August hasn’t been a happy month the for the Monsanto public-relations team. No, I’m not referring to my posts on how Gaza and Mexico don’t need the company’s high-tech seeds—the ones it will supposedly be “feeding the world” with in the not-so-distant future.

Monsanto’s real PR headache involves one of its flagship products very much in the here and now: the herbicide Roundup (chemical name: glyphosate), upon which Monsanto has built a highly profitable empire of “Roundup Ready” genetically modified seeds.

The problem goes beyond the “superweed” phenomenon that I’ve written about recently: the fact that farmers are using so much Roundup, on so much acreage, that weeds are developing resistance to it, forcing farmers to resort to highly toxic “pesticide cocktails.”

What Roundup is doing aboveground may be a stroll through the meadow compared to its effect below. According to USDA scientist Robert Kremer, who spoke at a conference last week, Roundup may also be damaging soil—a sobering thought, given that it’s applied to hundreds of millions of acres of prime farmland in the United States and South America. Here’s a Reuters account of Kremer’s presentation:

The heavy use of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide appears to be causing harmful changes in soil and potentially hindering yields of the genetically modified crops that farmers are cultivating, a US government scientist said on Friday. Repeated use of the chemical glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup herbicide, impacts the root structure of plants, and 15 years of research indicates that the chemical could be causing fungal root disease, said Bob Kremer, a microbiologist with the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.

Now, Kremer has been raising these concerns for a couple of years now—and as Tom Laskaway showed in this 2010 Grist article, the USDA has been downplaying them for just as long. Laskaway asked Kremer’s boss at the Agricultural Research Service, Michael Shannon, to comment on Kremer’s research. According to Laskaway, Shannon “admitted that Kremer’s results are valid, but said that the danger they represent pales in comparison to the superweed threat.”

So let’s get this straight: The head of the USDA’s crop-research service agrees that Roundup damages soil and thinks the superweed problem is even more troublesome. In the face of these two menaces, you might expect the USDA to intervene to curtail Roundup use. But Shannon meant his statement as a rationale for ignoring Kremer’s work. Meanwhile, the USDA keeps approving new Roundup Ready crops—ensuring that the herbicide’s domain over US farmland will expand dramatically.

Kremer commented on his employer’s reception of his work in a Reuters article last year:

“This could be something quite big. We might be setting up a huge problem,” said Kremer, who expressed alarm that regulators were not paying enough attention to the potential risks from biotechnology on the farm, including his own research…”Science is not being considered in policy setting and deregulation,” said Kremer. “This research is important. We need to be vigilant.”

Meanwhile, at a conference in Boulder, Colorado, in early August, another mainstream ag expert raised serious concerns about the poison, according to an account in Boulder Weekly. Iowa-based consultant Michael McNeill, who has a Ph.D. in quantitative genetics and plant pathology from Iowa State University, advises large-scale corn and soy farmers on weed control and soil fertility. He’s observing trends in the field that are consistent with Kremer’s research. Here’s Boulder Weekly:

McNeill explains that glyphosate is a chelating agent, which means it clamps onto molecules that are valuable to a plant, like iron, calcium, manganese, and zinc.…The farmers’ increased use of Roundup is actually harming their crops, according to McNeill, because it is killing micronutrients in the soil that they need, a development that has been documented in several scientific papers by the nation’s leading experts in the field. For example, he says, harmful fungi and parasites like fusarium, phytopthora and pythium are on the rise as a result of the poison, while beneficial fungi and other organisms that help plants reduce minerals to a usable state are on the decline. He explains that the overuse of glyphosate means that oxidizing agents are on the rise, creating oxides that plants can’t use, leading to lower yields and higher susceptibility to disease.

According to McNeill, problems with Roundup aren’t limited to the soil—they also extend to Roundup Ready crops and the animals that eat them.

McNeill says he and his colleagues are seeing a higher incidence of infertility and early-term abortion in cattle and hogs that are fed on GMO crops. He adds that poultry fed on the suspect crops have been exhibiting reduced fertility rates.

