Study Shows Organic Food No Better For You
July 30th, 2009
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Tell me something I didn’t already know!
If you’ve been reading this site for any period of time, you probably are aware that there is no scientific evidence that so-called “organic” food is any better for you than conventional food. The products are very difficult to distinguish at all, resulting in testing as extreme as stable isotope analysis in order to try to differentiate true “organic” products.
Now what we already knew has been re-confirmed by a recent study that has been making the rounds in the news media.
Organic food not healthier, study finds
LONDON (Reuters) – Organic food has no nutritional or health benefits over conventionally produced food, according to a major study published on Wednesday.
Its conclusions were challenged by organic food campaigners.
Researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine said consumers paid higher prices for organic food in part because of its perceived health benefits, creating a global organic market worth an estimated $48 billion in 2007.
A systematic review of 162 scientific papers published in the scientific literature over the last 50 years, however, found there was no significant difference.
“A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance,” said Alan Dangour, one of the report’s authors.
“Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.”
This really should not be news to anyone. There has never been any hard science produced to show that “organic food” is any better than conventionally produced food. Despite a lot of discussion over the composition of the foods, when you get down to it, they’re made of the same stuff. Organic crops are composed of things like water, cellulose, salt, sugars, plant lipids and so on. This is exactly the same thing that conventional crops are composed of. There’s no reason to presume that organic foods would be higher in any vitamin or mineral content and, as confirmed by analysis, they’re not!
There have also been a lot of claims made about the superior environmental aspects of organic foods. In general, these claims are also totally unsupported by hard science. At best, this area may be a bit nebulous. Organic agriculture may indeed reduce the use of natural gas derived fertilizers, thus saving some energy in the process, and it may also reduce the potential for runoff of water soluble nitrate fertilizers. Yet, there is another side to it. Organic agriculture tends to require more land for a given yield of food and also requires more irrigation, thus placing greater loads on local water resources. The heavy tilling in organic agriculture can increase nitrous oxide emissions and contribute to soil erosion, and the need for more tilling, plowing and application of large quantities of material makes it far more energy intensive than conventional agriculture.
When you get down to it, the small environmental benefits that come with organic agriculture may end up being paid for by much larger ecological issues it causes. it is important to bare in mind that organic agriculture is ultimately a restriction on the farmer and what tools can be used to produce foods. A conventional farmer can decide to use synthetic fertilizers as well as things like compost or other “natural” materials. Yet organic farming restricts the use of certain methods, thus resulting in fewer choices for the farmer. In some cases, composting may be the best way to provide nutrients, especially when it’s desirable to build soil bulk. In others, synthetic fertilizers may be the best choice, but in organic agriculture, this is not an option.
Not surprisingly, the various organic industry interests are not happy about it and they’re on the offensive.
Here’s a good example from the Daily Mail:
(yeah, I know the quality of the Daily Mail)
A cancerous conspiracy to poison your faith in organic food
Despite its obvious benefits for our health and for the environment, organic food continues to be denigrated by the political and corporate establishment in Britain.
The food industry, in alliance with pharmaceutical and big biotechnology companies, has waged a long, often cynical campaign to convince the public that mass-produced, chemically-assisted and intensively-farmed products are just as good as organic foods, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
The latest assault in this propaganda exercise comes from the Food Standards Agency, the government’s so-called independent watchdog, which has just published a report claiming that there is no nutritional benefit to be gained from eating organic produce.
Those forces bent on promoting GM crops and industrialised production, would have been delighted by the widespread media coverage of the Agency’s report, portraying enthusiasm for organic foods as little more than a fad among neurotic consumers that would pass once the public is given the correct information.But what is truly misguided is not the increasing popularity of organic goods, but the Food Standards Agency’s determination to halt this trend and instead promote genetic modification.
Oh ho hum, as if we have not heard this idiocy before. The fact of the matter is that modern agriculture is the reason why we don’t see people starving in the streets due to a bad annual harvest. It’s not that there is any big conspiracy, but simply the fact that modern technologies work and they work well. This includes genetic engineering. All food crops and livestock are genetically modified, although it is often through random mutations and years of selective breeding. Modern genetic engineering takes this a step further and allows selection of specific traits through genetic manipulation. Despite the appeals to fear, genetic modification has proven entirely safe and effective in producing better crops that can do things like resist disease, resist insect attacks without insecticide and more efficiently absorb nutrients.
The industry is scrambling to scare people. These scary “frankenfoods” are going to be the end of the world, they may tell you. I’m still waiting. Has the sky fallen yet? No? How much longer?
Another claim made is the organic foods are safer. Sure, they may be no better nutritiously, but they don’t have all those nasty chemicals, right?
Here few things concerning the “chemicals” in conventional foods:
- Despite the image that has been spread by some, conventional farming does not involve the indiscriminate application of copious amounts of insecticide to crops. No, farmers don’t just load up crop dusters with tons of insecticide and dowse everything in it. The use and amounts of insecticide are strictly regulated, and the amount and type used is based on the insect problem being addressed. Conventional farming also involves non-chemical methods of pest control, such as baited traps or mechanical controls, like non-toxic powders or soaps that clog the breathing passages of insects. It is not necessarily to the advantage of a farmer to use large amounts of insecticide, as this can also kill beneficial insects that pollinate plants or improve the soil conditions. Insecticides are thus generally applied in measured amounts, and in some cases, may not be used at all.
- All insecticides used in the food supplies of major industrial countries have been rigorously tested for safety and have shown no evidence of any health problems in humans. There is no evidence that the amounts or types of insecticides in use are dangerous to the health of the end consumer.
