Showing posts with label organic farming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organic farming. Show all posts
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Monday, September 26, 2011
Is Your Choice Of Food A Fundamental Right?
(If you don't think what you put in your body has a direct effect on your health and how you feel, and how long you live a healthy life, then you haven't paid attention. Your health depends on the food you eat, not the drugs you take when you are sick. In extreme emergencies, drugs are necessary, but are not meant to be taken for long periods of time. When people want to take control over growing and managing the food they eat, turns out it's not so simple. The law works against us.--jef)
~~~~~~~~~~~
You grow a garden; you expect to be able to harvest the food from that garden and eat it.
You raise a cow; you expect to be able to milk that cow and consume the milk. You raise chickens; you expect to gather eggs and eat them. It’s uncomplicated, simple, a fundamental right. Perhaps you wouldn’t feel this way if you lived under some other form of government, but here, now, in America and other democratized countries, this is what you expect.
According to Wisconsin Judge Patrick J. Fiedler, you do not have a fundamental right to consume the food you grow or own or raise. The Farm To Consumer Legal Defense Fund, the pioneers in defending food sovereignty and freedom, recently argued before Judge Fiedler that you and I have a constitutional right to consume the foods of our choice.
Judge Fiedler saw no merit to the argument and ruled against the FTCLDF. When they asked him to clarify his statement, these were his words:
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;”
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;”
Talk about hammering a point home.“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice…”
(source)
Sometimes I think I’ve woken up in a surreal alternate reality. I was raised in a patriotic glow where the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” was a well-defined, well-reasoned expectation. America is the “land of the free.” I do not think this means what I once thought it meant, particularly if we have no fundamental right to drink the milk from our own cows.
Constitutional law is not my thing, but perhaps it should be. That way I could develop a more cogent argument against the likes of Judge Fielder. As it is, I simply say, “But what of liberty? What of privacy? What of the right to do with my body and my property what I see fit, so long as I do no harm to others?”
How is it that I could have lived this long, and assumed that I had a right to eat the foods of my choosing?
I know how. It is our collective experience. In our day to day experience, we choose. In our day to day experience, we sow a garden and we harvest its fruit. In our day to day experience, we feed and milk our cows. In our day to day experience, we visit our local farms and buy foods from people we trust. In our day to day experience, we walk down the aisles of our grocery stores, and we choose. In our day to day experience, we open our pantry doors, let imaginary flavors roll over our tongues, and we choose.
We choose. We choose. We choose.
It’s like breathing. It is so common an experience, so personal, so much a part of our everyday existence, that I had (silly me!) come to assume that it was a fundamental right.
I certainly act like it is. And is that not, in the end, the measure of what is true? Is not truth that which matches our experience, that which is in accordance with reality?
If so, then food freedom and food sovereignty can’t be so casually stripped away, even by zealous judges.
Monday, May 23, 2011
The Terror Threat of Raising Your Own Poultry to Lay Fresh Eggs
Which came first? The chicken conspiracy? Or the egg conspiracy?
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Local and Organic Food and Farming
The Real Gold Standard
By WILL ALLEN, KATE DUESTERBERG and RONNIE CUMMINS
More and more consumers and corporations are touting the benefits of “local” foods, often described as “sustainable,” “healthy,” or “natural.” According to the trade publication, Sustainable Food News, local as a marketing claim has grown by 15 percent from 2009 to 2010, and it’s likely that number will increase in the coming year.1 Even supermarket giant and junk food purveyor Wal-Mart, with total sales in 2009 of $405 billion, has jumped on the bandwagon. It has pledged to reduce food miles and increase its purchase of “local” fruits and vegetables to include 9% of its produce by 2015. 2
Those who espouse local food are now called “locavores.” But, beyond the greenwashing and co-opting of the term by Wal-Mart, the supermarket chains, and factory farms and feedlots, what does “local” food and farming really mean? What is the impact of non-organic local food and farming on public health, nutrition, soil, water, marine life, biodiversity, and climate?
Jessica Prentice coined the term locavore for World Environment Day in 2005 to promote local eating, and local consumption in general. Her goal was to challenge people to obtain as much food as possible from within a one hundred mile radius. Her success was more than she imagined. In 2007 the New Oxford American Dictionary selected “locavore” as its word of the year. Local had arrived!
Then, the highly respected author Barbara Kingsolver published Animal Vegetable, Miracle emphasizing the value of eating locally, and the concept spread like wildfire. 3 While the eat local/buy local concept is increasingly popular, looking beyond the label or the marketing claims, it is obvious that “local” is a rather fuzzy concept, lacking in most cases a concrete definition or a set of principles and guidelines.
By contrast, the organic system of food production has legal definitions, a handbook of rules, permitted and prohibited substances, acceptable practices, an inspection process, and labels to guide the consumers. Local has none of these guidelines, rules, inspections or protections. It has the cachet of popularity without any guarantee of safety or sustainability.
Some chemical farmers, and even poultry, egg, pork, dairy, or beef operators feeding their animals genetically modified (GMO) grains, claim that local is better than organic, because it stimulates the local economy and reduces the distance (food miles) that food travels between the farm or feedlot and your table. But does so-called local farming, utilizing toxic pesticides, GMO seeds and feed, chemical fertilizers, and animal drugs mean that the food is safe and sustainable? Obviously not. We believe that there shouldn’t have to be a choice between local and safe organic; but rather that consumers should look for food that is not only local or regionally produced, but food that is also organic and therefore safe and sustainable. Local and chemical, or local using GMO seeds and feed, is nothing more than greenwashing. Organic and local is the new gold standard!
The locavore phenomenon brings up several important concerns including: food miles, chemically grown food, greenhouse gas emissions, factory farming, genetically engineered animal feed, and the value of organic labeling. All of these crucial issues relate to the central question: what should be in your market basket?
Does Local Mean Safe?
Despite the increasing popularity of the eat-local movement, many people do not understand that “local” does not necessarily mean that food is organic or even safe. Chemically grown foods produced locally may be cheaper than organic and may aid the local economy. But they pollute the ground water, kill the soil food web, and decrease the soil’s ability to sequester climate-destabilizing greenhouse gasses, broadcast pesticides into the air, poison farmworkers, and incrementally poison consumers with toxic residues on their foods. “Local” pesticides, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and chemical fertilizers are just as poisonous as those used in California, Mexico, Chile, or China.
Frequently, local chemical farmers claim that they only use “less toxic” pesticides or herbicides such as Monsanto’s Roundup. Unfortunately, “less toxic” is a dangerously relative term! Roundup is a powerful weed-killer, and is now sprayed so heavily on the nation’s 150 million acres of genetically engineered crops that it is poisoning our water supplies, killing the soil, and creating superweeds that can only be killed with super-toxic herbicides such as 2,4 D, arsenic and paraquat. Farmers in the U.S. have used everything from arsenic, lead, cyanide, fluorine, DDT, and nerve poisons since the 1860s, and they still use massive amounts. More than 80% of all the pesticides currently used in vegetable, fruit, and flower production are nerve poisons that were used on insects and also on concentration camp victims during the first and second World Wars.
Organophosphate pesticides or nerve poisons have been linked to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children. Organophosphate nerve poisons were found in the urine and saliva of Seattle preschool children who were eating conventional (chemical) and local food from off the shelf. When the kids stopped eating chemical food and ate organic food the organophosphates disappeared from their saliva and urine. When the children returned to the chemical diet, the nerve poisons showed up in their urine and saliva again.4 Nerve poisons, whether they are used on foods that are locally, nationally, or internationally produced and distributed are dangerous hazards, especially for growing children and at-risk populations. They need to be driven off the market, as soon as possible.
Does “Pesticide Free” Mean Safe or Sustainable?
Often, growers at farmers markets will say, “ I don’t use pesticides, I only use chemical fertilizers.” Sadly, what many people do not realize is that chemical fertilizers are extremely hazardous. A high percentage of these fertilizers seep into our wells and municipal drinking water, or else run off into our streams, rivers, and finally end up in the ocean. Two-thirds of the nation’s drinking water is contaminated with hazardous levels of nitrogen fertilizer. Non-organic farmers and feedlot operators are literally poisoning us and our children with the collateral damage of chemical fertilizers. High nitrogen and phosphorous levels in rivers and oceans kill fish and other marine wildlife. When this enormous amount of excess nitrogen enters the ocean it causes dead zones and oceanic acidification.
