I too have been disappointed in the ‘true colors’ shown by those who have attacked the FSA study using bad logic, bad science and/or unsubstantiated accusations of bias or conspiracy. Poor form.

But I’m expecting the eventual truth will favor organics. I mean, its a fact that the heavy chemical input kill off microbes and fungi, yes? And its a fact that the fungi are responsible for breaking down rock into constituent and plant-available minerals. So is there any reasonable doubt that a healthy, living soil produces more nutritious food?

Time will tell, ball’s in the organic movement’s court.

Maybe it’s true that mature permaculture food forests would not support the current world population, which may be, ecologically speaking, too large. However, I agree that “what would do much better would be the small home garden or allotment.” Intelligence-dense attention to small areas have supported dense populations in the past in both Asia and Mesoamerica; and we know more now.

For example, in “The Power of Duck” a Japanese farmer experiments in a conventional rice paddy, first with organic methods requiring expensive inputs, then with stacking functions and yields by adding ducks and fish, with amazing results, verified by university researchers. The author then travels to China to compare his practices with the age-old methods of traditional peasants, and finds them far less labor-efficient…

This may be going a bit aside from the present discussion; but my hope is that a culture of intelligent land management with a population tending smallholdings which present continuous challenges to their minds, hearts and bodies (rather than working out in gyms!) would be the healthiest.

“…but kindly grant me also that claims by the chemical industry for higher nutritional content are also too often unsubstantiated.” I dont think Ive ever seen a claim that non-organic food has higher nutrition. But I think the line between “industrial/corporate” marketing and “organic/natural/holistic” marketing”, and the corporate sponsors of each, is increasingly blurred. You can see this very clearly in alternative medicine. In general, though, Big Business is slightly more sophisticated at manipulating data than the “alternative” corporate sector. Neither should be confused with the workings of real science.

Much as i would love to visit the Mayan cocao growers, my personal air miles policy would prohibit it. My point still holds: Green and Blacks chocolate (I just consumed a half-bar to get the theobromine levels up! I love it!) is an expensive middle-class consumer item, containing minimum 15% sugar; and the high embodied energy of long-distance shipping. Good for individual cacao growers maybe in the short term; little to do with nutrition or local self-reliance and sustainability as far as i can see.

“Industrial agriculture has badly degraded nearly every ecosystem it has encountered while consuming roughly 20 percent of world energy production”

It is agriculture per se that is doing this; if we speculate that a fully mature permaculture system (NB: Organic farming as currently practiced has very little in common with food forests) would do better, IMO it wont support the current world’s population.

“Chemical agriculture requires an unsustainable commitment to ever-greater energy use, declining EROI, peak phosphorus, the nitrate-greenhouse connection, and whatever the next shoe to fall, so, despite heroic measures of chemical and genetic manipulation, agronomist sentiment is tilting against the reductionism that characterized the “scientific agriculture” of the past century. That is not an anti-science statement, but you have to take a peck at hubris whenever you see it.”

The evidence does not bare this up Albert. Chemical agriculture may in fact reduce fossil-fuel inputs and improve efficiency; and uses less land, which means more for the birds and the bees. The issue is over-population and total human impact; not organic vs conventional.

Again, these are issues for agriculture in general, not just “chemical” farming; I agree that the elephant in the room is peak oil, but this will be just as much an issue for organics as for “conventional”- the real issue as we all know is over-population, which many would argue is a result of agriculture in general. I have never thought “organic” equated with “sustainable”; this is clearly not the case. Many organic farms may use more fossil fuels than the “chemical” farms you denigrate.