- Crops which have been grown with insecticides or herbicides are normally washed as a part of their processing. As these materials do not permeate the food, this removes the vast majority of the products. Processed foods are always thoroughly cleaned, but for end consumers of fresh produce, it is advisable to wash the product before consumption. This is simply good food hygiene, but it also removes any remaining residue, which is generally minimal to begin with.
- The synthetic fertilizers used for growing of foods are non toxic and often identical to the chemical compounds found in biological material used in “organic” farming. These fertilizers provide the basic nutrients needed by crops, such as phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen. They are not in any way harmful or of concern to the end consumer.
- Organic farming does not necessarily mean that potentially toxic chemicals are not used. Organic agriculture permits the use of certain pesticides, such as pyrethrins and plant-based materials deemed “natural.” These materials are not necessarily safer than conventional insecticides and may even be worse. Toxic chemicals like copper sulfate are permitted for fungus control. Additionally, organic foods do not come with any guarantee against contamination with biologically dangerous or infectious material.
Previous Posts on this Issue:
How Malawi Solved Its Hunger Crisis
Organicly Grown Foods: Is it really any better?
How to tell organic from non-organic food?
Turns out ‘Organic’ fertilizer wasn’t or was it?
Once Again, Fertilizer is Not “Petroleum Based”
Take GM Crops Seriously? You must be sane!
“Agriculture” section of posts
Also check out the article “The Costly Fraud that Is Organic Food” at Agriculture Information
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Agriculture, Bad Science, Conspiracy Theories, Enviornment, Good Science, Not Even Wrong, Obfuscation, Politics, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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July 31st, 2009 at 2:54 pm
“Companies that try to avoid this by hiding things often get burned badly. “
Only the ones that don’t have the power to keep the truth in the dark…the ones that are the scapegoats while other larger and more powerful companies thrive while putting out nasty stuff. Look at Monsanto.
The reality is that many of these businesses put out things they know are dangerous, but they have governmental agencies in their pockets. Our governmental agencies that are there to “protect” us from foods and other dangerous products are as corrupt as any other. I just don’t believe it.
Some of you call those of us who believe in organic farming naive, but I say the opposite is true. I guess it all just comes down to who you believe.
Quote Comment
July 31st, 2009 at 2:55 pm
DrBuzz0,
Just a quick clarification request: are you referring to organic subsidies, or all farm subsidies when you state your opposition?
I’ll agree on the organic silliness, but I personally regard food crop production as one of the few areas where gov’ts should legitimately prop up struggling producers, since a significant disruption in the food supply would be deadly on a large scale (I consider it a national security issue).
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July 31st, 2009 at 3:08 pm
sustainme said:
Monsanto is as good a monster of capitalism as you can find, a behemoth bestriding the world with politicians from most countries clenched in its jaws. Whatever the truth, Monsanto looks as if it has the power to have black declared white in virtually any legislature.’ In other words, regardless of the truth of the matter, we should presume the worst of this ‘monster of capitalism’.
What rubbish. The environmentalists and their anti-corporate message sometimes look like a curious mirror image of the fundamentalist right-wing ‘militias’ in America. Where the American far right complains of the Zionist Occupation Government, the environmentalists sketch a paranoid fantasy about big corporations pulling the strings behind the scenes.
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July 31st, 2009 at 3:16 pm
DV82XL said:
Do a little research. Facing the truth has nothing to do with paranoia. I am not saying that all corporations are bad, but it’s naive and self-defeating to believe they are all good. What you are saying is just what the pro-cigarette folks said when people started to question whether or not smoking caused cancer. The companies denied it for years, even though they had done extensive studies that clearly showed this to be the case. Now we know that they knew – for years, that smoking caused cancer…and look at all the people who may have lived had this gotten out sooner. Asbestos…DDT…
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6262083407501596844
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July 31st, 2009 at 3:46 pm
susan said:
Well dear I often do research for a living and it does not entail using web videos as primary sources. The fact of the matter is that you and those like you start off with a mind-set that all this is evil, and then filter you “research” to support your views.
You eat because of modern agriculture. The fact that it supplies surpluses of cheap food is the reason that most of the poorly educated idiots that complain about modern life can afford to live. Do you honestly think that you have any value to society great enough that you could pay for food that was ALL grown with pre-technological methods? Do you have any idea just how expensive a meal would be? Do you really want to live on one bowl of rice a day? Because this is what you are fighting for.
You eat. Many do not. In places where modern agriculture is not practiced the only people that enjoys the same class of nutrition you have are the rich and the talented. Think about just where you would fit in, and then get down on your knees and thank God you were born in a place where modern farming methods made a society that could afford the luxury of feeding people like you.
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July 31st, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Here is something else – maybe the number one thing about all the “anti-organic” propaganda out there. Maybe you think it is a crock – that’s your opinion and I respect that. You have the right to choose whether or not to buy organic or conventional. I want that right too, and at the moment I don’t really have it because the government has banned the labelling of GM foods. This means that when go to the store and buy a potato I have no idea whether or not it is genetically modified or not. Shouldn’t I have the right to buy organic foods if that is what I want? If the biotech industry is not reigned in a little – made to grow under controlled environments to avoid contamination…there may be no choice.
These studies – they focus on one small aspect of a much more complex issue and use it to say “Organic farming is BS!” making it easier for the biotech guys to take over with no one paying any attention to what they are doing and the implications…many of which are still unknown and untested.
No one is saying that everyone must eat organically – but we should all have the choice.
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July 31st, 2009 at 4:26 pm
susan said:
Funny that you would choose to use potatoes as an example Susan, this cultivar has been so intensively breed over the last two thousand years that it cannot propagate using its own seeds anymore.
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July 31st, 2009 at 5:55 pm
sustainme said:
Let me clarify this. If it is overused, then that is done by farms that are not operating properly and are likely to go out of buisiness because they’re not managing their production properly.