Some “pesticide free” growers will argue that since they only use chemical fertilizers, their produce is cleaner. Their food may not have high pesticide residues. But, remind them that cleaner isn’t clean! And inform your local chemical farmer that their toxic fertilizer is polluting our drinking water, trashing the oceans, killing the soil’s ability to sequester greenhouse gases, destabilizing the nitrogen cycle of plants, and emitting billions of pounds of deadly greenhouse gasses every year. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is perhaps the most potent greenhouse gas emitter in the U.S. To produce each pound of fertilizer, 6.6 pounds of nitrous oxide (N2O) are emitted. Nitrous oxide accounts for a full ten percent of all climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases.
Nitrous oxide is extremely hazardous. It depletes the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere (thereby increasing skin cancer for humans). It increases ozone pollution levels at the ground level (fueling the current epidemic of asthma and respiratory diseases.) Poisonous nitrate fertilizers leaching into our rural wells and municipal drinking water supplies (where it combines into a super-toxic brew with pesticides) are a biological time bomb, a major cause of cancer, infertility, hormone disruption, and birth defects.
Perhaps most deadly of all, nitrate fertilizer kills our living soils and soil microorganisms, decreasing their ability to sequester (through plant photosynthesis) excess greenhouse gasses in the soil. Even after a century of industrial farmers dumping hundreds of billions of pounds of chemical fertilizers on farmlands, our living soils still contain two to three times as much carbon as the atmosphere, with the practical capacity to clean and safely sequester a considerable amount of greenhouse gases over the next 40 years. In other words, our living soils can save us—but only if we stop the widespread use of nitrate fertilizers, GMO crops, and pesticides and replace these deadly chemicals and mutant organisms with organic compost, compost tea, and cover crops, augmented by the biological power and fertility generated by organic, carefully planned, high-density rotational grazing of animals.
The energy-intensive manufacturing of nitrate fertilizers requires the use of massive amounts of natural gas, a resource in short supply, that will increasingly be needed to take us through the transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy. We can no longer afford to waste natural gas in order to uphold the profits of Cargill, Monsanto the devil, and Food Inc. We can no longer afford to have chemical-intensive food and farming greenwashed as “local.”
U.S. non-organic farmers used an average of 24 billion, 661 million pounds of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer per year from 1998 to 2007. That means that more than one hundred sixty-two billion, seven hundred sixty-two million pounds of nitrous oxide (N2O) are released each year in the process of manufacturing that fertilizer. 5 Also released is the CO2 from transporting the fertilizer. Since 70% of synthetic nitrogen is imported, the transportation cost is increasingly higher each year. Beyond production and transportation emissions, enormous quantities of N2O get released when the 24.66 billion pounds of synthetic nitrogen is applied to farmland every year. Nitrous oxide is 310 times more damaging as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Every year, U.S. farmers use enough synthetic nitrogen to fill more than 12,330, railroad boxcars with a capacity of 200,000 pounds each.
Consequently, farmers and supermarkets that tout their products as local and pesticide-free, while still using synthetic fertilizers, are engaged in greenwashing. Non-organic farms poisoning the environment with chemical fertilizers are a far cry from safe or environmentally friendly, even though they promote themselves as pesticide-free and local.
“Local” Factory Farms and CAFOs: Destroying Public Health and Climate Stability
According to Wal-Mart and Food Inc.’s definition of local (anything produced within a 400-mile radius), meat, dairy, and eggs, reared on a diet of GMO grains, slaughterhouse waste, and antibiotics, qualify as “local.” According to the USDA, the majority of the nation’s non-organic meat, dairy and eggs are now produced on massive factory farms, euphemistically called Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). 6 CAFOs are typically overcrowded, filthy, disease ridden, and inhumane, not only for the hapless animals imprisoned inside their walls, but also for the typically non-union, exploited, immigrant workers who toil in these hellish facilities. According to the EPA, the legal definition of a CAFO is a farm or a feedlot where large numbers of animals are confined and reared, beef – 1000 head; dairy – 700 head; swine – 2500 pigs weighing more than 55 lbs; poultry – 125,000 broilers or 82,000 laying hens or pullets.
Unfortunately meat, dairy, or eggs coming from CAFOs in North America are not required by law to be labeled as such. Greenwashing CAFO products as “natural” or “local” is a major source of profits for Wal-Mart, Cargill, Conagra, Perdue, Land O’ Lakes, Kraft, McDonald’s, KFC, Monsanto and chemica/GMOl farmers and ranchers. Organic consumers, farmers, and retailers need to educate the public about the hazards and inhumanity of factory farms and CAFOs. These animal factories, where GMO feed and drugs are force-fed to most of the nation's livestock and poultry, are not only poisoning consumers, but are also generating massive amounts of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases, especially methane, which is 72 times more destructive per ton than CO2. Methane (CH4) pollution is responsible for approximately 14% of human-induced global warming.
Where does methane pollution come from? Methane pollution mainly comes from factory farms and the overproduction of non-organic meat, dairy, and eggs, from throwing hundreds of millions of tons of rotting food, paper, and lawn wastes into landfills (instead of composting them for use on farms, ranches, and gardens), and the destruction of wetlands for shrimp and fish farms, industrial agriculture, chemical-intensive rice farming, and urban development or sprawl.
How do we get rid of excess, climate-destabilizing methane? By purchasing organic foods, especially those produced by family farmers and ranchers in our regions, and by increasing consumer awareness that it is unhealthy and inhumane to purchase factory farm foods. It is becoming increasingly clear that buying or consuming meat, dairy, or eggs that come from a factory farm or CAFO is an ethical abomination and a climate crime. While calling for a boycott of factory-farmed products we must deliver the positive message that the organic, humane, healthy, food producing small farms and ranches of North America are actually greenhouse gas sequestration centers, arguably our most important allies in cooling off the planet.
Millions of consumers are still "in the dark" about how "conventional" foods--especially the cheaper brands of animal products, processed, fast, and fake foods--are produced. We must educate the public about the need to fight for Truth-in-Labeling so that CAFO products, derived in great measure from Monsanto’s GMO crops, are no longer greenwashed as “local” or “natural.”
Food Miles and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Food miles are the average miles that food travels from the farm to the consumer. Since more than 80% of the U.S. grocery purchases are now processed foods, a huge percentage of the carbon or fossil fuel footprint of industrial agriculture comes from transporting factory farm crops or animals to the processing plant or slaughterhouse and then transporting these processed foods from the processing plant to the dinner table via the supermarket. By reducing the processed foods in our diet we can greatly reduce the food miles or carbon footprint for which our households are responsible, since the shorter the distance food travels, the lower the greenhouse gas emissions.
Part of the locavore ethic is to get people to eat from their own food shed, to save energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and stimulate the local economy. But, real “local” is also about stimulating a return to in-home food preparation, an appreciation for taste, and the joy in cooking—and eating. As folks begin to appreciate the taste of locally grown fresh organic foods, their dependence on processed foods from afar usually dwindles.
The 20% of the U.S. diet that is not processed food includes fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products, farm raised meats, eggs, whole grains, cold pressed oils, raw honey, syrup, natural sugars, etc. Though only 20% of the total food budget, the sales of non-processed food are huge! Unfortunately, production of non-processed foods is largely regional with production concentrated on the southern half of both coasts and the southwest. So, even a majority of the fresh foods come from afar. This requires lots of trucking and refrigeration to get the food to local markets the across the country.
“Fresh food miles” indeed contribute to the high CO2 emissions from the U.S. food system, but these whole foods are certainly not the major greenhouse gas contributor in our food system. That dubious honor belongs to factory-farmed meat, eggs, and milk, which generate 30 to 50% of all of the U.S. greenhouse gasses, more than industry and fossil fuels combined. 7
Fortunately, locally and nationally, farmers have worked out strategies of how to grow fresh foods in the middle of the winter with better technology and a minimum of heat, even in extremely cold places like Maine, Vermont, Minnesota, and Montana. Consequently, farmers and consumers are growing and storing food throughout the year so that they are not responsible for so many food miles on their tables.
