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Study Shows Benefits Of Organic Agriculture

Saturday, October 8th, 2011

If you ask most people why they buy organic, they say that they think organic produce is healthier and tastes better. But studies have consistently undercut the backing for both of these motivations. Some studies have shown that organic fruits and vegetables have higher antioxidant levels than their conventional counterparts, but others have not. Some say that pesticide residue clinging to conventional produce could be dangerous, but others, including the USDA, have said that it’s harmless. Blind taste tests of organic and conventional fruits and vegetables have shown that most people can’t reliably tell the two apart. So does it really make sense to buy organic produce — especially given that it often costs so much more than conventional produce?

A major study on organics says, “Yes, absolutely.” But the study indicates that the best reason to buy organic produce isn’t that it’s worlds healthier or better-tasting than conventional produce.

Instead, the 30-year comparison of organic and conventional growing methods, carried out by the highly respected Rodale Institute, in Kurztown, PAshows that there are huge ecological benefits to organic agriculture. The study also goes a long way to disproving the oft-repeated mantra, “Organic agriculture can’t feed the world.” Side-by-side match-ups of the yield on organic and conventional plots showed no difference whatsoever in overall corn, soy or wheat production per acre. Indeed, in years of drought conditions, yields in organic plots were 30% higher than those in conventional plots.

On the phone with the Huffington Post, Mark Smallwood, executive director of the Rodale Institute, summed up the findings this way: “If we’re looking to feed the world for the next 50 years, conventional can do it. But if we’re looking at feeding the world for the next 1500 years, we must switch over to organic.”

There is one caveat. The Rodale Institute’s study compared yields in relatively small (50′ x 30′) plots of land, not entire farms. Macro-scale studies of yields on organic and conventional farms have sometimes produced dispiriting figures on organic yields.

But, especially when it comes to a long-term comparison of the two methods, the Institute’s reportsupports this conclusion with some eye-opening statistics.

Much of the sustainability gap between conventional and organic systems can be attributed to differences in total petroleum-product use. Both methods call for diesel fuel to power tractors and farm equipment. But 41% of conventional systems’ petroleum goes to nitrogen-based fertilizers, which cannot be used on organic farms. This means that organic agriculture uses 45% less unsustainable energy than conventional agriculture. For similar reasons, organic farms produce 40% less greenhouse gas emissions than conventional farms.

The other key divide between the two systems was related to soil health. Conventional agricultural systems rely on crude-oil-dependent artificial fertilizers for the soil’s macronutrient content. This means that, unlike organic systems, they do not support the soil’s microbiological community, which can produce the same macronutrients without the use of crude oil. So when oil supplies start to run out, conventional farms will be left without a reliable way to maintain their soil’s macronutrient base — while organic farms’ soil will be virtually unaffected. That same macrobiological community also helps organic soil retain water, which fights erosion and drought.

The study even indicated that organic produce was cheaper for farmers to grow than conventional produce. Organics’ marginally higher labor costs are offset by the savings of not buying fertilizer. The cost parity of the two is borne out by national data on farmer incomes. According to census data, organic farms are almost twice as profitable as conventional ones.

So why is organic produce more expensive? “One of the reasons is that there aren’t enough organic farms. It’s because demand is higher than supply,” Smallwood said. “It’s simple economics.”

This demand may be driven more by overblown health claims than by ecological altruism. But the Rodale Institute study shows that ecologically benefits of organic agriculture are so great that anything that helps encourage it is probably good — even something that could be called a noble lie.

Source: Huffington Post

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Plants Don’t Want To Be Eaten

Friday, March 25th, 2011

Several years ago, after having to drive for too long behind a truck full of stinking, squealing pigs being delivered for slaughter, I gave up eating meat. I’d been harboring a growing distaste for the ugliness that can be industrial agriculture, but the real issue was a long-suppressed sympathy for its — or really, my — victims. Even screaming, reeking pigs, or maybe especially screaming, reeking pigs, can evoke stark pity as they tumble along in a truck to their deaths.

If you think about it, and it’s much simpler not to, it can be hard to justify other beings suffering pain, fear and death so that we can enjoy their flesh. In particular, given our many connections to animals, not least of all the fact that we are ourselves animals, it can give a person pause to realize that our most frequent contact with these kin might just be the devouring of them.

My entry into what seemed the moral high ground, though, was surprisingly unpleasant. I felt embattled not only by a bizarrely intense lust for chicken but nightmares in which I would be eating a gorgeous, rare steak — I could distinctly taste the savory drippings — from which I awoke in a panic, until I realized that I had been carnivorous only in my imagination.