Farmers are not old thymey straw-hat wearing characters who live on the land and sing a tune while they go plant things by hand. Get that whole picture out of your head. They are managers, businessmen, experts in what they do.
If you overuse insecticide then you are using more of something than you need and what you are using costs money. Pesticides cost money to buy and you have to pay someone to mix them and apply them, which is salaried time. Using too much can cause you all kinds of problems. You can end up damaging crops or making them unmarketable or you can do things like kill insects that pollinate the crop or insects that are beneficial to soil chemistry.
Some insecticides have a repellent effect and if you overuse those or use them improperly they can drive insects from one field to another. Some are known to cause resistance if you use the same kind year after year and in large quantities.
Large farming is about management. You have things to manage and if you manage them properly you get the best return. You have to manage the soil chemistry and nutrients. You have to manage pests and manage the workforce and irrigation and you all kinds of expenses like fuel for the equipment and maintenance and insurance.
The goal is like any other buisiness. You want to get the best yeild and you want to use the kind of fertalizer, soil management techniques, pestacides, irrigation and everything else that will give you the best yeild without spending any unnecessary money or putting down anything more than you need.
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July 31st, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Donald said:
There was a bumper sticker (remember those) about thirty years ago that was popular up here for a time. It read:
DON’T LAUGH AT FARMERS WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL
Still sage advice.
Quote Comment
July 31st, 2009 at 6:08 pm
susan said:
Today if you’re growing potatoes on any kind of scale, you will certainly have fungicide that will be used on any areas where you notice any fungus damaging the potatoes. If you’re an organic farmer and your potatoes start to show signs of a fungal infection then you’ll treat the field with fungicide and if the fungicide does not meet the definition of “organic” then you use it anyway. You will just have to sell the potatoes on the general market without the “organic” label.
Today, there are also genetically modified potatoes that have a high resistance to fungus. (they took some genes from plants related to the potato but naturally more resistant to fungus). If you use these breeds then chances are you won’t need fungicide at all.
My ancestors did not have either of these. They had neither chemical fungicides nor genetically modified potatoes. They had just plain old regular, natural, organic ones. They would have done anything for the new genetically modified ones, because the ones that they had ended up failing and people starved to death. Yes, they watched their children and neighbors starve to death even as they wasted away themselves. Some were known to eat grass to try to fill their empty bellies before dying.
If you go to the area where my family is from in Ireland today, you can still hike into the hills and find the foundations of houses and structures that are gone. These were whole villages and small communities. In some everyone starved to death and in others a few got out and survived.
The fact that I exist at all is a combination of luck and circumstance. I am a direct descendant of those who were lucky to survive. My great great grandfather was a fisherman, as he lived near the coast and he sustained his family and modest income with fish and not potatoes. On my grandfather’s mother’s side, the family was mostly from industrial areas of the North of Ireland. They scrounged together enough money to come to the US when things got very very bad.
In any case, they were all very very lucky, as is evidenced by the fact that they have living descendants. Many families just died off.
(you would be surprised how fresh the memory of this is in Ireland. It seems like a long time ago, but peoples lives were dominated by the death and starvation around them, and those who lived through it passed on the stories to their children and grandchildren. The memory seems strangly fresh and not so distant in the past there)
So much for organic potatoes.
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July 31st, 2009 at 6:20 pm
sustainme said:
Okay, let me just address this whole idea of lobbying and buying off governments. Yes, it is true that big agricultural businesses engage in lobbying and political action. ALL big companies and ALL political interests, even the totally charitable ones, engage in this to some degree or another. It’s not something you can stop. Private parties have the right to petition the government and to mount their own campaigns in their interest.
To that end, I will say that there are policies that have been kept alive by big agri that I don’t agree with. Antiquated sugar taxation, ethanol mandates and so on. These exist in part because of big companies trying hard to keep them in place.
That being said, it is ignorant and hypocritical to think that the anti-organic food lobby (if they exist at all) and the biotech, fertalizer companies and so on have a monopoly on this.
The amount of lobbying and campaigning for organic agriculture is staggering. Groups like Greenpeace, FOE, Earth First and others campaign for it continuously, even resorting to underhanded tactics like destroying other people’s crops (property) and they get away with it. These groups are very well funded and have deep pockets.
There are a number of well funded groups that are entirely for “sustainable agriculture” and are also very well funded. By “sustainable agriculture” I mean all this organic BS.
You know where this money comes from? There are very deep pockets sopping huge amounts of money for this cause. The Ted Turner Foundation, the Rockeffeler Brothers Fund, the Merck Fund and dozens of others spend millions per year on this. The Turner Foundation spends tens of millions per year on lobbying and political action to this end and donates millions more to groups like Greenpeace with the donation the stipulation that the donation be spent on agricultural programs.
Yes, there are many tens or even hundreds of even millions of dollars per year spent on this by such groups.
Ted Turner, by the way, has a large agricultural interest. For one thing, he owns some of the largest cattle and bison ranches in North America. Perhaps he is trying to keep the market open for his bullsh*t (literally speaking.. because you know, big ranches equal a lot of bullsh*t)
Also, are you so naive to think this is an example of little farmers trying to stay around who are up against the big fat corporations? Companies like Bunge, Cargill, ADM and so on all have a big stake in the organics market. They know there are stupid consumers out there and they’re going to get a piece of the pie. There are plenty of huge operations like that.
sustainme said:
Actually, the thing about belief is that it doesn’t change reality. You can believe something all day and that doesn’t make it so.
Quote Comment
July 31st, 2009 at 6:39 pm
sustainme said:
let me just tell you, as a buisiness person and someone who has many years experience with businesses big and small. The best policy is not to produce a product that is dangerous or defective, to have good internal quality control and not to engage in coverups or corruption. It will come back to bite you.