Our thesis is that a majority of our food miles could be chopped off if we prepare more of our food from local ingredients. But, that begs another question. What kind of local ingredients?
Chemical and Local versus Organic and Local
Some growers and brokers argue that local, chemically grown is better than fresh organic, because so much that is organic travels long distances from the two coasts. If they are talking about comparing supermarket fresh organic with fresh chemically grown local, we should still choose supermarket organic, because, whether they are used locally or nationally, pesticides and fertilizers are more dangerous and deadly to your health and the health of the environment than chemically-free organic foods transported from outside your local region.
Chemical farmers are not inspected or reprimanded by the federal or state governments as to their use or abuse of pesticides or fertilizers unless there is an accident, whether they are local farmers or factory farmers from California, Florida, or China. The only way the abusers are caught is when there is a fish kill, a labor poisoning, a recall after multiple poisonings, or some other notable injury as a result of a spill, overuse, or carelessness.
By contrast, organic growers are inspected every year and can be inspected at any time the certifying agency or the federal government (USDA) deems it appropriate. These are the rules in California, Vermont, Chile, and all countries that grow and market certified organic products. Because organic farms are inspected (at least once a year), and their soil and water checked for toxins, consumers can be secure that the organic products are the safest on the market. Consumers can be confident that organic food does not contain poisonous pesticide residues, did not poison farmworkers, and was not grown with a fertilizer that trashed the soil, the water, the atmosphere, and the oceans.
Organic farming is a set of techniques and strategies that encourage the life to come back into the soil and into our food. Chemical fertilizers kill soil life and inhibit the accumulation of organic matter (plant residues in the soil). Chemical food has less life force because chemicals kill soil microorganisms and earthworms. Organic matter is critical to organic farmers because nutrients cling to organic matter, so the plant roots can efficiently find and mine nutrients and water at those spots.
Organic farmers add nutrients such as lime, rock phosphate, potash, and sulfur in an effort to get the soil balanced so that the maximum amount of all nutrients and water are available to foraging plant roots. This soil-balancing act is a constant process. On light and sandy soils, organic matter must be replaced every year by growing a fertilizer crop and by adding small amounts of compost, which has billions of soil microorganisms. These critters go to work breaking down the organic matter and making it available to plant roots while constantly adding to the fertility by defecating the digested organic matter (and they work 24-7, not 9 to 5).
To control pests, organic farmers rotate their crops, so that pests do not build up from continuous monocropping. Instead of toxic pesticides, organic growers use beneficial insects as predators and parasites on pests. They use bacterial sprays for certain worms and beetles. They spray clay on their apples and other fruits. They use insect traps and lures. And, they use trap crops that the insects like better than the main crop. They use disease resistant crops that are immune or less prone to disease. And, they monitor their fields often so that they can spot problems early.
The Gold Standard: Local and Organic
Local organic food and farming are the gold standard. Organic farmers gladly adhere to a set of regulations, use non-toxic products, and accept the need to be scrutinized by an independent third party inspector. Why? Because, regulation of food safety is essential to guaranteeing consumers that the farmer has their health and well being at the center of his or her business plan. The organic regulatory process is neither easy nor happily anticipated by the farmer. But it is necessary! It is our covenant with our customers.
There are no regulations governing “local” chemically grown or GMO-derived food. Anything goes! Nobody is inspecting the farm! Nobody is watching the store! As customer, you must also be the regulator of non-organic food. Instead of depending on a regulator, you as customer should ask the “local” growers what they used as a fertilizer source, how they controlled pests and diseases, and what chemicals they used to stimulate yield.
When the local chemical grower tells you that local is better than organic, tell them that they should switch to organic so that you can trust their food to be safe, clean, inspected, and environmentally friendly. Local food is not the gold standard, and may not even be safe. Local-organic is the gold standard.
By WILL ALLEN, KATE DUESTERBERG and RONNIE CUMMINS
More and more consumers and corporations are touting the benefits of “local” foods, often described as “sustainable,” “healthy,” or “natural.” According to the trade publication, Sustainable Food News, local as a marketing claim has grown by 15 percent from 2009 to 2010, and it’s likely that number will increase in the coming year.1 Even supermarket giant and junk food purveyor Wal-Mart, with total sales in 2009 of $405 billion, has jumped on the bandwagon. It has pledged to reduce food miles and increase its purchase of “local” fruits and vegetables to include 9% of its produce by 2015. 2
Those who espouse local food are now called “locavores.” But, beyond the greenwashing and co-opting of the term by Wal-Mart, the supermarket chains, and factory farms and feedlots, what does “local” food and farming really mean? What is the impact of non-organic local food and farming on public health, nutrition, soil, water, marine life, biodiversity, and climate?
Jessica Prentice coined the term locavore for World Environment Day in 2005 to promote local eating, and local consumption in general. Her goal was to challenge people to obtain as much food as possible from within a one hundred mile radius. Her success was more than she imagined. In 2007 the New Oxford American Dictionary selected “locavore” as its word of the year. Local had arrived!
Then, the highly respected author Barbara Kingsolver published Animal Vegetable, Miracle emphasizing the value of eating locally, and the concept spread like wildfire. 3 While the eat local/buy local concept is increasingly popular, looking beyond the label or the marketing claims, it is obvious that “local” is a rather fuzzy concept, lacking in most cases a concrete definition or a set of principles and guidelines.
By contrast, the organic system of food production has legal definitions, a handbook of rules, permitted and prohibited substances, acceptable practices, an inspection process, and labels to guide the consumers. Local has none of these guidelines, rules, inspections or protections. It has the cachet of popularity without any guarantee of safety or sustainability.
Some chemical farmers, and even poultry, egg, pork, dairy, or beef operators feeding their animals genetically modified (GMO) grains, claim that local is better than organic, because it stimulates the local economy and reduces the distance (food miles) that food travels between the farm or feedlot and your table. But does so-called local farming, utilizing toxic pesticides, GMO seeds and feed, chemical fertilizers, and animal drugs mean that the food is safe and sustainable? Obviously not. We believe that there shouldn’t have to be a choice between local and safe organic; but rather that consumers should look for food that is not only local or regionally produced, but food that is also organic and therefore safe and sustainable. Local and chemical, or local using GMO seeds and feed, is nothing more than greenwashing. Organic and local is the new gold standard!
The locavore phenomenon brings up several important concerns including: food miles, chemically grown food, greenhouse gas emissions, factory farming, genetically engineered animal feed, and the value of organic labeling. All of these crucial issues relate to the central question: what should be in your market basket?
Does Local Mean Safe?
Despite the increasing popularity of the eat-local movement, many people do not understand that “local” does not necessarily mean that food is organic or even safe. Chemically grown foods produced locally may be cheaper than organic and may aid the local economy. But they pollute the ground water, kill the soil food web, and decrease the soil’s ability to sequester climate-destabilizing greenhouse gasses, broadcast pesticides into the air, poison farmworkers, and incrementally poison consumers with toxic residues on their foods. “Local” pesticides, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and chemical fertilizers are just as poisonous as those used in California, Mexico, Chile, or China.
Frequently, local chemical farmers claim that they only use “less toxic” pesticides or herbicides such as Monsanto’s Roundup. Unfortunately, “less toxic” is a dangerously relative term! Roundup is a powerful weed-killer, and is now sprayed so heavily on the nation’s 150 million acres of genetically engineered crops that it is poisoning our water supplies, killing the soil, and creating superweeds that can only be killed with super-toxic herbicides such as 2,4 D, arsenic and paraquat. Farmers in the U.S. have used everything from arsenic, lead, cyanide, fluorine, DDT, and nerve poisons since the 1860s, and they still use massive amounts. More than 80% of all the pesticides currently used in vegetable, fruit, and flower production are nerve poisons that were used on insects and also on concentration camp victims during the first and second World Wars.
Organophosphate pesticides or nerve poisons have been linked to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children. Organophosphate nerve poisons were found in the urine and saliva of Seattle preschool children who were eating conventional (chemical) and local food from off the shelf. When the kids stopped eating chemical food and ate organic food the organophosphates disappeared from their saliva and urine. When the children returned to the chemical diet, the nerve poisons showed up in their urine and saliva again.4 Nerve poisons, whether they are used on foods that are locally, nationally, or internationally produced and distributed are dangerous hazards, especially for growing children and at-risk populations. They need to be driven off the market, as soon as possible.