Here is what Trewavas concludes:

“Uhlin (1999) estimated that fuel represented 26% of the energy use in conventional farming; fertiliser production only accounted for 14%. Putting the Bertillson figures (for fertiliser and transport) with those of Leake (2000a) on fossil fuel use on farms and Uhlin (1999) estimates of energy use, the efficiency of conversion of fossil fuel use into seed energy can be estimated. From Table 2, the figures for organic in kWh/ tonne of yield of wheat are organic 200, integrated 132, conventional 140. The latter two forms of farming are on this basis more efficient in their conversion of energy into product. There are several caveats in the figures above. Leake (2000a) used 180 kgN/ha for wheat production (Table 2). Other farmers may use more or less N, dependent on manure input. Leake however states his ARTICLE IN PRESS A. Trewavas / Crop Protection 23 (2004) 757–781 773 organic yields are substantially higher than the average UK organic yield. Bertillson (1992) assumed that intensive farming only uses 100 kgN/ha. Thus I have programmed in a worst case scenario for conventional farming. Secondly I have not included any energy considerations for the mining and transport of phosphate rock or transport or packaging of minerals to organic farms. Taking account of these considerations places integrated no-till as about 2 times as energy efficient as organic farming and conventional farming about the same.”

While some may see the hand of MOSSAD in these figures, I have no problem accepting them having read the review. What would do much better however would be the small home garden or allotment- whether “organic” or not.

Nor does there appear to be good evidence that soil structure is necessarily better on organic farms- it may very well be worse because organic farms often need to till more often.

There is really no evidence that I can see that shows merely applying Organic standards, or even just avoiding “chemicals” will either protect the soil more or reduce fossil fuel inputs. (Chemical farmers can just as easily add manure etc as organic ones.)The opposite could equally be true- the point is again, it is the specific management practices, not the mode of farming per se.

Science doesnt operate in absolutes , but in probabilities based on the nest available evidence; therefore we can say with a high degree of certainty that:

Whoops. A little non-sequitur there. Best available evidence and high degree of certainty do not equate. The probability advantage can be quite small, and often is.

you continue:

a)claims by the organic industry for higher nutritional content in organic foods are not evidence- based; and are often plucked out of thin air (for example a locally made film on organics claimed them to have “4 times” the nutritional of conventional veg);

granted, but kindly grant me also that claims by the chemical industry for higher nutritional content are also too often unsubstantiated. No-one to blame. That is what the ad biz is about. Likewise industry lobby groups with beltway think tanks and endowed labs in Universities, maybe even a CIA/MI5/Mossad/Saudi connection, who knows? And, lest we forget, chemical exposure does put meat on the table for Big Pharma. Lots of suspects in the parlor.

b)there is no reason to think organic food is likely to have higher nutritional benefit

nor to think the contrary. But I still wouldn’t be quite so absolute. This discussion is hardly a literature review.

c)the organic lobby is not very interested in evidence, and has a low degree of scientific literacy;

Sorry, have to respectfully disagree with the characterization. I know a lot of soil scientists. Many are organic food consumers, even advocates, and quite a few are recent converts. I don’t see any that go the other way. I seriously doubt the scientific literacy for the organic side is any dumber than on the chemical side. Consider phthalate esters, for instance.

Getting the third world to give over valuable land to grow cash crops like cacao for the affluent middle-class sections of the rich world raises a whole other set of controversial issues- and I say that as an inveterate coffee drinker! Either way, it doesnt seem to have a whole lot to do with promoting health or nutrition, considering the high sugar content.

That statement is theobromine-starved. No worries, we’ll just have to bring you to meet some Mayan cacao growers. Cacao is not sweet, it is bitter. The medicinal properties have been well known for three thousand years, and probably considerably longer, given its Amazon origins. The bitterness was moderated with maize, chili, vanilla, peanut butter, honey, and sometimes fresh blood. The reason it found a way to the Olde World had little to do with sweets and more to do with the caffeine-like buzz of the cacahuatl, which the Europeans couldn’t get enough of. Bitter was the usual cocoa drink until the first chocolate shop opened in London in 1657. Sugar plantations and the industrial revolution had begat the sweet chocolate you and I know and love.

However, both your comments seem to miss what I think is the most interesting aspect of the whole subject- chemical farming may actually be better for the soil than organics, because of low-till regimes. The Trewavas review found this to be likely, and found generally soil quality to be also effected much more by general management practices than by organic or otherwise.

This may be getting a bit too labored, but there is a body of credible science on many aspects of organics, even a growing body of good studies on organic no-till now.