Look, lets consider the world we live in. This is not just politicians and regulatory agencies. If I do something that causes harm to someone as a buisiness, then I’m liable, especially if I knew about it. Lawyers make their living on suing people and they are willing to take up cases and pay for independent investigations just for the payoffs they get in the end. If my product hurts someone or damages property, I could be sued to the point of losing just about everything.
Liability means that any time there is even a hint that someone is at fault, there is a swarm of legal manuvering to try to find out if money can be made. Sometimes, even just rumors and claims are enough to take down a big company, like Dow Corning. They didn’t make a dangerous product, but there was enough talk and BS out there to destroy them. It doesn’t matter how rich the company is, the richer they are the more money independent lawyers will risk spending to get at their billions.
Companies should always follow proper safety and quality procedures and most do. I always care about safety and doing the job right and that’s why I have a good reputation and affordable insurance. You know what would happen if my company didn’t take safetyseriously? Someone would get hurt and we’d have to pay for things like workers comp or even a wrongful death lawsuit. If I were the one who was in charge of the project, I could get fired or even sued myself or investigated criminally. If there were any breaks of safety protocol, our insurance company could deny the claim or fine us and that could ruin us. We could lose coverage or end up with premiums we couldn’t afford.
If we did not take care not to cause problems for others or damage property, then we could get a bad reputation. People could go on the local news and talk about it and it could lead to contracts being canceled and big money lost.
If you have a problem with your company and you try to keep it bottled up and do dangerous things while keeping it secret or covered up, it will come back to bite you, chances are it will be ten times worse because of the cover up. Employees leave and they don’t keep their mouths shut. People get wind of things. It comes out.
The Pinto scandal tarnished Ford’s reputation and they lost a lot of sales and money over it. The asbestos industry no longer exists and those involved have been bled dry for the legal fund. Peanut Corp of America went under and the managers may be facing criminal charges due to their poor safety and quality control.
It might sound like a lot of lame highbrow talk, but when it comes down to it, the best thing for buisiness is to run a safe, honest, reputable company and not to cut corners. In the long run you do better and have a lot less to worry about.
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July 31st, 2009 at 6:42 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Powerful and true. I’m 1/4 Irish my great grandparents came to the United States in the 1870’s s before my family relocated to Canada. I too would not be hear except they were lucky enough to survive and to get out of the country before starving to death because of the organic potatoes.
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August 1st, 2009 at 6:02 am
susan said:
You have the right to buy organic food if you want, and as I understand it, organic food producers don’t use GM Crops (except the kind with selected breeding and all that). How is it banned? If you mean that the government doesn’t force all products that might contain GM crops to be labled, that’s one thing, but I don’t see why they should be, especially products that may contain multiple ingredients from different suppliers and everything, as that would be unnecessarily difficult.
Look, there are plenty of organic foods out there, and if that little sticker somehow makes you feel you’ve done a good deed or are healthier for paying twice the price, then go ahead. I fully support the right of a seller to seperate a fool from his or her money.
I don’t think this article or those on this site are in any way saying that organic agriculture should be banned or that people don’t have the right to buy into it. It’s just saying that you’re a damn fool for doing so.
The thing is it’s totally arbitrary. Organic producers are allowed to use some chemicals that are potentially dangerous and they’re not allowed to use some which are totally innocuous. There’s no real reason to think it’s environmentally better either. It’s all based on someone’s dumb, shallow and arbitrary definition of what they consider “natural” and what they consider “unnatural.”
Fine, you bought it hook line and sinker and if that’s what you want, then go ahead and make someone rich off of this. I mean, it doesn’t benefit you and certainly not the enviornment in general, but it does make someone money, and I can’t fault them for not having a good marketing campaign, because it does seem to be working!
Quote Comment
August 1st, 2009 at 6:18 am
Before anyone says anything about how big agricorps are lobbying government and have politicians in their pocket, please look at this website – http://www.activistcash.com/ – and note the enormous amounts of money going to activist and political groups over organic foods and opposition to modern agriculture.
Note the major organizations like Greenpeace, the Tides Foundation and the Seira club get a lot of their top donations with the intent to have to do with opposing modern agriculture.
Also note the following donors and contributions:
http://www.activistcash.com/foundation.cfm/did/99
http://www.activistcash.com/foundation.cfm?did=86
http://www.activistcash.com/foundation.cfm?did=138
http://www.activistcash.com/foundation.cfm/did/168
http://www.activistcash.com/foundation.cfm/did/166
http://www.activistcash.com/foundation.cfm/did/161
http://www.activistcash.com/foundation.cfm/did/45
Note that these are some of the top richest funds and foundations in the world, controlled by some of the richest persons and families in the world and some of the top leaders of corporations. Note that they spend ungodly amounts of money on their various agriculture projects.
The amount of money that is being spent to promote this organic bull**** is huge. It is so ridiculous that there is this image that it’s a grass-roots effort of rag-tag campaigners who are working on their own time to unseat the big wigs like David and Goliath. It’s such bull. They ARE the rich fat cats spending huge amounts of money.
I think there are a number of reasons. It would be worth researching. One is likely that they have an interest in the organic industry. Another could be a desire to move more land to organic production to try to keep food prices up. That could create scarcity and that could mean more profit. It might be to stop their smaller competitors from gaining an advantage.
I really don’t know, but I am sure, 100% that there are additional motivations here for this level of money expended on this fairly narrow issue.