Does “Pesticide Free” Mean Safe or Sustainable?
Often, growers at farmers markets will say, “ I don’t use pesticides, I only use chemical fertilizers.” Sadly, what many people do not realize is that chemical fertilizers are extremely hazardous. A high percentage of these fertilizers seep into our wells and municipal drinking water, or else run off into our streams, rivers, and finally end up in the ocean. Two-thirds of the nation’s drinking water is contaminated with hazardous levels of nitrogen fertilizer. Non-organic farmers and feedlot operators are literally poisoning us and our children with the collateral damage of chemical fertilizers. High nitrogen and phosphorous levels in rivers and oceans kill fish and other marine wildlife. When this enormous amount of excess nitrogen enters the ocean it causes dead zones and oceanic acidification.
Some “pesticide free” growers will argue that since they only use chemical fertilizers, their produce is cleaner. Their food may not have high pesticide residues. But, remind them that cleaner isn’t clean! And inform your local chemical farmer that their toxic fertilizer is polluting our drinking water, trashing the oceans, killing the soil’s ability to sequester greenhouse gases, destabilizing the nitrogen cycle of plants, and emitting billions of pounds of deadly greenhouse gasses every year. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is perhaps the most potent greenhouse gas emitter in the U.S. To produce each pound of fertilizer, 6.6 pounds of nitrous oxide (N2O) are emitted. Nitrous oxide accounts for a full ten percent of all climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases.
Nitrous oxide is extremely hazardous. It depletes the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere (thereby increasing skin cancer for humans). It increases ozone pollution levels at the ground level (fueling the current epidemic of asthma and respiratory diseases.) Poisonous nitrate fertilizers leaching into our rural wells and municipal drinking water supplies (where it combines into a super-toxic brew with pesticides) are a biological time bomb, a major cause of cancer, infertility, hormone disruption, and birth defects.
Perhaps most deadly of all, nitrate fertilizer kills our living soils and soil microorganisms, decreasing their ability to sequester (through plant photosynthesis) excess greenhouse gasses in the soil. Even after a century of industrial farmers dumping hundreds of billions of pounds of chemical fertilizers on farmlands, our living soils still contain two to three times as much carbon as the atmosphere, with the practical capacity to clean and safely sequester a considerable amount of greenhouse gases over the next 40 years. In other words, our living soils can save us—but only if we stop the widespread use of nitrate fertilizers, GMO crops, and pesticides and replace these deadly chemicals and mutant organisms with organic compost, compost tea, and cover crops, augmented by the biological power and fertility generated by organic, carefully planned, high-density rotational grazing of animals.
The energy-intensive manufacturing of nitrate fertilizers requires the use of massive amounts of natural gas, a resource in short supply, that will increasingly be needed to take us through the transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy. We can no longer afford to waste natural gas in order to uphold the profits of Cargill, Monsanto the devil, and Food Inc. We can no longer afford to have chemical-intensive food and farming greenwashed as “local.”
U.S. non-organic farmers used an average of 24 billion, 661 million pounds of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer per year from 1998 to 2007. That means that more than one hundred sixty-two billion, seven hundred sixty-two million pounds of nitrous oxide (N2O) are released each year in the process of manufacturing that fertilizer. 5 Also released is the CO2 from transporting the fertilizer. Since 70% of synthetic nitrogen is imported, the transportation cost is increasingly higher each year. Beyond production and transportation emissions, enormous quantities of N2O get released when the 24.66 billion pounds of synthetic nitrogen is applied to farmland every year. Nitrous oxide is 310 times more damaging as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Every year, U.S. farmers use enough synthetic nitrogen to fill more than 12,330, railroad boxcars with a capacity of 200,000 pounds each.
Consequently, farmers and supermarkets that tout their products as local and pesticide-free, while still using synthetic fertilizers, are engaged in greenwashing. Non-organic farms poisoning the environment with chemical fertilizers are a far cry from safe or environmentally friendly, even though they promote themselves as pesticide-free and local.
“Local” Factory Farms and CAFOs: Destroying Public Health and Climate Stability
According to Wal-Mart and Food Inc.’s definition of local (anything produced within a 400-mile radius), meat, dairy, and eggs, reared on a diet of GMO grains, slaughterhouse waste, and antibiotics, qualify as “local.” According to the USDA, the majority of the nation’s non-organic meat, dairy and eggs are now produced on massive factory farms, euphemistically called Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). 6 CAFOs are typically overcrowded, filthy, disease ridden, and inhumane, not only for the hapless animals imprisoned inside their walls, but also for the typically non-union, exploited, immigrant workers who toil in these hellish facilities. According to the EPA, the legal definition of a CAFO is a farm or a feedlot where large numbers of animals are confined and reared, beef – 1000 head; dairy – 700 head; swine – 2500 pigs weighing more than 55 lbs; poultry – 125,000 broilers or 82,000 laying hens or pullets.
Unfortunately meat, dairy, or eggs coming from CAFOs in North America are not required by law to be labeled as such. Greenwashing CAFO products as “natural” or “local” is a major source of profits for Wal-Mart, Cargill, Conagra, Perdue, Land O’ Lakes, Kraft, McDonald’s, KFC, Monsanto and chemica/GMOl farmers and ranchers. Organic consumers, farmers, and retailers need to educate the public about the hazards and inhumanity of factory farms and CAFOs. These animal factories, where GMO feed and drugs are force-fed to most of the nation's livestock and poultry, are not only poisoning consumers, but are also generating massive amounts of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases, especially methane, which is 72 times more destructive per ton than CO2. Methane (CH4) pollution is responsible for approximately 14% of human-induced global warming.
Where does methane pollution come from? Methane pollution mainly comes from factory farms and the overproduction of non-organic meat, dairy, and eggs, from throwing hundreds of millions of tons of rotting food, paper, and lawn wastes into landfills (instead of composting them for use on farms, ranches, and gardens), and the destruction of wetlands for shrimp and fish farms, industrial agriculture, chemical-intensive rice farming, and urban development or sprawl.
How do we get rid of excess, climate-destabilizing methane? By purchasing organic foods, especially those produced by family farmers and ranchers in our regions, and by increasing consumer awareness that it is unhealthy and inhumane to purchase factory farm foods. It is becoming increasingly clear that buying or consuming meat, dairy, or eggs that come from a factory farm or CAFO is an ethical abomination and a climate crime. While calling for a boycott of factory-farmed products we must deliver the positive message that the organic, humane, healthy, food producing small farms and ranches of North America are actually greenhouse gas sequestration centers, arguably our most important allies in cooling off the planet.
Millions of consumers are still "in the dark" about how "conventional" foods--especially the cheaper brands of animal products, processed, fast, and fake foods--are produced. We must educate the public about the need to fight for Truth-in-Labeling so that CAFO products, derived in great measure from Monsanto’s GMO crops, are no longer greenwashed as “local” or “natural.”
Food Miles and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Food miles are the average miles that food travels from the farm to the consumer. Since more than 80% of the U.S. grocery purchases are now processed foods, a huge percentage of the carbon or fossil fuel footprint of industrial agriculture comes from transporting factory farm crops or animals to the processing plant or slaughterhouse and then transporting these processed foods from the processing plant to the dinner table via the supermarket. By reducing the processed foods in our diet we can greatly reduce the food miles or carbon footprint for which our households are responsible, since the shorter the distance food travels, the lower the greenhouse gas emissions.
Part of the locavore ethic is to get people to eat from their own food shed, to save energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and stimulate the local economy. But, real “local” is also about stimulating a return to in-home food preparation, an appreciation for taste, and the joy in cooking—and eating. As folks begin to appreciate the taste of locally grown fresh organic foods, their dependence on processed foods from afar usually dwindles.
The 20% of the U.S. diet that is not processed food includes fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products, farm raised meats, eggs, whole grains, cold pressed oils, raw honey, syrup, natural sugars, etc. Though only 20% of the total food budget, the sales of non-processed food are huge! Unfortunately, production of non-processed foods is largely regional with production concentrated on the southern half of both coasts and the southwest. So, even a majority of the fresh foods come from afar. This requires lots of trucking and refrigeration to get the food to local markets the across the country.