Temptations and trials were everywhere. The most surprising turned out to be the realization that I couldn’t actually explain to myself or anyone else why killing an animal was any worse than killing the many plants I was now eating.

Surely, I’d thought, science can defend the obvious, that slaughterhouse carnage is wrong in a way that harvesting a field of lettuces or, say, mowing the lawn is not. But instead, it began to seem that formulating a truly rational rationale for not eating animals, at least while consuming all sorts of other organisms, was difficult, maybe even impossible.

Before you hit “send” on your hate mail, let me say this. Different people have different reasons for the choices they make about what to kill or have killed for them to eat. Perhaps there isn’t any choice more personal or less subject to rationality or the judgment of others. It’s just that as far as I was concerned, if eating a tofu dog was as much a crime against life as eating bratwurst, then pass the bratwurst, please.

So what really are the differences between animals and plants? There are plenty. The cells of plants, and not animals, for example, harbor chloroplasts, tiny green organelles that can turn the energy of light into sugar. Almost none of these differences, however, seem to matter to any of us trying to figure out what to eat.

The differences that do seem to matter are things like the fact that plants don’t have nerves or brains. They cannot, we therefore conclude, feel pain. In other words, the differences that matter are those that prove that plants do not suffer as we do. Here the lack of a face on plants becomes important, too, faces being requisite to humans as proof not only that one is dealing with an actual individual being, but that it is an individual capable of suffering.

Animals, on the other hand — and not just close evolutionary relations like chimps and gorillas, but species further afield, mammals like cows and pigs — can experience what pretty much anyone would agree is pain and suffering. If attacked, these animals will look agonized, scream, struggle and run as fast as they can. Obviously, if we don’t kill any of these animals to eat them, all that suffering is avoided.

Meanwhile, whether you pluck a leaf or slice a trunk, a plant neither grimaces nor cries out. Plants don’t seem to mind being killed, at least as far as we can see. But that may be exactly the difficulty.

Unlike a lowing, running cow, a plant’s reactions to attack are much harder for us to detect. But just like a chicken running around without its head, the body of a corn plant torn from the soil or sliced into pieces struggles to save itself, just as vigorously and just as uselessly, if much less obviously to the human ear and eye.

Source: NY Times

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Growing Fish In Greenhouses

Friday, January 14th, 2011

At Growing Power in Milwaukee, Wisconsin they are raising yellow perch along side lettuces and other veggies. The nutrients in the fish water goes to feed the plants while the plants filter the water. When in doubt, look to nature for an answer.

Posted in Fisheries, urban farming, Vegetable Production, Videos | No Responses »

Man Goes On Two Month ‘Potato Only’ Diet

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

Chris Voight, executive director of the Washington Potato Commission, set himself the task of cutting out all other foodstuffs for 60 days to prove the nutritional value of the starchy vegetable.

His challenge was an attempt to prove to the US Government that the potato should remain a part of the school lunch programme, amid claims from the US Institute of Medicine that it should be replaced by other vegetables.

For 60 days, the 45-year-old denied himself all foods except potatoes, seasoning such as salt and pepper, and a little oil to cook them in.

As he ended his trial at midnight on Monday, Mr Voight, denied that the experiment had damaged his health, claiming it had helped him lose 21 pounds and lower his cholesterol.

He told the Today programme: “I absolutely feel great. I’ve always had lots of good energy on this diet, I’ve had no strange side effects, I sleep well at night. I just had my last medical exam today and it came back fabulous.”

Such a diet may be enough to put most people off potatoes for life, but in his interview, recorded hours before the end of his diet, Mr Voight said the experience hadn’t deterred him in the slightest.

He said: “Actually I plan on eating potatoes tomorrow, it’s just I’m planning on putting something on them and eating something with them, not just potatoes any more.

“I want some salsa on some nice beef tacos with some grilled potatoes and maybe some ice cream and some milk.”

The only negative health impact Mr Voight would admit to suffering during his potato marathon was a deficiency in some fat-soluble vitamins such as Vitamins A and E, but he added: “Luckily I was a little overweight so there was a natural store of a lot of those in me already.”

He accepted, however, that eating nothing but potatoes was not a “sustainable diet”.

He admitted: “While the potato is a good choice if you were to pick one food, it certainly doesn’t meet all your needs.

“But I hope that this was just a bold statement just reminding people that it’s OK to eat potatoes because they truly are healthy for you.”

