Organic Food

[Guest guest]

Dear Herbalists,

This is an excellent article to print out and show to those who are

being persuaded by the Media that Organic Food is not safe.....Best

Wishes Penny

 

Refuting The Media Lies About The Dangers Of Organic Food

By Donella H. Meadows

The Global Citizen 3-9-00

5-30-00

 

 

The strangest news items about organic food have been popping up. It

isn't

good for you after all. It's full of bacteria and insect parts. You

folks

who

pay a high price for it are not only suckers, you're risking your

health.

AB

C's John Stossel recently interviewed Dennis Avery, " a leading critic of

 

organic produce, " who said organic foods are grown with (oh no, tell me

it's

not true!) manure. As we all know, manure is " infested with bacteria. "

Furthermore, organic farmers " waste land and resources because they lose

so

much of their crop to weeds and insects. " Before I get into

speculating

about why anyone would want to be a " leading critic of organic produce, "

 

let

me quickly dispose of his claims. All kinds of crops, organic or not,

are

raised with manure. Any farmer in his right mind who can get hold of

manure

to put on his land does so, because it's a cheap, long-lasting

fertilizer.

Not only does it provide nutrients, it helps soil hold moisture and

gives

it

a better texture for plant roots -- which fertilizer from bags doesn't

do.

 

Vital nutrients have been cycling through soil, plants, animals, manure,

 

and

back to the soil for eons. Farmers have been riding that cycle since

farming

began. As a farmer I have had regular contact with chicken, sheep, cow

and

horse manure for decades, and I live to tell the tale. Anyone with the

wit

to

wash hands and veggies need have no fear of manure. Pesticides are

harder

to

wash off, especially when plants are genetically engineered to produce

them

in every cell. Give me a choice between meeting up with an honest cow

patty

or some malathion, and there's no doubt which I'd pick. Organic

farmers

do

not lose more to pests or weeds than other farmers. They do not get

lower

yields, though Dennis Avery (who was in the Agriculture Department under

 

Reagan, who now works at the right-wing Hudson Institute) constantly

claims

otherwise. Both chemical-using and organic farmers on average lose 30

percent

of their output to pests or weeds. The loss rates are similar because

pesticide users typically grow monocultures, miles of the same crop year

 

after year, a sure recipe for breeding that crop's pests. Pesticides

beat

back the enhanced pest populations to roughly where they would be if

crops

were interplanted and rotated -- which is to say, if they were grown the

 

way

organic farmers grow them. Pesticides don't reduce crop loss, they just

permit monocultures. Monocultures lend themselves to mechanization and

industrialization. We like to think they reduce costs, but we do not

count

the costs of spraying poisons across the land or eating their residues

in

our

food. It's because our foods are increasingly mechanized,

industrialized,

engineered, poisoned and irradiated that organic foods are becoming

popular.

At present there are 6,600 certified organic farms in the United States,

 

large and small, north and south, growing everything from grain to

grapes.

There are also many uncertified organic farms; only 31 states have

certification programs. Altogether consumers buy about $6 billion worth

of

organic food each year, about one percent of the U.S. food budget.

Doesn't

sound like enough of a threat to mount a publicity campaign against it.

But

the organic food market has been growing at 20 percent per year in

America,

faster than that in Europe and Japan. British supermarkets comb the

world

for

organic produce. Sainsbury's, a major U.K. grocery chain, has approached

 

the

governments of two Caribbean nations, Grenada and St. Lucia, to plant

hundreds of acres of organic bananas, mangoes, coconut, and passion

fruit,

to

be shipped exclusively to its stores. I have walked in a Central

American

banana plantation, where there was no visible living thing other than

people

and bananas. I was cautioned not to touch the plants, not to pick up

fallen

fruit, to wash myself and my clothes thoroughly upon leaving, because of

 

powerful sprays that were used on a weekly basis. This is the produce

that

Dennis Avery wants us to regard as healthy. I guess that the recent

spurt

of negative campaigning against the word " organic " stems not only from

worry

about the rapid growth of the U.S. organic market, and not only from

fear

that British enthusiasm for organic foods might spread our direction,

but

also because of the release of our first national organic standard.

After

ten

years of planning, this set of rules for organic certification was

announced

on March 7 and will go into effect later this year. (You can read it at

www.ams.usda.gov/nop /. ) A national standard will provide a label

that,

if

the USDA does its job, consumers can trust. No, I'm not sure the USDA

will

do

its job. It took a huge protest from farmers and consumers to head off

its

plan to allow bioengineered crops and crops fertilized with sewage

sludge

to

be labeled " organic. " I'm happy with strict, well-administered state

standards like the ones we farm under in New Hampshire and Vermont. But

if

we

want our organic farmers to have a national or export market, we need a

national standard. By the way, the new standard does not allow fresh

manure

to be applied to any food crop within 90 days before harvest. So don't

listen

to the public relations campaign against organic food. It's all just a

load

of you-know-what. _____ Donella Meadows is an adjunct professor at

Dartmouth College and director of the Sustainability Institute in

Hartland,

Vermont. Sustainability Institute P.O. Box 174 Hartland Four Corners

VT

05049 603-646-1233