“Fresh food miles” indeed contribute to the high CO2 emissions from the U.S. food system, but these whole foods are certainly not the major greenhouse gas contributor in our food system. That dubious honor belongs to factory-farmed meat, eggs, and milk, which generate 30 to 50% of all of the U.S. greenhouse gasses, more than industry and fossil fuels combined. 7
Fortunately, locally and nationally, farmers have worked out strategies of how to grow fresh foods in the middle of the winter with better technology and a minimum of heat, even in extremely cold places like Maine, Vermont, Minnesota, and Montana. Consequently, farmers and consumers are growing and storing food throughout the year so that they are not responsible for so many food miles on their tables.
Our thesis is that a majority of our food miles could be chopped off if we prepare more of our food from local ingredients. But, that begs another question. What kind of local ingredients?
Chemical and Local versus Organic and Local
Some growers and brokers argue that local, chemically grown is better than fresh organic, because so much that is organic travels long distances from the two coasts. If they are talking about comparing supermarket fresh organic with fresh chemically grown local, we should still choose supermarket organic, because, whether they are used locally or nationally, pesticides and fertilizers are more dangerous and deadly to your health and the health of the environment than chemically-free organic foods transported from outside your local region.
Chemical farmers are not inspected or reprimanded by the federal or state governments as to their use or abuse of pesticides or fertilizers unless there is an accident, whether they are local farmers or factory farmers from California, Florida, or China. The only way the abusers are caught is when there is a fish kill, a labor poisoning, a recall after multiple poisonings, or some other notable injury as a result of a spill, overuse, or carelessness.
By contrast, organic growers are inspected every year and can be inspected at any time the certifying agency or the federal government (USDA) deems it appropriate. These are the rules in California, Vermont, Chile, and all countries that grow and market certified organic products. Because organic farms are inspected (at least once a year), and their soil and water checked for toxins, consumers can be secure that the organic products are the safest on the market. Consumers can be confident that organic food does not contain poisonous pesticide residues, did not poison farmworkers, and was not grown with a fertilizer that trashed the soil, the water, the atmosphere, and the oceans.
Organic farming is a set of techniques and strategies that encourage the life to come back into the soil and into our food. Chemical fertilizers kill soil life and inhibit the accumulation of organic matter (plant residues in the soil). Chemical food has less life force because chemicals kill soil microorganisms and earthworms. Organic matter is critical to organic farmers because nutrients cling to organic matter, so the plant roots can efficiently find and mine nutrients and water at those spots.
Organic farmers add nutrients such as lime, rock phosphate, potash, and sulfur in an effort to get the soil balanced so that the maximum amount of all nutrients and water are available to foraging plant roots. This soil-balancing act is a constant process. On light and sandy soils, organic matter must be replaced every year by growing a fertilizer crop and by adding small amounts of compost, which has billions of soil microorganisms. These critters go to work breaking down the organic matter and making it available to plant roots while constantly adding to the fertility by defecating the digested organic matter (and they work 24-7, not 9 to 5).
To control pests, organic farmers rotate their crops, so that pests do not build up from continuous monocropping. Instead of toxic pesticides, organic growers use beneficial insects as predators and parasites on pests. They use bacterial sprays for certain worms and beetles. They spray clay on their apples and other fruits. They use insect traps and lures. And, they use trap crops that the insects like better than the main crop. They use disease resistant crops that are immune or less prone to disease. And, they monitor their fields often so that they can spot problems early.
The Gold Standard: Local and Organic
Local organic food and farming are the gold standard. Organic farmers gladly adhere to a set of regulations, use non-toxic products, and accept the need to be scrutinized by an independent third party inspector. Why? Because, regulation of food safety is essential to guaranteeing consumers that the farmer has their health and well being at the center of his or her business plan. The organic regulatory process is neither easy nor happily anticipated by the farmer. But it is necessary! It is our covenant with our customers.
There are no regulations governing “local” chemically grown or GMO-derived food. Anything goes! Nobody is inspecting the farm! Nobody is watching the store! As customer, you must also be the regulator of non-organic food. Instead of depending on a regulator, you as customer should ask the “local” growers what they used as a fertilizer source, how they controlled pests and diseases, and what chemicals they used to stimulate yield.
When the local chemical grower tells you that local is better than organic, tell them that they should switch to organic so that you can trust their food to be safe, clean, inspected, and environmentally friendly. Local food is not the gold standard, and may not even be safe. Local-organic is the gold standard.
Citations:
1. Sustainable Food News, November 12, 2010.
2. Hightower, Jim, Other Words, Dec. 8, 2010, “Meet Your New Neighborhood Food Market”
3. Kingsolver, Barbara, et. al 2007 Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.Harper-Collins, May 2007.
4. Curl, Cynthia L., Fenske, Richard A., Elgethun, Kai. 2010 Organophosphorus Pesticide Exposure of Urban and Suburban Preschool Children with Organic and Conventional Diets. Department of Environmental Health, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
5. Fertilizer Use Statistics, 1998-2007 . National Agricultural Statistical Service, United States Department of Agriculture.
6. “Factory Farm Nation,” Food and Water Watch, 2010,
7. Goodland, Robert and Anhang, Jeffery, 2009 Livestock and Climate Change. World Watch Magazine. November 1.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Organic and Beyond
Friendship, Solidarity and Patriotism
By CARMELO RUIZ-MARRERO
Those of us who advocate a new, environmentally sound agricultural model know full well that organic farming out-competes industrial conventional farming in all indicators, including yields, consumer benefits, rural economic development, environmental protection and hunger eradication. We know full well that the methodologies of organic agriculture have as much or more scientific validation than conventional agriculture and that these represent the vanguard of the agriculture of the future. By whatever name it goes- agroecology, permaculture, ecological farming, biodynamics- this modality of agricultural production, which combines the best of ancient traditions with modern science, is our best bet in facing pressing global challenges like climate change, peak oil, the food crisis and the worldwide economic debacle.
We know all those things. Among sustainable agriculture advocates, these are facts that are not in controversy. So let me now say some things that might be controversial: Organic is not enough. Organic will be an effective proposal for change only to the extent that it is integrated into the local and global movements that carry on the fight for food sovereignty, climate justice, ecological debt, women's rights and labor organizing; and against enclosures of common goods, as in the case with patents on seeds; for the defense of water and seed as inalienable human rights, for the human right to housing, education, health care and food. In a single word: justice.
This means that the concept "organic" cannot be the only criterion when passing judgement on agricultural production. There are other elements that must be considered. I wholeheartedly agree with the following words of Mario Mejia-Gutierrez, professor at Colombia's National University:
Patriotism, as in the case of Raul Noriega, who has been working his farm continuously for over twenty years, and has been an organic producer since 2000. The farm, located in the Barrio Pasto community in the municipality of Aibonito, where four generations of Noriegas live together in a humble little house, has been in the family's possession for over 150 years. Raul has had a heart attack, a stroke, and more recently an amputation, and nevertheless he is still dedicated to agriculture with the same fire and energy as when he started practicing. He is a founding member of the Madre Tierra Organic Farming Co-op and board member of the Agrocomercial Farm Co-op, Puerto Rico's oldest farm co-op, with over 70 years of existence. He heads the Agrocomercial's Education Committee, whose tasks include the publication of the Agrocooperando newspaper, of which I am senior editor.
I cannot talk about Raul without mentioning his loyal wife Laura Morcilio, who has been at his side in both good and bad times for more than twenty years and who, because of her husband's delicate health condition, does most of the work at the farm. Every time that Raul is given a well-deserved tribute, Laura must be equally honored.
That's patriotism. This is something that every consumer must consider when deciding on food purchases and on the best way to contribute to agriculture's transformation.
Then there's also the fervorously independent Pablo Diaz-Cuadrado from the town of Orocovis. His farm is not strictly organic, since he uses fertilizer in his coffee crop. But it would be unjust and foolish to dismiss him and lump him together with conventional producers who use and abuse agrochemicals. Pablo is an established authority in ecological farming, especially in the control of pests and weeds without using toxic chemicals, as was documented in an extensive interview with author Maria Benedetti, included in her book "Sembrando y Sanando".