McNeill made an interesting comparison to the Boulder Weekly reporter: “Just as DDT was initially hailed as a miracle pesticide and later banned, researchers are beginning to discover serious problems with glyphosate.”

Well, the EPA has been in the process of reviewing glyphosate’s registration since July 2009, but I’ve seen no evidence that the agency has the fortitude to challenge Monsanto and its multibillion-dollar empire. Just last week, Kremer told Reuters that neither the EPA nor the USDA has shown interest in further exploring his research. Maybe Monsanto’s PR team doesn’t have much to worry about, after all.

Tom Philpott is the food and ag blogger for Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. To follow him on Twitter, click here. Get Tom Philpott’s RSS feed.

Reposted from Mother Jones.

While speaking up for policy reform, individuals can help provide market demand for climate-friendly foods by following the principles of a climate-friendly diet, writes Anna Lappé.

New Forest Farm is nestled in the Kickapoo Valley 130 kilometers west of Madison, Wisconsin. In the summer of 2008, the state—and much of the US Midwest—was deluged with unseasonal downpours, and large tracts of farmland were flooded. The heavy rains and flooding caused $15 billion in damages and left 24 people dead across the Midwest. Wisconsin declared a state of emergency. Yet on a visit just weeks after the rainstorms had swept the region, Mark Shepard of New Forest Farm does not seem beaten down at all.

Shepard is lounging on the porch of his newly constructed cider mill, powered by solar panels and a soon-to-be built windmill. His farm is bursting with life: undulating fields of bush cherries, Siberian peas, apricots, cherries, kiwis, autumn olives, mulberries, blueberries, rosehips and asparagus, hickory nuts and oak, apples and chestnuts, and more. He escaped devastation from the deluge, he says, not by luck but by savvy farming.

It is a kind of farming that created these resilient fields and that puts Shepard at the heart of a movement scattered from the verdant valleys of the US Midwest to South Korea, from the foothills of the Himalaya to the plains of southern Brazil. It goes by many names, but it is fundamentally about following agro-ecological principles. Shepard and like-minded farmers around the world are proving that a sustainable and abundant food system need not rely on fossil fuels. They are also showing how these climate-friendlier farms can help the world adapt to the climate crisis at the same time. Extreme weather events like the floods that swamped Wisconsin are only going to be more common as the climate destabilises because of ever-greater greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, including those from the food and agriculture sector.

The climate crisis and its main drivers generally conjure up images of dirty coal-fired power plants or fuel-guzzling sports utility vehicles. Yet the food industry and agribusiness are among the biggest contributors to climate change. In many developing countries without significant heavy industry, agriculture is in fact the most important source of greenhouse-gas emissions, largely because of its role in deforestation.

Farming, especially industrial-scale production of livestock on factory farms, is among the biggest drivers of deforestation. As forests are cleared, the trees release enormous amounts of carbon into the atmosphere along with other greenhouse gases, including methane and nitrous oxide. The loss of forests contributes more than 17% of human-made emissions of carbon dioxide. Globally, livestock production accounts for 18% of global emissions, according to the United Nations. New Zealand’s ruminant livestock animals produce 85% of that country’s emissions of methane—a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide.

Greenhouse-gas emissions from food occur at every step in the food chain: farming, processing, packaging, transportation, wholesale/retail, food service, household consumption and waste. Account for all the direct and indirect emissions—including land-use changes, the production of farm chemicals and synthetic fertiliser, and fossil fuel energy use throughout the supply chain—and the food system is responsible for as much as one-third of global GHG emissions. These emissions can largely be traced back to a radical remaking of agriculture and food systems in the twentieth century, first in the industrial world and then in developing countries.

But it does not have to be this way. Innovative farmers like Mark Shepard are showing the potential of sustainable farms to feed the world while not depleting its finite resources like fossil fuels and not exacerbating the climate crisis. Sustainable farmers use a variety of techniques and innovations to protect against weeds and pests and to boost soil fertility without relying on fossil fuels or synthetic pesticides. Some of these techniques include using cover crops, crop rotations and beneficial insects. Farmers like Shepard are also beginning to generate their own energy—in his case, through wind turbines and solar panels. Small-scale methane digesters can also convert animal waste into usable energy.