Quote Comment
August 1st, 2009 at 9:47 am
http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm?oid=20
This is a particularly telling quote from mr. Cummings:
In BioDemocracy (OCA’s newsletter), Cummins spelled out his group’s (and his movement’s) game plan. “The challenge over the next months and years will be to see if organic consumers, environmental organizations, farm activists, churches, and public interest groups can build upon this tactical victory and begin making headway in the bigger battle — driving genetically engineered crops off the market all over the world, beginning to phase-out [sic] the most dangerous practices of industrial agriculture, and jump-starting the conversion of the majority of the world’s agriculture to organic methods as soon as possible.”
He is an advocate of genocide. Pure and simple. If several billion people have to go, it would be my moral duty to make sure Ronnie Cummings is one of them.
Quote Comment
August 1st, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Indeed, there is a LOT of money on this end. Don’t buy into the idea that this is the little guy fighting the big guy, as Q points out, some very very rich groups are spending big money and some very well funded activist groups are working very hard on this both PR and direct political action as well as various staged events like “students” tearing up other people’s crops. These are staged to make it seem like it’s a bunch of low income college students doing what their hearts tell them is the right thing to do, but it’s really a very powerful and well organized group.
Soylent is right in point out Ronnie Cumming’s pretty frank motive. I don’t know if most of those who listen to this movement understand the whole issue of feeding the world, but if this became the way things are, then I think what we would see is a lot more land and effort put into agriculture combined with a larger amount of famine than we’ve seen in a long time.
One must remember Cumming’s group might indicate the mindset, but it’s only one of the many groups. There are a whole lot of them and some of them have very deep pockets. The Organic Consumers Association reports a net income of under one million dollars, which in the world of this kind of activism is actually fairly low. This is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
We are talking many many millions of dollars (or if you prefer Euros or Pounds or whatever). In any case, it’s a huge amount of money.
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August 1st, 2009 at 1:39 pm
The funny thing is the underlying motivation for much of this is to protect the overseas markets of First world agriculture. Far from being simply deluded these forces have used organic consumers, environmental organizations, farm activists, churches, and other interest groups to discourage the use of GM and other new tech in the Third World.
Added to this is the fact that most of the decision-making in these Third World countries is done by an elite that derives most of its income and power from rural debt-slavery systems that keep the farming populations in a perpetual state of economic dependence. These groups too are not interested in seeing sudden growth in yields ether.
The general public in the West tends to have a low awareness of agricultural politics, both domestic and international. Knowing this the sector can put just about whatever spin it wants on these issues, and the truth is often not what it seems at first glance.
Quote Comment
August 1st, 2009 at 1:57 pm
DV82XL said:
How would this protect overseas markets? I could see how if you stopped the modern agriculture practices in the First World, then they would not be able to sell their cheaper products and price out the ones still left with the manual methods. That is not going to happen though, because organic agriculture is a nitch sector in the first world and the world is still fed from modern growing methods, including genetically improved crops.
Wouldn’t it be better to introduce these methods, including GM crops and fertilizers to the third world? Perhaps they would need to import them, at least at first. They would likely need to import things like fertilizers at first, but they could eventually start making it domestically. The technology to do so is avaliable on the open market. If they get their production up enough using imported fertilizer they might make enough money to build a fertilizer plant domestically.
I do not believe it should be seen as a problem when a developing country is buying things from industrial countries. If farmers need to spend a small amount of money on imported fertilizers or insecticides and this results in a much larger return on their crops, then this is what I call a mutually beneficial buisiness relationship.
Think of a situation:
A farmer scrapes together a few dollars to buy insecticide one year, and then when the harvest comes, he has more food and enough to sell some. The next year he has a little more money and he can buy more insecticide and fertilizer. That year he grows even more.
Nothing is wrong with this. Of course, getting the farmers started could be done with some subsidies, until they can grow enough. They portray it as if these farmers are forced to buy from forign companies. They’re not. They can grow it the old way and make nothing, or spend a few dollars and make many more. That’s called a high return on investment. Tractor companies don’t force farmers to buy tractors. Farmers do it because a ten thousand dollar tractor is going to return hundreds of thousands of dollars in what it can do versus doing things with hand tools.
Also, many countries started off by importing technology or commodities they could not make. There is nothing wrong with that. The industrial revolution started in Europe, especially England. In the US the first generation of steam engines were all English models imported. Before long they had a domestic capability to build them. China’s coming of age has involved many projects that are beyond their experience. They often have foreign engineers hired as consultants. Westinghouse is building reactors in China. Both China and Westinghouse are happy because it benefits both of them.
Why must trade with the third world be seen as exploitation? It is the only way, historically, that countries can become developed. Ideally they start off by buying things from us, which they use to increase their domestic productivity (to a degree greater than what they spent on the things they bought). Then as they develop they start to become more domestically reliant and the final step is where they produce more domestically than they need and they can start to sell things on the international market.
If things work out well (and in plenty of real world cases they do), you end up with mutual benefits to countries engaged in world trade. You have a product to improve production, I buy it from you, I improve my production, I start selling my products to you and others. I make more money and I start importing other things. I develop my industries and start making more stuff and then start exporting more stuff.
Capitalism has been spun as harsh, but it’s really very hopeful and progressive. This is exactly how societies improve living conditions and eventually become wealthy. We shouldn’t see their purchasing of an item with has a high return on that investment as a bad thing for them. There is nothing wrong if we make money in the process. That is actually a good thing, because it makes it economically sustainable and it makes other providers want to get that market, which will just drive down prices for the buyer.
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August 1st, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Horatio Hellfire said:
It is not about stopping modern practices in the First World. Agribusiness is too well entrenched here for that. Most of the efforts of these groups is to convince African and countries in other regions to stop the use of GM crops, pesticides, and chemical fertilizer. They have been relatively successful in this matter.