In 1943 Howard published An Agricultural Testament, which described his theories of building compost piles, recycling waste materials, and creating soil humus as a “living bridge” between soil life, such as mycorrhizae and bacteria, and healthy crops, livestock, and people. At the heart of his work is the idea that soils, nutritious crops, and organisms in general are not just arrays of minerals, but are parts of a complex ecology of cycling organic matter, and these life-supporting cycles are critical for a self-regenerative agriculture, of the type described in other societies by F.H. King, etc.

Howard became embroiled in a mid-20th-century conflict. On one side were disciples of chemists such as Carl Sprengel (1787-1859) and Justus von Liebig (1803-1873), who promoted the Law of the Minimum, a mechanical approach arguing that plant growth is boosted by adding the scarcest, or limiting, mineral. Big Ag: roll out the NPK. This soon became a widely accepted agronomic principle and the basis for the Green Revolution, which didn’t work in Africa because there were no healthy soils left to exploit. On the other side were the organic advocates, who adhered to Howard’s Law of Return, which states that crop health depends on maintaining soil ecology, done by returning to the soil not just the minerals lost in farming, but also the organic matter that supports the nutrient cycles of soil life. Howard’s position was, in the words of biologist Janine Benyus, that it is life that best creates the conditions conducive to life.

Industrial agriculture has badly degraded nearly every ecosystem it has encountered while consuming roughly 20 percent of world energy production, and obviously that can’t last, so I think these minor disagreements are moot, in any event. Chemical agriculture requires an unsustainable commitment to ever-greater energy use, declining EROI, peak phosphorus, the nitrate-greenhouse connection, and whatever the next shoe to fall, so, despite heroic measures of chemical and genetic manipulation, agronomist sentiment is tilting against the reductionism that characterized the “scientific agriculture” of the past century. That is not an anti-science statement, but you have to take a peck at hubris whenever you see it.

Last week Tom Vilsack, former Iowa governor, and Big Ag promoter, made a personal appearance at the North American Biochar Conference to endorse biochar as a soil amendment, water conservation tool and GHG-sink. He is Secretary of Agriculture and in Obama’s cabinet.

Today agricultural colleges are working much more closely with soil science laboratories and soil scientists are taking the time to look more closely at traditional methods such as the terra preta dark earths of the Amazon, the milpa and chinampa systems that pre-existed European contact with the Americas, and the return-loop systems described by King as practiced in Asia for 4000 years. Whatever direction agriculture takes now, even putting aside nutritional claims, we need to consider the role of energy cost, soil, carbon, conservation of water, and caloric efficiency in ways we have not had to give much thought to before — and chemistry plays a role. The alternative is not early famine but later one because of the continued degradation of ecosystem services and conversion of one-off resources to unrecoverable waste. The ecosystems that support us cannot afford another 10,000 years of that, they are purty near broke as it is.

In my humble opinion.

More than this even, the point is, if there was any significant difference it would surely have shown up in the extensive review, without the need for further study- which would be, of course, always welcome. Nonetheless, it is obvious at this stage, as already stated, that other factors- eating more greens etc- are orders of magnitude more important than eating organic per se, even if there does turn out to be a marginal benefit in some foods. Getting the third world to give over valuable land to grow cash crops like cacao for the affluent middle-class sections of the rich world raises a whole other set of controversial issues- and I say that as an inveterate coffee drinker! Either way, it doesnt seem to have a whole lot to do with promoting health or nutrition, considering the high sugar content. However, both your comments seem to miss what I think is the most interesting aspect of the whole subject- chemical farming may actually be better for the soil than organics, because of low-till regimes. The Trewavas review found this to be likely, and found generally soil quality to be also effected much more by general management practices than by organic or otherwise.

p>Okay, Graham, I went back upstream to the Holford Watch report and also looked at comments by Rodale Institute and others and confess my previous post was hasty and too off the hip, instead of considered. But I would not have gone so far as to make a blanket statement like “there is no evidence organic food in general contains more nutrients.” FSA cited 162 studies that are in evidence, but had to be excluded from consideration because they lacked one or more of the following criteria:

• a clear definition, in the Introduction or Methods section of the paper, of the organic production methods of the crop or livestock product analysed (including the name of any certifying body)
• specification of the cultivar of crop, or breed of livestock
• a statement of which nutrient(s) and other substance(s) were assessed for content
• a description of the laboratory analytical methods used to test for the content of the named nutrients and other substances
• a statement of the statistical methods used for data analysis.