Sustainable farming techniques build healthy soil, which benefits plant health and climate stability. In side-by-side field trials over 30 years, the US-based Rodale Institute found that corn and soybeans raised with organic techniques stored more carbon in the soil year after year. In a review of these field trials, Cornell University professor David Pimentel found that the organic farming methods produced the same yields of corn and soybeans as did industrial farming, but they used 30% less energy, less water and no synthetic pesticides. Based on these lessons, former Rodale Institute chief executive officer Timothy LaSalle estimates that if 434 million acres [nearly 176 million hectares] of cropland in the United States shifted to organic production, nearly 1.6 billion tons [1.45 billion tonnes] of carbon dioxide could be sequestered annually, “mitigating close to one quarter of the country’s total fossil-fuel emissions.”

These findings, and similar results from research around the world, are remarkable, for they point to the potential of agriculture to help mitigate climate change. Furthermore, research shows that sustainable farms are also better able to withstand the climate instability triggered by the greenhouse effect. At Rodale, researchers found that the organic test fields did better during dry years, “thanks to improved water-holding capacity of the extra soil organic matter,” says LaSalle.

On a global scale, the shift away from petrochemicals in the food supply need not threaten food productivity. In one meta-study of yields from organic and industrial farms around the world, researchers from the University of Michigan found that introducing agro-ecological approaches in developing countries led to two to four times greater yields. Estimating the impact on global food supply if all production shifted to organic farming, the authors found an average yield increase for every single food category they investigated.

In one of the largest studies of how agro-ecological practices affect productivity in the developing world, researchers at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom reviewed 286 projects in 57 countries, mostly in Africa. Of the 12.6 million farmers who were transitioning to sustainable agriculture, the researchers found an average yield increase of 79% on farms. A 2008 UN Conference on Trade and Development and UN Environment Programme report concluded that “organic agriculture can be more conducive to food security in Africa than most conventional production systems, and … is more likely to be sustainable in the long term.”

In the most comprehensive analysis of world agriculture to date, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) found that “reliance on resource-extractive industrial agriculture is risky and unsustainable, particularly in the face of worsening climate, energy and water crises,” according to Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, a lead author of the report.

The IAASTD study, the University of Essex findings, the Rodale Institute’s conclusions and Mark Shepard’s abundant fields all point in one direction: If we are to continue to feed the planet — and feed it well — in the face of global climate chaos, we should be radically rethinking the industrial food system. We can start with what is on our plates.

We can make food choices in line with a climate-friendly diet. We can choose to eat foods from sustainable farms, reduce consumption of highly processed foods, and cut back — or cut out — meat and dairy that comes from factory farms. We can also reach for local and regionally grown foods. (Even though transportation-related emissions are a relatively small segment of the overall impact of most food items, choosing to support regional farmers is an important part of building a resilient, biodiverse food system.)

But it is important not to stop there. At least for now, climate-friendly choices are unavailable in most communities, largely because agricultural policies in the United States and elsewhere have been providing incentives for industrial production for decades — at the cost of sustainable producers. US industrial livestock producers receive billions of dollars in direct payments etched into the Farm Bill, the multi-billion-dollar policy that governs food and farming. From 1995 to 2006, the Farm Bill legislation paid nearly $3 billion in direct subsidies to large-scale livestock producers.

Livestock producers benefit from the US Farm Bill in indirect ways, too. Between 2003 and 2005, corn producers received $17.6 billion in subsidies, and soybean producers another $2 billion. Because feed costs usually account for 60% or more of the total cost of production for most factory farm operators, policies that enable grain and soy prices to fall below the cost of production are a boon to processors and retailers. And since 67% of US corn and nearly all of the soybean meal are used for domestic or overseas livestock or fish feed, these commodity subsidies could also be seen as livestock industry subsidies.

