The Chapel Hill News

March 27, 2005

Organic foods: Yes? No?

By Phillip Manning

A growing number of people eat organic. They believe organically grown foods taste better and are better for you because they don’t contain synthetic pesticide residues. Sure, they cost more, but they are worth it. In fact, a few people are so gung-ho about organic foods that they believe we should all eat them and are trying to sell Americans on the idea.

Two recent books and an essay explore the pros and cons of organic farming and foods. The books approach the topic by way of genetically modified foods, but they also make the case for and against organic agriculture. “Genetically Modified Food: Changing the Nature of Nature” by Martin Teitel and Kimberly Wilson forcefully states the case for organically grown foods: “The method for growing our organic food builds our precious soil instead of depleting it, results in clear instead of polluted runoff water, employs more people in small-scale farming, preserves the health of farm workers and their children, contributes to the health of people who eat the food instead of threatening that health with dangerous synthetic chemicals, and helps keep alive the traditional seed varieties that are the foundation of all of humanity’s food supply.” For all this, the authors add, you pay only “a few pennies more” and get better tasting food to boot.

Teitel and Wilson make organic agriculture sound so appealing, one wonders why all of our food isn’t grown that way. In an essay for the Land Institute, Deborah Rich espouses exactly that cause. She recommends we vote today, “to require all agriculture to be organic within 10 years....” She even came up with a nifty slogan to publicize the idea, “All-American, All-Organic.”

A century ago, most of the world did farm organically. But food production did not keep up with rapid population growth. In 1943, 4 million people in India died of starvation because they could not grow enough food to feed themselves. One result of this disaster (and similar ones) was the Green Revolution, which introduced modern intensive farming practices around the world. New cultivars were developed and coupled with higher doses of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Yields skyrocketed. World production of grains went from 14 million tons in 1950 to 144 million in 1990. Famines decreased, and per capita calorie consumption jumped 25 percent.

In “Mendel in the Kitchen,” Professor Nina Fedoroff and Nancy Marie Brown tell the side of the organic farming not addressed by Teitel and Wilson. “If we tried to feed 6 billion people,” the authors write, alluding to the lower yields of organic farms, “using the mainly organic farming methods of 1961, we would need to cultivate 82 percent of the the earth’s surface land instead of the current 38 percent.”

But what about the “dangerous synthetic chemicals” and the better taste of organically grown vegetables? Fedoroff and Brown quote Bruce Ames, the developer of a standard test for carcinogens: “There is no convincing evidence that synthetic chemical pollutants are important as a cause of human cancer.” Furthermore, the authors point out, taste tests comparing conventionally grown fruits and vegetables to organically grown ones have shown them to be indistinguishable. Tasters preferred fresher, riper foods regardless of how they were grown.

But some problems associated with the Green Revolution are real. Fertilizer runoff, aquifer contamination, and soil erosion are undoubtedly damaging the environment. Moreover, many organos don’t buy Fedoroff and Brown’s assertion about the higher yields of conventional agriculture. They believe that organic agriculture can produce yields close to (or equal) those achieved with conventionally grown crops.

One thing both sides of this debate agree on is that organic farms are labor intensive. A visitor to rice growers in Africa who use no herbicides found that “It takes 40 days of sweating and straining each year to keep just one hectare [about two and a half acres] of land weed free.” The hard work doesn’t pay off, either. Peter Raven, the staunch conservationist and director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, says, “Organic agriculture is essentially what is practiced in sub-Saharan Africa and half the people are starving....” So, should you eat organic?

I have friends who swear by organic food. It tastes better, they claim, and they feel better because they are eating food grown without synthetic chemicals. Others, including me, can tell no difference. But a few enthusiastic organos — like Deborah Rich — sincerely believe that what they prefer is what the world should prefer. If her program succeeds, we will all eat organic. This poses little problem for many Americans, but it looms large for others. The problem is those “few pennies more.”

America is a food exporter. If we go “All-Organic,” worldwide food prices will inevitably rise. Those extra pennies will mean more starving people in Africa and elsewhere. So, eat organic if you choose, but let’s not make it the law.
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