What this seems to suggest is not that there is no nutritional advantage (in either direction) but that better work still needs to be done.

The price premium paid for organic food probably could not be justified on a consumer health basis, in any event, for all the reasons you’ve cited. It might, nonetheless, be justified for what it has done to benefit soils and land use practices, and I’d go so far as to say Green and Black’s initiative to build an organic cacao industry in Belize is a good case in point.

As Holford Watch (linked to above) explain:

“The report clearly states that the differences were not statistically significant for Beta-carotenes or proteins. The differences for zinc and flavonoids only hold if you were to include all of the included studies and comparisons, regardless of their quality[c] but were not relevant if the reader is only interested in the results from studies that are of ’satisfactory quality’.[d]

Consider the Beta-carotenes example. Accepting even the non-significant difference figure for all of the included studies would be the equivalent of selecting one carrot from a barn that is filled with organic carrots of different cultivars, grown in different countries, in different soils, with different growing methods, of different stages of maturity, analysing that and then claiming that the nutrient profile for that carrot is true for that of all other carrots that you deem to be comparable.

For the zinc and flavonoids example, consider this. Drawing a retirement pension is strongly associated with mortality, based on reports from all sources, including newspaper articles. However, neglecting to mention that retirement pensions are normally drawn by people aged 60 or more and that older people do die would be foolish for many reasons. Most readers would realise that perhaps the association doesn’t hold once age is taken into account and perhaps it would be more relevant, in this instance, to assign credibility to figures and interpretations from appropriate sources such as the Office of National Statistics.”

The Daily Mail at least certainly did not neglect to copy the false reports of the SA that those nutrients were found to be higher in organic food- that is not the case; the “previous work” you allude to simply was not of good quality, but even if we accept it, the differences found were insignificant.

So the message is- eat your greens- and stick to the science.

Organic Food is not All That- Chicago Sun Times, 30 Jul 09 No Added Nutritional Benefit From Organic Food- U.S. News & World Report, 1 Aug 09

News media from around the world have been misrepresenting the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s recent research review.

No Evidence‚ Organic Foods More Nutritious- National Business Review, 3 Aug 09 Organic Food: Just a Superstition- American Daily, 2 Aug 09

The NHSTM study reported that organic foods tested in previous work were superior in measurements of beta-carotene, flavonoids, phenolic compounds, protein, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, sulfur and zinc, all of which are required for complete nutrition.

Mainstream media missed this fact, instead running misleading headlines that confused the public. Is that a function of “frames of reference” or knee-jerk rejection of a hard science look at chemo-vs-organic? It seems that there is just as much an organophobia as there is chemophobia at work here.

I am shocked by current reports of so many young people (under 50) getting cancer, the epidemic of child autism, and even early-onset alzheimers, which was unheard of when I was young in the 80s. I think this is due to the “chemical soup” we are forced to live in, which is so complex, direct correlations to such disorders can’t be proved. Except perhaps by process of elimination –literally: detoxification protocols have been known to cure many chronic illnesses and even autism. I know this by experience, having cleared heavy metal poisoning from my personal “polluted stream” to my immense relief.

Good science is dependent far more on the intentions and prejudices of the experimenter, than on any given set of measurements. It is a discipline which aims at objectivity, but that very objectivity inevitably exists within a frame of reference. So being alert to such frames of reference, being open-minded, is of the essence, keeping in mind that each conclusion reached must be provisional and temporary –what we know so far.

Always good to keep asking questions and to challenge any orthodox thinking, however hip, cool and trendy it appears: especially then. So we retain our receptivity to new ideas and connections, to what’s really out there. Thus permaculture’s emphasis on continuous observations of effects is one of my favorite lessons.