In total, these federal subsidies saved the factory livestock sector an estimated $35 billion between 1997 and 2005, according to researchers at Tufts University. Livestock industry lobbyists also succeeded in getting payments from the Farm Bill’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) for concentrated animal feeding operations, even though the programme was designed to help small-scale farmers reduce pollution. By 2007, factory farms were receiving as much as $125 million a year from this programme alone.

These are just some of the “perverse” farm policies that are providing incentives to further a food system that is contributing to the climate crisis. But the Farm Bill could instead encourage a shift away from fossil-fuel-dependent agriculture and toward an agricultural system that is part of mitigating the climate crisis. It could, for instance, provide:

• farmer education to facilitate the transition from chemical agriculture to organic farming;

• broader incentives for farmers who make the transition and financial support to subsidize the costs of organic certification (in 2009, the EQIP Organic Initiative set aside more than $35 million in assistance for certified and transitioning organic farmers);

• incentives and support for all farmers to build healthier, carbon-rich soil matter and to reduce the use of synthetic fertiliser;

• greater enforcement of environmental regulations for emissions-intensive factory farming and commodity crop production; and

• research dollars to explore how to reduce on-farm greenhouse-gas emissions (currently only 2.6% of the US Department of Agriculture’s research budget goes toward organic approaches).

The Farm Bill could also expand its programs that encourage consumption of fruits and vegetables and local foods instead of highly processed products. The WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program, for example, operates in 45 states and provides up to $30 a year in vouchers to low-income children and to pregnant and post-partum women for redemption at farmers’ markets. Reaching 2.2 million people, this programme could be significantly expanded, fueling greater consumption of climate-friendly foods and fueling regional food systems.

These are just a few of the policy changes that could help shift the food system. While speaking up for policy reform, individuals can help provide market demand for climate-friendly foods by following the principles of a climate-friendly diet.

Yes, we cannot change the world just by buying organically grown apples from the neighborhood farmers’ market, but it’s a start.

Anna Lappé is a co-founder of the Small Planet Fund and author of Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It.

This extract is from the Worldwatch Institute’s State of the World 2011: Innovations That Nourish the Planet. The full report is available from Earthscan (non-US readers) and Worldwatch (US readers). State of the World 2011: Innovations That Nourish the Planet © Copyright 2011, Worldwatch Institute

(NaturalNews) The state of our environment has gotten so bad, that if you’re paying attention and have a bone of compassion in your body, it’s more than a little disturbing. A lump of trash is floating in the water near the North Pole twice the size of France; it’s about 33 feet deep. Landfills around the world are overloaded. “First world” trash is shipped to “third world” countries and people living near the dump sites are getting sick. Even our healthy foods have become nutrient deplete because of improperly cared for soils, and all while literally millions of pounds of pesticides are dumped onto the land daily.

In light of the obvious problems, and the reluctance for real change from a top down approach, a lot of people have started wondering what they, individually, can do about these problems that seem larger than any one of us. Fortunately, there are a couple of solutions that, in their own ways, address many of the problems above.

One of those answers is composting, or turning your kitchen and yard waste into nutrient-rich soil. Composting is a fun project, and it’s one of the most environmentally friendly things you can do.

Composting works on environmental problems on a number of levels.

The truth is: if you eat a fresh fruit and vegetable oriented diet, recycle all you can, and compost all you can, there really isn’t much left to send to the landfill. If you’re already recycling, and simply start composting, many families can reduce the amount of trash leaving the house by half or more.

By composting instead of sending the waste to the landfill, you’re actively reducing the amounts of greenhouse gasses created in the landfill, and the compost itself pulls the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide out of the air.

It’s estimated that a fifth acre garden with compost tilled into the top 8 inches of soil can remove 19,000 pounds of carbon from the atmosphere. That offsets about one and a half years of an average American’s carbon emissions.

When your compost has finished, you can use it to fertilize your yard – and end the use of store bought or chemical fertilizers. This makes your yard (and the air around your home) safer for you and your family, while feeding optimal nutrition to the Earth and creating an optimal growing environment. It’s said that well composted soil helps with every growing problem, including pests and drainage.