Source :Telegraph UK

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Want To Grow A Bigger Potato? Organic May Be The Way

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

The balanced mix of insects and fungi in organic fields does a superior job of keeping pests in check, leading to larger plants, according to researchers at Washington State University in Pullman. Potato plants exposed to conditions typical of pesticide-treated fields fared more poorly in the research team’s experiments.

The findings may help potato growers cut back on spraying and make more effective use of natural predators to control pests, said entomologist David Crowder, who led the study published Thursday in the journal Nature.

“The goal is to learn as much as we can about how these natural enemies are doing their jobs and what impact they’re having, so we can incorporate their effects into management practices,” he said.

Washington is second only to Idaho in potato production in the nation, and the state’s crop is valued at nearly $700 million a year. But potatoes can be very vulnerable to pests. Washington potato farmers applied more than 19 million pounds of weed- and bug-killing chemicals in 2005, according to the latest data available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Less than 1 percent of the state’s potatoes are organically grown, and even many organic farmers use some type of chemicals or natural toxins to control pests. But farmers are under pressure from such companies as McDonald’s — the nation’s top potato customer — to green up their practices.

“People who buy a lot of potatoes are asking the growers to reduce insecticide use as much as possible, to document pesticide use, and include biological control as a consideration,” said WSU entomologist William Snyder, a study co-author.

Snyder recently received a $2 million USDA grant to help potato growers shift their practices.

“We have some pretty progressive farmers who already spray much less, compared to the industry average,” Snyder said. “It’s kind of ‘organic lite.’”

The Washington State Potato Commission also funds some of Snyder’s research and hopes to translate the science into practical advice its members can use, said Andrew Jensen, the group’s research director.

For the Nature study, the WSU scientists wanted to find out whether a balanced mix of insects could be beneficial. They examined bug counts from conventional and organic fields around the world, growing a range of crops.

Since many pesticides wipe out the majority of insects, it wasn’t surprising to discover that the conventional fields were often dominated by only a few hardy species. In contrast, the organic fields had a much more even mix.

But would that mix provide any real-world advantage? To test that, Crowder set up 42 potato plots enclosed in fine mesh. He seeded each of his mini fields with Colorado potato beetles, one of the industry’s worst scourges. Then he added varying numbers of insects, fungi and microscopic worms called nematodes that attack the beetles’ eggs and larvae.

The potato plots with the most balanced mix of insects and fungi, typical of organic fields, performed the best: Pest numbers were 20 percent lower and plants were 30 percent bigger than in the plots with the lopsided insect mix typical of pesticide-treated fields.

The study didn’t follow the potatoes to harvest, but plant size is closely correlated with potato size and yield, Crowder said.

Though it’s not clear how the results would scale up, the study does suggest that farmers who reduce pesticide use might be able to rely on a mix of natural predators to take up the slack in controlling pests, he added.

The work also suggests a way to short-circuit the “pesticide treadmill” that forces farmers to use more and different chemicals as pests evolve resistance, said an accompanying article in Nature from researchers at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

The results have broader ecological implications, Crowder said. Scientists have long focused on the number of species in an ecosystem as a measure of its health. The WSU experiments show that it’s also important to have a balanced mix of species.

Research on organic farming has received short shrift in the past, said Jennifer Miller, sustainable-agriculture coordinator at the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides in Boise.

“Often the natural pest control that’s happening on organic farms is overlooked,” she said. “It’s really great to see research looking at the value of this effect and cheaper ways of pest management that come with reduced pesticide use.”

Source: Seattle Times

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U.S. Schools Add Fresh Food Without Busting Budgets

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Thousands of U.S. public school districts are teaming up with local farmers to put more fresh fruits and vegetables on lunchroom menus, without breaking budgets or getting any help from celebrity chefs.

The schools are taking early steps toward adding more fresh and homemade foods as advocated by British chef Jamie Oliver, who led a campaign to improve school lunch in his country. But inexpensive, processed foods still dominate U.S. school menus.

Proponents including U.S. President Barack Obama are pushing for a bigger investment in school meals that feed some of the country’s neediest children. The aim is to establish healthier eating habits and curb obesity rates that are driving nearly $150 billion in medical costs each year.

Nearly a third of U.S. children are obese or overweight and public health experts are warning that this generation of youth may be the first to live shorter lives than their parents.

The problem is so severe it has caught the attention of the U.S. military. Last month, two retired generals said in a Washington Post column that being overweight or obese was now the top medical reason recruits were turned down for military service, and that obesity rates were threatening the future strength of the military.