There is a surplus of food in most Western countries. Much of that surplus is exported to the Third World. If these countries were able to grow enough food domestically, they would not have to import. It was policy for many years in the west to keep other countries dependent on food imports for several reasons, not the least of which was to maintain them in a state of dependence.
As usual these ’social action’ groups are just a front to provide a fig leaf for other agendas.
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August 1st, 2009 at 7:41 pm
No, there’s nothing wrong with third world countries trading with and buying from first world countries, especially if they buy something that results in a higher return than it costs them to buy. It’s like this BS about farmers being forced to buy from big chemical companies. Nobody forces them, they do it willingly because they make more money in their higher returns than they spend on the fertilizer. If it didn’t result in a net gain they would not be buying it.
Mutually beneficial trade is the cornerstone of economic sustainability.
The senerio that Horatio Hellfire mentions, where a nation begins trading with other nations and then increases trade even as they increase their own domestic productivity is not only an effective way to become a developed society, it’s the ONLY way to. It’s the only way that works.
You can read in this post from a while ago about how the nation of Malawi has been successful in expanding agriculture as they have adopted modern farming methods including genetically enhanced crops.
The nation of Malawi is not becoming more dependent on first world nations. Actually the opposite is happening. And it’s not needing more aid, it’s needing less. In this case, they did begin by subsidizing fertilizers to small farmers and importing nitrogen fertilizer. This is sometimes required to jump start things and get the technology adopted. However, this has resulted in a huge improvement of production. It is a much better idea to provide aid in the form of fertilizer subsidies than to just hand out food. (the old teach a man to fish idea).
There investment has provided great returns. While fertilizer consumption is up, so is productivity even to the point of the country becoming a net exporter and exporting food to other African nations. The best news is that they’ve been so successful that they’re already working to establish their own domestic programs to develop biotechnology. The country is actually working on a national legal framework for biotechnology patent and intellectual property regulation and biotechnology encouragement. This is something we in the United States really need to do! In this way they’re actually forging ahead of us!
That’s how you do it.
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August 1st, 2009 at 8:05 pm
drbuzz0 said:
That is exactly what I am saying. Those groups that have been working to get Third World nations to not allow modern agriculture in are funded by forces that want the status quo where these countries are net importers of food.
The gain here is for two groups. The first is First World exporters and their governments, not only do they maintain the State in question dependent, often it is also used to maintain a good balance of trade when the Third World country is suppling raw materials or energy products.
The second group are the indigenous power class that use the marginal farm yields as political tools to keep the masses in control. You have to understand just how revolutionary and unsettling it would be in some of these places if there was a surplus of food. The fact is that keeping people on the edge of hunger has always been an instrument of oppression. Many of these Third World governments doi not want their people fully fed.
The bad thing is that the ‘natural/organic’ food wacos have been co-opted into this fight. That is why they get huge sums of money. That is why they are so active in poorer countries. Their actions in the developed world are just window dressing to make them look legitimate.
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August 2nd, 2009 at 8:03 am
Soylent said:
It was right-wing plutocrats who caused the economic bubbles in the first place, by allowing Western manufacturing to be outsourced to cheap-labour countries. This meant that the only way jobs could only be created by the government (which of course requires higher taxes or deficit spending to pay for them), or in non-tradable services which are impossible to outsource.
There may be a case for free international trade — as per Ricardo’s theory or comparative advantage — but there is NO case for free international movement of capital — which guarantees that capital will move to wherever has the greates absolute advantage (ie where the workers can be most brutally exploited).
The Left as a whole has been criminally irresponsible in failing to challenge these plutocratic scumbags. Perhaps the problem is that the workers themselves were too easily dazzled by cheap imports, while the middle-class Left was made up of poseurs more interested in showing that they cared (this may explain the almost universal defection from class politics in favour of Green or identity politics) than they were in actually improving the condition of the working class.
(Sorry to go OT, but I can’t let pro-plutocracy propaganda go unchallenged.)
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August 2nd, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Matthew said:
I only know of him and his writings indirectly. My family has many members involved in agriculture and I’ve taken some agricultural science courses, but I haven’t entirely made up my mind if I want to go into it or not. What I say is based on what I know directly and have learned in classes or in helping out friends and family in the sector and just living in an area with a lot of large scale agriculture.
By the way, another tidbit of information:
The worst soil management crisis ever was happened in North America in the 1930’s. You might have heard of it. It was called the “Dust Bowl” and it was bigger than you can imagine. It stretched from Oklahoma, Texas through the plains and all the way into Saskatchewan. It was so bad that one year a dust storm blew all the way into New York City.
At the time, most farmers were not heavy users of chemical fertilizers. The use proportion in regular use of synthetic fertilizer was less than 10% of what it is today. It happened anyway.
It was caused by drought, but that was only what triggered what had been a disaster brewing. The real cause was ignorance and inexperience with soil management. There was over tiling, and nobody really practiced tilling management. Soil barriers were not used like having grass in off seasons. There was inadequate irrigation and the water resources they did have were not properly managed and distributed.
The crisis didn’t subside completely until 1940, due to that year getting a lot of rain.
We have had droughts since then, but never has there been another soil crisis like the dust bowl in the US, although there have been some similar incidents elsewhere in the world.
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August 3rd, 2009 at 10:43 am
Organic food was the topic of the latest P&T episode. They covered the important ground, but seemed a little sloppy in places.
I do begin to wonder though. That hippy couple looked like such a cliche. Surely the word is out now and no-one would come on the show just to be called an **** and the like. I do wonder whether they were fake.
I wish they would stop using people from libertarian think tanks as well when it comes to scientific issues. For episodes like ‘Walmart Hatred’ and ‘World Peace’ it’s fair game since the topic is sort of their bag, but for a topic like organic food, getting some real scientists on would be much better.