Once your soil has been brought to life with your nutrient-dense compost, you might be encouraged to plant a few fruit trees, vegetables, or herb bushes to regularly provide fresh pesticide-free foods for your family in a sustainable manner.

While composting isn’t the whole answer, it’s a great start in the right direction. Another big improvement is to simply avoid plastics whenever possible. Plastics, particularly plastic bags, aren’t easily recyclable. In fact, each grocery store plastic bag costs only 1 cent to make, but far more to recycle. That’s why so many of them are floating up near the North Pole.

How to Compost

For the uninitiated, composting might seem overwhelming, but once you know the basics, it’s simple. Here’s a quick run down on the basics of composting.

One of the most important things is that you need about 1/3 greens to 2/3 browns for it to be successful. But, what does this mean? Generally speaking, greens are from your kitchen and anything green from your yard. Brown is anything brown from your yard (including dried grass and leaves), and can also include cardboard, paper towels, and newspaper. Waste from a cat or dog should not be added to the pile.

If you don’t have enough browns your nitrogen balance will be off and you’ll know this because your compost will start to smell, which is undesirable. The green brown ratio doesn’t need to be exact, but keep in mind that you’ll need more browns than greens. And if it starts to smell, just add more browns, mix it up, and it should become fine.

All fruit and vegetable waste is fair game for composting, but don’t use processed foods, dairy, egg, or meat remains; they’ll rot (in a bad way) or attract animals. Egg shells are fine. They add calcium, but if you use them, rinse and crush them; they take a while to decompose. If you want to speed your results, cut up your kitchen remains before adding them to your compost pile.

You’ll need an area of your yard for composting or a compost bin. You can buy a professional bin, or make one with a container you already have. Either way, the size should be in line with the amount you’ll be composting. It should be kept in a warm place that ideally is a little away from your house.

Once your bin or composting area is all set up, just toss everything in and mix it up. Then toss in some dirt to give it the microbes needed to start the decomposition process. Then add a layer of browns to the top, which will trap the heat inside and discourage pests.

Your compost should be a little damp, but not soaked which can lead to fungal growth. Your compost should also have access to air, as opposed to being sealed. You can and should “turn” or stir your compost somewhat regularly, at least every week or two. Turning your compost will give it air and speed the process along. After turning it or adding more greens, add a light layer of browns to the top.

The length of time it’ll take to decompose depends on a couple of factors, including the temperature of the compost, the size of the pieces, how often you turn it, the size of the compost, and more. Depending on these factors, it can take anywhere from a month to several months to completely decompose.

Some people keep two bins going simultaneously. One can be added to on a continual basis while the other is left to compost without new materials being added. When the fully composted material is finished and used, a new batch is started, and the pile that was previously the “add to” pile becomes the pile that just sits to compost.

Keep in mind, there are many different approaches to composting out there. The above is the down and dirty for the beginning composter, and should be enough to get you started.

More:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/5208645/Drowning-in-plastic-The-Great-Pacific-Garbage-Patch-is-twice-the-size-of-France.html
http://www.epa.gov/oppbead1/pestsales/01pestsales/historical_data2001_3.htm
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/2006-10-01/Compost-Made-Easy.aspx
http://www.foodshare.net/garden13.htm

Reposted from NaturalNews.

But this message may be too simplistic. Over the past decade, scientists have begun conducting sophisticated comparisons of foods grown in organic and conventional farming systems. They’re finding that not all apples (or tomatoes, kiwis, or milk) are equal, especially when in comes to nutrient and pesticide levels. How farmers grow their crops affects, sometimes dramatically, not only how nutritious food is, but also how safe it is to eat. It may well be that a federal food policy that fails to acknowledge the connection between what happens on the farm and the healthfulness of foods is enough to make a nation sick.

The Results Are In

In the late 1990s, researcher Anne-Marie Mayer looked at data gathered by the British government from the 1930s to the 1980s on the mineral contents of 20 raw fruits and vegetables. She found that levels of calcium, magnesium, copper, and sodium in vegetables, and of magnesium, iron, copper, and potassium in fruit had dropped significantly.

