $37 billion. According to Business Week, the decade of the 1990’s saw Trader Joe’s increase its profits by 1000%. Trader Joe’s also compensates its employees aggressively, with starting salaries for supervisors at $40,000…and they only hire non-union workers. Of course, if you’re anti-union and pro-big-business (and I’m not), there’s nothing wrong with any of that. But Trader Joe’s shoppers should not kid themselves that they’re striking a blow at the Big Guy by shopping there or buying organic foods.
Maybe, though, it’s about supporting local farmers and producers, rather than striking a blow at anyone. That’s a perfectly valid point, and I’m all for buying food from your local family farm. But let’s not kid ourselves that the guy selling apples from his farm down the road is going to be able to fill growing global food requirements.
Conclusions for part II
The scientific research on the healthfulness of organic versus conventional is clear:
“On the basis of a systematic review of studies of satisfactory quality, there is no evidence of a difference in nutrient quality between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs.”
All the literature I can find agrees with this. You can claim otherwise if you like, but you will be ignoring what the scientific consensus says about the matter. Regarding pesticides, the residue that is to be found is well within health limits, and organic food might be contaminated with its own pesticides which simply aren’t being tested for. Further, simply washing your produce will help rid it of any residual pesticides, organic or not.
On the subject of taste, the the data is less clear. Sometimes, organic produce can taste better, and sometimes it doesn’t, and we know that growing conditions have a huge influence which cannot be discounted. Maybe organically-grown food tastes better to you. That’s a perfectly valid reason to eat it, if you feel the higher price is justified by the better taste – and the impact on the environment. Organic farming results in lower yields almost across the board, from minor (strawberries) to catastrophic (wheat and cereals). However, some organic farming practices might help to ameliorate some of the problem of nitrogen runoff from conventional fertilizer, and that’s a good thing that we should study further, and incorporate practices that will be most helpful to the planet. And here we run smack into the problem of the false dichotomy of organic versus conventional growing.
Lumping disparate practices together under a single banner like “organic” or “conventional” and then standing behind it as a ideology encourages dumbed-down, simplistic thinking, not scientific thinking. The various elements of organic and conventional farming should be evaluated on their own merits, not seen as some all-or-nothing proposition. Cost of production, sustainability, health effects on workers, productivity, multiple environmental effects, quality of the food – these all should be considered for each individual practice and then the best practices adopted. It is scientifically absurd to lump a long list of diverse practices together with a long list of outcomes and try to come up with a overall assessment by asking “is organic farming better than conventional farming?” That is fundamentally the wrong question, and one that doesn’t encourage us to think critically about the issues involved.
In doing this research, I gained a tremendous respect for the great complexity of the issues involved. It’s not simply about “organic” or “conventional”, it’s about best practices, and finding out what our best practices are is a complex issue – but we already have some answers. The Stanford studies and other meta-analysis show, convincingly I think, that organic farming as defined by the USDA does nothing in terms of food quality from a nutrition standpoint, and while it might possibly have some positive taste effects in certain cases, the vast increase in the amount of food yield per acre does not justify its use on a large scale to feed a growing population. Does this mean we have nothing to learn from the practices of organic farming? Certainly not. Crop rotation practices are neglected in conventional agriculture today – monoculture is something I think most food security experts agree is a short-sighted policy. Should we strive to use fewer pesticides when possible? Absolutely. But why the ban on irradiating food? Why not use better pesticides that we need to use less of? We also need to feed people – a lot of them – and for that we need practices that maximize food yields at a cost that people can afford. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just the way it is. Michael Pollan got it right when he said “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”, and he should have stopped there. Eat that conventionally-grown apple and know that you’re doing your body more good either way than a bag chips or candy bar would ever do you.
We should strive for sustainable and environmentally friendly farming practices that maximize production, minimize land use, minimize negative environmental impacts, maximize the safety of the workers involved, and produce nutritious and safe products that people can afford.
In part III, we’ll talk about organic livestock, farmer’s markets, the traveling salesman problem, the cost of food, and GMO crops.
Exit, stage left.
Sparks
1: Are organic foods safer or healthier than conventional alternatives? A systematic review, Annals of Internal Medicine, Vol. 157, 2012.
2: Fruit and Soil Quality of Organic and Conventional Strawberry Agroecosystems
3: A comparison of the nutritional value, sensory qualities, and food safety of organically and conventionally produced foods. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 2002; 42(1):1-34. DOI:10.1080/10408690290825439
4: Dangour AD, Dodhia SK, Hayter A, Allen E, Lock K, and Uauy R. Nutritional quality of organic foods: a systematic review. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2009;90:680-685. DOI:10.3945/ ajcn.2009.28041
5: Summary report on sensory-related socio-economic and sensory science literature about organic food products
6: Postharvest Quality and Sensory Attributes of Organically and Conventionally Grown Apples, HortScience October 1992 vol. 27 no. 10 1096-1099
7: Effects Of Organic And Conventional Growth Management On Apple Fruit Quality At Harvest, ISHS Acta Horticulturae 737: I International Symposium on Organic Apple and Pear
8: Fruit and Soil Quality of Organic and Conventional Strawberry Agroecosystems, PLoS ONE, September 2010, Volume 5, Issue 9
9: Quality of organically and conventionally grown potatoes: Four-year study of micronutrients, metals, secondary metabolites, enzymic browning and organoleptic properties, Food Additives; Contaminants, Volume 22, Issue 6, 2005
10: Sensory quality and mineral and glycoalkaloid concentrations in organically and conventionally grown redskin potatoes (Solanum tuberosum), Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, Volume 85, Issue 5, pages 720–726, 15 April 2005
11: Comparing the yields of organic and conventional agriculture, Nature 485, 229–232, (10 May 2012)
Note: I need to credit Brian Dunning of Skeptoid, because I regularly paraphrase / quote him in this entry.