Pablo always shows up in community, progressive and environmental activities, with his table on which he displays and sells his goods, coffee, honey, jelly, juice (lemon, orange, passion fruit), eggs, and much more. All of it local, pesticide-free produce straight from his farm, no intermediaries. He does this even when it means an economic loss to him. From a strictly economic viewpoint, selling his products in these activities, which sometimes have poor attendance, makes no sense. But disinterested commitment is precisely the essence of patriotism.
Third and last, the admirable example set by Toño Alvarez, who led the Pollos Picú poultry company to success. Long before people started talking about corporate social responsibility, Alvarez was already putting in practice a social capitalism based on solidarity. During his lifetime he gave us all an unforgettable lesson of business success, patriotism and solidarity bordering of selflessness. It was a real tragedy for all Puerto Ricans to see his company descend to ruin after his death.
I do not mean to say that organic is not important. Have no doubt that we aspire to no less than a total transformation of world agriculture towards ecological practices and the abolition of toxic agrochemicals, GMO's, monocultures and industrial feedlots. Have no doubt that we, as a global society, must move towards small, post-industrial, decentralized, post-patriarchal, farming systems, with a reduced ecological footprint.
Likewise, I do not mean to wax romantic about those forms of agriculture that we seek to turn into a thing of the past. Picú, like its competitors and succesors, was an industrial feedlot operation, in which birds spend their short and miserable lives confined indoors, with over 100,000 under the same roof; an inherently unsustainable system, among other reasons because of the huge amounts of water and fossil fuel that it needs in order to operate; a system whose horrors were detailed in films like Food Inc and The Meatrix.
In the course of doing research for a film project on Puerto Rico's poultry production in 2009, I had the pleasure of meeting Tony Alvarez, Toño's son. He was kind enough to give me and a film maker colleague of mine a whole day of his time, showing us around the farms that once supplied his father's company. Of all the people we interviewed that day, Tony was practically the only one who understood the need to transcend the current poultry production system and take the bold step towards an ecological aviculture, which treats the animals that feed us with dignity and ethical concern.
In short, in our zeal to move towards an agroecological future, we cannot boil everything down to conventional = bad, organic = good. I only wish it were that simple. But when facing complex realities we need complex thinking.
And we need humility, because the practicioners and advocates of sustainable agriculture must acknowledge that even conventional farmers can teach us some very important lessons.
By CARMELO RUIZ-MARRERO
Those of us who advocate a new, environmentally sound agricultural model know full well that organic farming out-competes industrial conventional farming in all indicators, including yields, consumer benefits, rural economic development, environmental protection and hunger eradication. We know full well that the methodologies of organic agriculture have as much or more scientific validation than conventional agriculture and that these represent the vanguard of the agriculture of the future. By whatever name it goes- agroecology, permaculture, ecological farming, biodynamics- this modality of agricultural production, which combines the best of ancient traditions with modern science, is our best bet in facing pressing global challenges like climate change, peak oil, the food crisis and the worldwide economic debacle.
We know all those things. Among sustainable agriculture advocates, these are facts that are not in controversy. So let me now say some things that might be controversial: Organic is not enough. Organic will be an effective proposal for change only to the extent that it is integrated into the local and global movements that carry on the fight for food sovereignty, climate justice, ecological debt, women's rights and labor organizing; and against enclosures of common goods, as in the case with patents on seeds; for the defense of water and seed as inalienable human rights, for the human right to housing, education, health care and food. In a single word: justice.
This means that the concept "organic" cannot be the only criterion when passing judgement on agricultural production. There are other elements that must be considered. I wholeheartedly agree with the following words of Mario Mejia-Gutierrez, professor at Colombia's National University:
"It is indispensable to remember the existence of values, principles and social proposals of a category higher than the economic and ecological, in particular moral, ethical, historical, philosophical, political, religious and spiritual elements; and of course, without rolling out the whole list, we present some examples: truth, mercy and beauty, the trilogy of Mokiti Okada, founder of messianic agriculture; justice, as pointed out in Nitiren's agricultural proposal; love and forgiveness, as stated by Jesus; compassion, if we follow the Buddha; the virtues of personal enlightenment, in the style of Lao Tse: austerity, laboriousness, humility, loyalty; liberty in relation with peace, democracy, the practice of one's own culture, the right to be... Can a social system of solidarity-based relationships between producer and consumer of healthy foods be constructed solely with economic and ecological arguments?"Indeed, there is a multiplicity of values and criteria to consider, which go way beyond dollars and cents, even beyond narrow concepts of environmental protection. To those mentioned by Mejia-Gutierrez I would add more: friendship, solidarity and patriotism.
(Source: http://webs.chasque.net/)
Patriotism, as in the case of Raul Noriega, who has been working his farm continuously for over twenty years, and has been an organic producer since 2000. The farm, located in the Barrio Pasto community in the municipality of Aibonito, where four generations of Noriegas live together in a humble little house, has been in the family's possession for over 150 years. Raul has had a heart attack, a stroke, and more recently an amputation, and nevertheless he is still dedicated to agriculture with the same fire and energy as when he started practicing. He is a founding member of the Madre Tierra Organic Farming Co-op and board member of the Agrocomercial Farm Co-op, Puerto Rico's oldest farm co-op, with over 70 years of existence. He heads the Agrocomercial's Education Committee, whose tasks include the publication of the Agrocooperando newspaper, of which I am senior editor.
I cannot talk about Raul without mentioning his loyal wife Laura Morcilio, who has been at his side in both good and bad times for more than twenty years and who, because of her husband's delicate health condition, does most of the work at the farm. Every time that Raul is given a well-deserved tribute, Laura must be equally honored.
That's patriotism. This is something that every consumer must consider when deciding on food purchases and on the best way to contribute to agriculture's transformation.
Then there's also the fervorously independent Pablo Diaz-Cuadrado from the town of Orocovis. His farm is not strictly organic, since he uses fertilizer in his coffee crop. But it would be unjust and foolish to dismiss him and lump him together with conventional producers who use and abuse agrochemicals. Pablo is an established authority in ecological farming, especially in the control of pests and weeds without using toxic chemicals, as was documented in an extensive interview with author Maria Benedetti, included in her book "Sembrando y Sanando".
Pablo always shows up in community, progressive and environmental activities, with his table on which he displays and sells his goods, coffee, honey, jelly, juice (lemon, orange, passion fruit), eggs, and much more. All of it local, pesticide-free produce straight from his farm, no intermediaries. He does this even when it means an economic loss to him. From a strictly economic viewpoint, selling his products in these activities, which sometimes have poor attendance, makes no sense. But disinterested commitment is precisely the essence of patriotism.
Third and last, the admirable example set by Toño Alvarez, who led the Pollos Picú poultry company to success. Long before people started talking about corporate social responsibility, Alvarez was already putting in practice a social capitalism based on solidarity. During his lifetime he gave us all an unforgettable lesson of business success, patriotism and solidarity bordering of selflessness. It was a real tragedy for all Puerto Ricans to see his company descend to ruin after his death.
I do not mean to say that organic is not important. Have no doubt that we aspire to no less than a total transformation of world agriculture towards ecological practices and the abolition of toxic agrochemicals, GMO's, monocultures and industrial feedlots. Have no doubt that we, as a global society, must move towards small, post-industrial, decentralized, post-patriarchal, farming systems, with a reduced ecological footprint.
Likewise, I do not mean to wax romantic about those forms of agriculture that we seek to turn into a thing of the past. Picú, like its competitors and succesors, was an industrial feedlot operation, in which birds spend their short and miserable lives confined indoors, with over 100,000 under the same roof; an inherently unsustainable system, among other reasons because of the huge amounts of water and fossil fuel that it needs in order to operate; a system whose horrors were detailed in films like Food Inc and The Meatrix.
In the course of doing research for a film project on Puerto Rico's poultry production in 2009, I had the pleasure of meeting Tony Alvarez, Toño's son. He was kind enough to give me and a film maker colleague of mine a whole day of his time, showing us around the farms that once supplied his father's company. Of all the people we interviewed that day, Tony was practically the only one who understood the need to transcend the current poultry production system and take the bold step towards an ecological aviculture, which treats the animals that feed us with dignity and ethical concern.