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August 3rd, 2009 at 11:19 am
George Carty said:
The economic bubble was created by easy central bank monetary policy and an implicit understanding that losses for the big banks would be socialized and profits privatized as in the examples set by the S&L debacle and LTCM collapse.
From Reagan onwards, under every US republican president the size of government has balooned and they’ve generally enacted policies hostile to free markets.
The proper name for government colluding with business is not rightwing, it is fascist. I don’t particularly like the fascists any more than I like the socialists.
George Carty said:
The sorry state of western manufacturing isn’t the result of free-market policies but of the facists and socialists taking turns to dick around with the economy.
Most people have a romantic view of regulation as fighting pollution or protecting consumers. This is very rarely the case.
The fascistic elements like to add regulation to induce large, fixed costs that strangle start-up companies in the crib before they can grow large enough to compete with the favoured companies on whos behalf the regulation is enacted. Filing a couple of man-years of paper-work or hiring a couple of extra laywers is a mere flea-bite for a large company, a small price to pay.
The socialists tend to add regulation such as minimum wage restrictions, restrictions on hiring and firing people. The intent of this is to make it very unfavourable to hire young people without much prior job experience, temp workers, people with disabilities etc. so that the wages of high-skilled, unionised workers can be maintained. They also tend to favour nonsensical environmental regulation that leads to restrictions on imports from other countries.
After decades of playing these games it piles up. The burden is now so large that it makes little sense to manufacture anything in the western world.
If you want to increase wages on any kind of durable basis you have to make investments in capital equipment and R&D that allows more work to be performed with less effort as well as branching out into high-tech goods. When government comes in and curtails competition and bails failed institutions out that’s never going to happen.
If companies aren’t allowed to outsource, they will go under in this kind of climate. If you bail out the companies that aren’t allowed to outsource by forcing people to buy domestically produced goods all you’ve succeeded in doing is making everyone poorer. The effect of increasing the cost of industrial inputs by protectionism generally goes unobserved in favour of noting that the favoured industry does indeed benefit; it’s a situation of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs.
George Carty said:
Naturally. The more the government interfers, the more it has to interfer in the future to mend what it has broken. It’s an ever expanding spiral.
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August 3rd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Josh said:
Yeah, well their show does get a little “sloppy” in terms of cutting corners on some details and simplifying stuff or just breezine through some things. They’re aware of this. It’s something of a necessary evil. They do try to stay acurate, but it’s an entertainment show and it airs on Showtime and that dictates a lot of things. They just don’t have the time or the format to really introduce all the scientific evidence.
I still like their show. They do put a lot of effort into trying to be fair and accurate even given the venue’s limitations.
Josh said:
They only use real people for their interviews and such. No, the hippy couple is totally real. Penn is actually really big on the fact that those who are interviewed for this shows are not tricked or desceived. He denounces things like the Borat kind of routines where people come in for one kind of interview and end up realizing it’s different. Those who are on the show see previous episodes and know how the guests are portrayed and treated and they know that they will be subject to the same kind of treatment and portrayal.
Also, they do not edit interview footage in a way that makes people seem to be saying different things than they are, like by taking comments out of context or only showing partial statements.
Penn and Teller and fairly vocal on this.
No, it does not make it difficult for them to get guests, believe it or not.
Josh said:
I haven’t seen the show yet. I have it Tivoed and was waiting for a chance to see the whole thing and enjoy it by not multitasking while watching it. I understand Ron Baily was on it and I assume that is who you’re talking about?
I don’t know the kind of statements he made or anything, but I know Ron, having first met him at the Amazing Meeting 5. Stuff like enviornmental bad science and this kind of stuff, is really right up his ally. He has a lot of experience in this area and his written several excellent reviews on the studies in this area. His opinions and stuff are also very similar to those of Penn and Teller. Penn is an admitted libertarian, so he may be bringing some of his own beliefs in there (I’m not sure if Teller is as much of one).
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August 3rd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
George Carty said:
This is totally off topic, but I don’t see this as being caused at all by the right-wing free market types.
The fact that the “bubble burst” and that things suddenly and dramatically started going bad is because of the financial market collapse. Securities turned out to be worthless even though companies had every reason to think they were a legitimate place to keep their money. This caused a domino effect and things got worse as banks started writing off more and more loans.
Things got worse as banks got more desperate. In general, the banks prefer not to foreclose because this always leads to a net loss on their part. If you don’t pay your mortgage, the bank will generally not take your house right away. You’ll get a letter asking why you missed a payment. They might slap you with a penalty. If you miss another payment, you may get an angrier letter. They will try to work out a payment plan if you have trouble making it. This is all because they simply don’t want to foreclose and deal with the loss unless except as a last resort. But the banks were so straight up over defaults, they HAD to recoup any money they could ASAP. Thus they stopped being as tolerant and started taking homes faster.
Of course the over-speculation on property ended up bursting and then the property owners were left with huge net losses, sometimes having taken out loans that were then deeper in debt than the value of the home, essentially giving the property negative worth. In such circumstances some just allowed the foreclosure to happen, because they were at a loss either way.
What caused this?
Well, banks obviously don’t like to have their loans defaulted on. For this reason there’s the whole credit rating process and credit scores and checks on a person’s finances when they apply for a big loan. If you have bad credit, lack a credit history or the bank does not believe you have the income to pay them back then you are either denied a loan or you end up with crappy terms – high interest rates, fees etc. This is because they know you’re a big risk and the only way to keep big risks from destroying them is to charge them more as a kind of insurance policy.
In the 1990’s there was a movement that “Everyone should be able to own their home.” Credit rating was cast as discrimination. People who are just starting out, who have low incomes and so on end up with a hard time getting a loan and bad loan terms. Rich people get good loans, as the bank is pretty sure they can be paid back. You can throw in the race card on this one.