Local farmer Bob Knight supplies 23 Southern California school districts with competitively priced produce, giving poor children access to products sold to upscale customers via farmers’ markets and direct sales.

“We’re taking that elite food and we’re getting it to kids who would never, ever have access to it,” Knight said.

Michelle Ratcliffe, farm-to-school program manager for the Oregon State Department of Agriculture, said schools needed more money to improve entrees in the middle of the tray — where it is common to find processed meats and pizza loaded with fat.

To that end, U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Kevin Concannon has joined the president and first lady Michelle Obama in calling for an extra $10 billion in funding over a decade for school breakfast and lunch programs.

“You pay more for better foods and that’s true for institutions as well. I think that has to be recognized. The return on those investments will be huge,” Concannon said.

Each day, U.S. schools serve about 11 million breakfasts and 31 million lunches.

A proposal in Congress calls for a $4.5 billion increase in funding over 10 years and would require the U.S. Department of Agriculture to set new standards for all school food, whether it is served in a lunch room or from a vending machine.

The additional money would raise the amount schools get for each meal served to $2.74 from $2.68 and provide money for farm-to-school programs, school gardens and training.

Right now, after labor costs and overhead, schools have about $1 left per lunch to spend on food. As a result, many depend on inexpensive food like pizza, chicken nuggets and pressed meats.

NO FRUIT BOWL ON DINING ROOM TABLE

While politicians wrangle over money, 15 school systems — including California’s Riverside Unified School District, Oregon’s Eugene School District, Kentucky’s Jefferson County Public Schools and Boston Public Schools — are working with the USDA to strengthen farm-to-school programs already in thousands of schools.

Rodney Taylor, who made a name for himself bringing salad bars to schools in affluent Santa Monica, California, moved to Riverside Unified in 2002.

As Riverside Unified’s nutrition services director, he oversees nearly four dozen schools that serve produce from local farmers, and in some cases, from school gardens.

More than half of lunches served in the district — in an area with some of the country’s highest home foreclosure and unemployment rates — are free of charge or offered at reduced prices, Taylor said.

“My goal was to provide access to those students who may not have access. … I can guarantee you that they don’t have a fruit bowl on their dining room table,” said Taylor.

All but two of the district’s 31 elementary schools have salad bars and the district’s chef is creating prepackaged salads and sandwiches made with fresh ingredients to match the preferences of older students.

Taylor said 47 percent of students in the district were eating school food in 2002. Participation is now almost 70 percent, helped by school menu promotion and the recession.

“We need to get back to more basic food, the kind like this program provides. … I am a believer in the potential for school-based nutrition programs to help children grow up with healthy eating habits,” Concannon said during a recent Riverside visit.

Knight said the farm-to-school program helped him stay on his family farm, which is located a stone’s throw from Riverside Unified’s Emerson Elementary School.

Before he became a supplier to schools, Knight’s farm depended solely on farmers’ markets and direct sales.

“This is totally working financially,” Knight said, adding the program helped preserve farmland while giving family farms a steady market.

Ratcliffe said schools did not need to wait for more money to start making changes.

“Can we do things in the meantime? Yes, we can, and yes, we are,” she said.

Source: Reuters

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Free Hoop Houses from the USDA

Monday, December 21st, 2009

On Dec. 16, 2009, Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan announced a pilot project under the ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ initiative for farmers to establish high tunnels – also known as hoop houses. Obama administration officials highlighted opportunities available for producers in a video which shows high tunnels recently installed in the White House garden.

“There is great potential for high tunnels to expand the availability of healthy, locally-grown crops – a win for producers and consumers,” said Merrigan. “This pilot project is going to give us real-world information that farmers all over the country can use to decide if they want to add high tunnels to their operations. We know that these fixtures can help producers extend their growing season and hopefully add to their bottom line.”

The 3-year, 38-state study will verify if high tunnels are effective in reducing pesticide use, keeping vital nutrients in the soil, extending the growing season, increasing yields, and providing other benefits to growers.

Made of ribs of plastic or metal pipe covered with a layer of plastic sheeting, high tunnels are easy to build, maintain and move. High tunnels are used year-round in parts of the country, providing steady incomes to farmers – a significant advantage to owners of small farms, limited-resource farmers and organic producers.

USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) will provide financial assistance for the project through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the EQIP Organic Initiative, and the Agricultural Management Assistance program. NRCS will fund one high tunnel per farm. High tunnels in the study can cover as much as 5 percent of 1 acre. Participating states and territories are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Pacific Islands, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service

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