In short, in our zeal to move towards an agroecological future, we cannot boil everything down to conventional = bad, organic = good. I only wish it were that simple. But when facing complex realities we need complex thinking.
And we need humility, because the practicioners and advocates of sustainable agriculture must acknowledge that even conventional farmers can teach us some very important lessons.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
How Organic Agriculture CAN Feed the World
Recently, I've read/heard a few sources that said organic farming can't feed the entire world's population, most recently on Penn & Teller's corporate interest shillfest show, Bullsh*t. Here is a retort:
Witnessing a Shift in the Worldview of Agriculture
By HEATHER GRAY and K. RASHID NURI
Recent research indicates that organic farming can feed the world, and is actually making a significant difference everywhere. In the United States and Europe, universities are reporting that organically produced food will address the problems of hunger and poverty facing the world’s growing population. This is not a surprising finding for organic farmers and advocates of organic agricultural production. The American worldview of agriculture is, in fact, making a radical shift.
In 1990 sociologists Curtis Beus and Riley Dunlap wrote a fascinating description of paradigms in agriculture in an article entitled “Conventional versus Alternative Agriculture: The Paradigmatic Roots of the Debate”. The authors define conventional agriculture in the 20th century as: "Capital-intensive, large-scale, highly mechanized agriculture with monocultures of crops and extensive use of artificial fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, with intensive animal husbandry". They go on to say that the “discussion of conven tional agriculture as presented in this paper will include the agri business suppliers of farm inputs and the marketers of farm output. This is done because of the integral interdependence between the production sector and the supply and marketing sectors of modern agribusiness”. It is often referred to as industrial agriculture.
In describing dominant worldviews, reference has to be made to physicist Thomas Kuhn. In 1970 his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” Kuhn describes how science inquiry changes overtime. When change is eminent he says that those holding the dominant worldview in science will cling to and fight for their dominant position. Kuhn’s analysis has subsequently been adapted to understanding changes in worldviews whether in science or in society overall. In agriculture, the struggle of conventional versus alternative worldviews is right out of Kuhn and the differences have been so acute that even discourse between the various parties has often been impossible.
In general, the American dominant social paradigm, the authors say, is described as the “most fundamental and pervasive worldview”. It is a “belief in progress, growth and prosperity, faith in science and technology, commitment to a laissez faire economy and private property rights, and a view of nature as something that must be subdued and made useful”. All of the above concepts became part of the paradigm of corporate/conventional agriculture described above. It has also been aligned with corporate America, Congress, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the executive branch. All of them have had controlling factions that have held this view and as a result the subsequent farm policies have been devastating in the United States and around the world.
As a result of these conventional practices we’ve witnessed the loss of family farmers throughout the world, degradation of topsoil, pollution of water tables and fresh water generally and ocean dead zones from chemical pollution and run-offs, lack of important diversity in agriculture and intense mono-crop production, less nutritious food, loss of family farmers and rural jobs, poorer health of consumers due to ingestion of chemicals in food, in the water and in the air. The list goes on and on.
In the 1970’s the environmental movement took hold with a new paradigm that challenged the dominant paradigm of conventional agriculture above. Rachel Carson’s influential “Silent Spring” (1963), for one, described the devastation of chemicals and huge agriculture ventures. Her critique began to take hold on the American psyche that set the stage for an intense battle of views in agriculture circles. The core values of the new movement challenged the prevailing views of “economic growth and domination of nature, the free market economy, hierarchical political structure, centralized social organization, large scale technological development, and the legitimacy of scientific knowledge as the basis for social decision making” (Beus and Dunlap). From this an alternative view of agriculture began to take shape.
Beus and Dunlap define alternative agriculture as follows:“At the heart of any definition of alternative agriculture is an em phasis on organic or near-organic practices. Essentially, all alternative agriculturalists favor significantly reduced use of synthetic farm chem icals. Most alternative agriculturalists, however, see their goals as much broader than merely reducing agricultural chemical use. Ad ditionally, alternative agriculturalists advocate smaller farm units and technology, reduced energy use, greater farm and regional self-suf ficiency, minimally processed foodstuffs, conservation of finite re sources, and more direct sales to consumers. This is not an exhaustive list, nor does it completely define alternative agriculture, but it does illustrate some of the fundamental differences between alternative and conventional agriculture.”
After reviewing the writings and actions of leading proponents of conventional agriculture and alternative agriculture, Beus and Dunlap identify six “dimensions” of the competing paradigms and they are: “1) centralization vs. decentralization, 2) dependence vs. independence, 3) competition vs. community, 4) dom ination of nature vs. harmony with nature, 5) specialization vs. diversity, and 6) exploitation vs. restraint.”
One of the prevailing views not referred to by Beus and Dunlap, however, is the belief among proponents of industrial agriculture that the world needs industrial agriculture if the world’s poor and hungry are to be fed. In fact, former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz under the Nixon administration once said, "We can go back to organic agriculture in this country if we must.... However, before we move in that direction, someone must decide which 50 million of our people will starve" (Beus and Dunlap).
The paradox is that there is already enough food to feed the world but people are still hungry – why is this? One of the many reasons for this is poverty, and industrial agriculture might be the culprit here as well as it focuses on quantity and is known to exacerbate poverty. Antithetical to industrial/conventional agriculture is locally owned sustainable food production, job creation and an independent farming sector which are some of the hallmarks of the alternative agriculture model.
Conventional and alternative models of agriculture have been addressed in the debates and in competing farm policies in America and around the world. In fact, in 2006 and in 2007 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) met in Rome to discuss international food security and the paradoxes of industrial versus organic production and the findings were striking. The findings? The FAO stated “States should integrate organic agriculture objectives within national priorities”.
With the world’s population to reach 9 billion by 2050 the FAO has been trying look at how best to feed the world in an environmentally sound and sustainable way.
The FAO reported that while it dominates in the world’s food production "industrialized food systems have environmental and social costs that threaten food security, e.g., occupational deaths through pesticide poisoning, farmers' suicides due to debts, and loss of millions of jobs in rural areas." The FAO also expressed concern about the impact of industrial agriculture on vulnerable populations, the environment and climate change issues.
So what’s best for our communities? The FAO reported that organic production is one of the best routes toward food sovereignty. Through rural development and rural revitalization locally owned and controlled organically focused production creates jobs, is environmentally sound, has a fairer trade system, has fairer wages, it’s locally based emphasis helps people have more control over their own local resources, and is non-exploitive generally. Some of the other benefits of organic production are that because no chemicals are used there is more water security and less erosion as organic production prioritizes healthy and alive soil that helps to retain water. Importantly, organic production also helps to maintain plant diversity for generations to come.
In addition to all of the above, organically produced food can also produce enough food for the world!
In a 2007 report from the University of Michigan, it states, “Organic farming can feed the world”. The University researched the differences in performance between conventional and organically produced food. The press release begins by stating: “Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food on individual farms in developing countries, as low-intensive methods on the same land—according to new findings which refute the long-standing claim that organic farming methods cannot produce enough food to feed the global population.”
Ivette Perfecto, professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, and one the study's principal investigators said "the University of Michigan found that in developed countries, yields were almost equal on organic and conventional farms. In developing countries, food production could double or triple using organic methods.” She said further “the idea that people would go hungry if farming went organic is ‘ridiculous’”.
The press release stated further that: "We were struck by how much food the organic farmers would produce," Perfecto said. The researchers set about compiling data from published literature to investigate the two chief objections to organic farming: low yields and lack of organically acceptable nitrogen sources.
Their findings refute those key arguments, Perfecto said, and confirm that organic farming is less environmentally harmful yet can potentially produce more than enough food. This is especially good news for developing countries, where it’s sometimes impossible to deliver food from outside, so farmers must supply their own. Yields in developing countries could increase dramatically by switching to organic farming, Perfecto said.”
Other research in Europe and others in the United States have concurred with the University of Michigan findings. (See the Worldwatch Institute’s “Can Organic Farming Feed Us All?”).