Because of this, the government instituted a series of policies designed to undermine the rating system and to encourage a lot of lending in the sub-prime sector. Probably the worst one was the Affordable Housing Tax Credit which basically encouraged extremly high risk lending practices. Also, since subprime financing is known to be high risk, there were some reforms instituted that allowed for the financing to be passed on in the form of bonds while not explicitly saying the level of the loans. Effectively, bonds that were so high risk nobody would want them suddenly looked like standard securities of relatively safety.
Anyway, this, as you might expect, lead to a lot of lending. Suddenly anyone could get just about any sized loan whether or not they could pay it back. As the government intended, home sales went up. This increased realestate prices and with loans so easy to get people started taking out huge loans to buy properties they could not afford in the hopes of reselling them at a higher price and walking away with a profit. Speculation went crazy.
The ridiculous thing is that it became very apparent that it was a bubble and people started talking about the burst long before it happened. This did not stop speculation. People bought and sold property knowing it was a bubble and thus selling it quickly. They knew it would burst and they were just wagering that they would not be the one holding the time bomb when it exploded. So they passed it back and forth, making a profit on each exchange.
This whole thing has been cast in a certain light that is not really acurate. It wasn’t really the companies making unwise investments. The whole process was undermined by regulatory changes. The auto makers also, despite what everyone says DID NOT end up in trouble because they don’t make a good or popular product. The US auto makers are at a HUGE disadvantage due to the UAW having them by the balls, but despite this by the early 2000’s, US auto markers were doing very well and had some very strong brands and good sales. Sales took a small slump, but they should have been able to make it through that without a crisis. What killed them was the credit collapse. Auto makers have a bit stake in the credit and finance markets because most cars are financed. In GM’s case, GMAC, their financial services and lending wing has been one of their fastest growing units. When the markets fell apart, the companies found that much of the equity they needed to make loans had been in bonds that were devalued. They ended up with some of their secondary financers falling apart.
Add to this the mounting debt of the government does not help the situation. It’s just another example of undermining the monetary system and confidence in the dollar. Without major change there is enormous inflation on the horizon and everyone in the finance markets knows it.
The sad thing is that the current policies are not addressing these issues and can end up making them worse. The government has been encouraging MORE lending and has put out “mortgage and debt relief” to try to keep up the subprime insanity. This is horrible. The market needs to get back on its feet by reducing lending that carries a lot of risk. There can’t continue to be so much debt floating around without equal equity in the system. If people end up in a bad credit situation, where they need to file for bankruptcy or if companies end up losing a lot of money because of this then that’s not necessarily a bad thing in the long run. Burning your fingers is how you learn your damn lesson!
What we need are the polar opposite of what is being done now. What is happening is, in my opinion, worse than doing nothing, it’s pouring gasoline on the fire. Left alone the fire would burn itself out. Pouring water on it would help. We’re doing neither. We’re assuring it won’t go out by giving it fuel.
So… I’m very concerned about this whole thing.
On the bright side, anyone who says the US does not matter or that the United States is not the player in the world that it used to be has in a way been proven wrong. We’re so important to the world’s finance markets that when we committed financial suicide we ended dragging the entire global economy down the tubes with us. (Although there were other international financial problems brewing, the US did manage to drag everyone down.)
Quote Comment
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:55 pm
drbuzz0:
That’s basically what I was trying to get at. I’ve seen idealists who failed, hobbyists who are able to keep going with a second source of income and think this means it’s “sustainable”, and people who essentially do it as a sideline to stay in touch with their farming past. Ironically, the most successful organic growers tend to be big corporations with savvy marketing departments and a large conventional line to cover their bottom line.
The thing that really gets me about this is when people make the argument that there’s anti-organic propaganda from the big agribusinesses afraid of losing their “monopoly”. Forgiving that the big agribusinesses do not have a monopoly, this is very much like the alt med arguments against Big Pharma — it rightly points out one side’s big financial stake while utterly ignoring that the other side has a financial stake too. “Organic” food is marketable, and has become big business in some areas. Grocers can jack up the price (if they’re willing to put up with the annoyance of pointlessly segregating the organic produce).
sustainme
I missed this the first time I read your post, sustainme. You contradict yourself. You acknowledge that you read the study, and apparently have no complaints about its content besides not addresing some areas. Yet “less nutrition” was definitely addressed. In fact, that was the *point* of the study. The study found that the nutritional content is identical.
Next time you make stuff up to criticize a study, try to make it less obvious, ‘kay?
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August 3rd, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Ironically I had a phone call today from someone that wants me to do a pre-audit on an organic snack food company before they are inspected for certification under the new Canadian Organic Product Regulations and the US-Canada Organic Equivalent Agreement for export.
I told them the sort of team I would have to put together and how much it was going to cost them. They will be getting back to me they say.
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August 3rd, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Soylent said:
Why was monetary policy so loose? Because the loss of manufacturing had resorted them to run a debt-based Ponzi scheme to create a false impression of prosperity…
Soylent said:
I guess I’m using the European definition of “right-wing” (= “Social Darwinist”), while you are using the American definition (= “small government”).
Soylent said:
Yes, there’s a lot of unnecessary regulation, but dumping such regulation won’t stop companies using 10-cents-per-hour workers from underselling you.
Also, isn’t China’s ability to undersell everyone else in large part due to dirty tricks by the Chinese government which make the renminbi artificially weak? How would libertarians counter that kind of chicanery?
Soylent said:
True, we need to keep our technology up-to-date to optimize our productivity. But this won’t help as far as Western jobs are concerned, because free movement of capital means that the Third World’s cheap labourers now get to use the same machinery as the Western workers.
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August 3rd, 2009 at 2:36 pm