Moving toward organic and sustainable agriculture production throughout the world is not really an alternative but is, in fact, a necessity for us all. All the data is now in place showing that there has been a shift toward a natural, organic and sustainable agriculture model in communities throughout the world, including here in the United States, which is also being implemented. It needs to continue. The dominant worldview in agriculture is also changing and what has been referred to as alternative is now becoming the dominant view in most countries. We are also witnessing this worldview shift in agriculture circles here in the United States. On the implementation side, organic production needs to replace industrial/conventional practices everywhere.
Witnessing a Shift in the Worldview of Agriculture
By HEATHER GRAY and K. RASHID NURI
Recent research indicates that organic farming can feed the world, and is actually making a significant difference everywhere. In the United States and Europe, universities are reporting that organically produced food will address the problems of hunger and poverty facing the world’s growing population. This is not a surprising finding for organic farmers and advocates of organic agricultural production. The American worldview of agriculture is, in fact, making a radical shift.
In 1990 sociologists Curtis Beus and Riley Dunlap wrote a fascinating description of paradigms in agriculture in an article entitled “Conventional versus Alternative Agriculture: The Paradigmatic Roots of the Debate”. The authors define conventional agriculture in the 20th century as: "Capital-intensive, large-scale, highly mechanized agriculture with monocultures of crops and extensive use of artificial fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, with intensive animal husbandry". They go on to say that the “discussion of conven tional agriculture as presented in this paper will include the agri business suppliers of farm inputs and the marketers of farm output. This is done because of the integral interdependence between the production sector and the supply and marketing sectors of modern agribusiness”. It is often referred to as industrial agriculture.
In describing dominant worldviews, reference has to be made to physicist Thomas Kuhn. In 1970 his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” Kuhn describes how science inquiry changes overtime. When change is eminent he says that those holding the dominant worldview in science will cling to and fight for their dominant position. Kuhn’s analysis has subsequently been adapted to understanding changes in worldviews whether in science or in society overall. In agriculture, the struggle of conventional versus alternative worldviews is right out of Kuhn and the differences have been so acute that even discourse between the various parties has often been impossible.
In general, the American dominant social paradigm, the authors say, is described as the “most fundamental and pervasive worldview”. It is a “belief in progress, growth and prosperity, faith in science and technology, commitment to a laissez faire economy and private property rights, and a view of nature as something that must be subdued and made useful”. All of the above concepts became part of the paradigm of corporate/conventional agriculture described above. It has also been aligned with corporate America, Congress, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the executive branch. All of them have had controlling factions that have held this view and as a result the subsequent farm policies have been devastating in the United States and around the world.
As a result of these conventional practices we’ve witnessed the loss of family farmers throughout the world, degradation of topsoil, pollution of water tables and fresh water generally and ocean dead zones from chemical pollution and run-offs, lack of important diversity in agriculture and intense mono-crop production, less nutritious food, loss of family farmers and rural jobs, poorer health of consumers due to ingestion of chemicals in food, in the water and in the air. The list goes on and on.
In the 1970’s the environmental movement took hold with a new paradigm that challenged the dominant paradigm of conventional agriculture above. Rachel Carson’s influential “Silent Spring” (1963), for one, described the devastation of chemicals and huge agriculture ventures. Her critique began to take hold on the American psyche that set the stage for an intense battle of views in agriculture circles. The core values of the new movement challenged the prevailing views of “economic growth and domination of nature, the free market economy, hierarchical political structure, centralized social organization, large scale technological development, and the legitimacy of scientific knowledge as the basis for social decision making” (Beus and Dunlap). From this an alternative view of agriculture began to take shape.
Beus and Dunlap define alternative agriculture as follows:“At the heart of any definition of alternative agriculture is an em phasis on organic or near-organic practices. Essentially, all alternative agriculturalists favor significantly reduced use of synthetic farm chem icals. Most alternative agriculturalists, however, see their goals as much broader than merely reducing agricultural chemical use. Ad ditionally, alternative agriculturalists advocate smaller farm units and technology, reduced energy use, greater farm and regional self-suf ficiency, minimally processed foodstuffs, conservation of finite re sources, and more direct sales to consumers. This is not an exhaustive list, nor does it completely define alternative agriculture, but it does illustrate some of the fundamental differences between alternative and conventional agriculture.”
After reviewing the writings and actions of leading proponents of conventional agriculture and alternative agriculture, Beus and Dunlap identify six “dimensions” of the competing paradigms and they are: “1) centralization vs. decentralization, 2) dependence vs. independence, 3) competition vs. community, 4) dom ination of nature vs. harmony with nature, 5) specialization vs. diversity, and 6) exploitation vs. restraint.”
One of the prevailing views not referred to by Beus and Dunlap, however, is the belief among proponents of industrial agriculture that the world needs industrial agriculture if the world’s poor and hungry are to be fed. In fact, former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz under the Nixon administration once said, "We can go back to organic agriculture in this country if we must.... However, before we move in that direction, someone must decide which 50 million of our people will starve" (Beus and Dunlap).
The paradox is that there is already enough food to feed the world but people are still hungry – why is this? One of the many reasons for this is poverty, and industrial agriculture might be the culprit here as well as it focuses on quantity and is known to exacerbate poverty. Antithetical to industrial/conventional agriculture is locally owned sustainable food production, job creation and an independent farming sector which are some of the hallmarks of the alternative agriculture model.
Conventional and alternative models of agriculture have been addressed in the debates and in competing farm policies in America and around the world. In fact, in 2006 and in 2007 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) met in Rome to discuss international food security and the paradoxes of industrial versus organic production and the findings were striking. The findings? The FAO stated “States should integrate organic agriculture objectives within national priorities”.
With the world’s population to reach 9 billion by 2050 the FAO has been trying look at how best to feed the world in an environmentally sound and sustainable way.
The FAO reported that while it dominates in the world’s food production "industrialized food systems have environmental and social costs that threaten food security, e.g., occupational deaths through pesticide poisoning, farmers' suicides due to debts, and loss of millions of jobs in rural areas." The FAO also expressed concern about the impact of industrial agriculture on vulnerable populations, the environment and climate change issues.
So what’s best for our communities? The FAO reported that organic production is one of the best routes toward food sovereignty. Through rural development and rural revitalization locally owned and controlled organically focused production creates jobs, is environmentally sound, has a fairer trade system, has fairer wages, it’s locally based emphasis helps people have more control over their own local resources, and is non-exploitive generally. Some of the other benefits of organic production are that because no chemicals are used there is more water security and less erosion as organic production prioritizes healthy and alive soil that helps to retain water. Importantly, organic production also helps to maintain plant diversity for generations to come.
In addition to all of the above, organically produced food can also produce enough food for the world!
In a 2007 report from the University of Michigan, it states, “Organic farming can feed the world”. The University researched the differences in performance between conventional and organically produced food. The press release begins by stating: “Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food on individual farms in developing countries, as low-intensive methods on the same land—according to new findings which refute the long-standing claim that organic farming methods cannot produce enough food to feed the global population.”
Ivette Perfecto, professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, and one the study's principal investigators said "the University of Michigan found that in developed countries, yields were almost equal on organic and conventional farms. In developing countries, food production could double or triple using organic methods.” She said further “the idea that people would go hungry if farming went organic is ‘ridiculous’”.
The press release stated further that: "We were struck by how much food the organic farmers would produce," Perfecto said. The researchers set about compiling data from published literature to investigate the two chief objections to organic farming: low yields and lack of organically acceptable nitrogen sources.
Their findings refute those key arguments, Perfecto said, and confirm that organic farming is less environmentally harmful yet can potentially produce more than enough food. This is especially good news for developing countries, where it’s sometimes impossible to deliver food from outside, so farmers must supply their own. Yields in developing countries could increase dramatically by switching to organic farming, Perfecto said.”
Other research in Europe and others in the United States have concurred with the University of Michigan findings. (See the Worldwatch Institute’s “Can Organic Farming Feed Us All?”).
Moving toward organic and sustainable agriculture production throughout the world is not really an alternative but is, in fact, a necessity for us all. All the data is now in place showing that there has been a shift toward a natural, organic and sustainable agriculture model in communities throughout the world, including here in the United States, which is also being implemented. It needs to continue. The dominant worldview in agriculture is also changing and what has been referred to as alternative is now becoming the dominant view in most countries. We are also witnessing this worldview shift in agriculture circles here in the United States. On the implementation side, organic production needs to replace industrial/conventional practices everywhere.
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