The 50-year period of Mayer’s study coincides with the post World War II escalation of synthetic nitrogen and pesticide use on farms. These agri-chemicals allowed farmers to bypass the methods of maintaining soil fertility by replenishing soil organic matter with cover crops, manure, and compost, and of controlling pests with crop rotation and inter-cropping. Reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides became a defining characteristic of conventional farming, while farmers who eschewed the use of agri-chemicals came to be considered organic.

In 2004, Donald R. Davis, a research associate with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, published a similar analysis of data collected by the USDA in 1950 and again in 1999 on the levels of 13 nutrients in more than 40 food crops. Davis found that while seven nutrients showed no significant changes, protein declined by six percent; phosphorous, iron, and calcium declined between nine percent and 16 percent; ascorbic acid (a precursor of Vitamin C) declined 15 percent; and riboflavin declined 38 percent. Breeding for characteristics like yield, rapid growth, and storage life at the expense of taste and quality were likely contributing to the decline, Davis hypothesized. The “dilution effect,” whereby fertilization practices cause harvest weight and dry matter to increase more rapidly than nutrient accumulation can occur, probably also played a role, Davis suggested.

Meanwhile, researchers at the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania were seeing a trade-off between use of synthetic fertilizers and food nutrient values in the Institute’s Farming System Trial.

“We looked at the major and minor nutrients of oat leaves and seeds, grown after 22 years of differentiation under conventional and organic systems,” says Paul Hepperly, research and training manager at the Institute. “We found a direct correlation between the increase of organic matter and the amount of individual minerals in the oat leaves and seeds. The increase in minerals ranged from about seven percent for potassium, up to 74 percent for boron. On average, it was between 20 and 25 percent for all the elements we looked at, and we looked at nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, iron, manganese, copper, boron, and zinc. The production practices used on these oats was completely the same the year they were planted – the plots varied only by the legacy of what had happened to the soil as a result of the previous farming practices. This showed how dramatic the soil change had been and its effect on the nutrient content of the plant. We’ve done these tests not only on oats but also on wheat, corn, soybeans, tomatoes, peppers, and carrots, and we consistently find that the organic heritage improves soil and improves the mineral content of the food products.”

Probably due in part to a fertilizer effect, and partly because the use of chemical pesticides dampens the mobilization of a plant’s own defenses, conventionally grown whole foods also often have lower levels of antioxidants and other beneficial phytochemicals than the same foods grown organically.

Charles Benbrook, chief scientist at the Organic Center and former executive director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences, maintains a database of all the studies published since 1980 that compare the nutrient levels of organic and conventional foods. His analysis of food comparison studies shows that, on average, conventionally grown fruits and vegetables have 30 percent fewer antioxidants than their organically grown counterparts. This makes enough of a difference, says Benbrook, that “consumption of organic produce will increase average daily antioxidant intake by about as much as an additional serving of most fruits and vegetables.”

The public health implications of farming methods that restore food nutrient density are tantalizing. Several studies released in 2007 suggest that moving US agriculture toward organic practices could help to reduce the incidence of some of our nation’s most debilitating and costly chronic diseases.

At the University of California at Davis, researchers compared organic and conventional tomatoes. They found that 10-year mean levels of quercetin were 79 percent higher in organic tomatoes than in conventional tomatoes, and levels of kaempferol were 97 percent higher. Quercetin and kaempferol are flavonoids, which epidemiological studies suggest offer protection from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other age-related diseases.

A study led by Lukas Rist, head of research at the Paracelsus Hospital in Switzerland, demonstrated how farm practices affect health even several levels up the food chain. Rist analyzed milk samples from 312 breastfeeding mothers. He found that mothers consuming at least 90 percent of their dairy and meat from organic sources have 36 percent higher levels of rumenic acid in their breast milk than mothers eating conventional dairy and meat. Rumenic acid is one of a group of compounds that nutritional research suggests have anti-carcinogenic, anti-diabetic, and immune-modulating effects, and that favorably influence body fat composition.

Hay Belly Nation

Eager as we are to connect the dots between specific nutrients and specific health benefits, we’re still a long way from being able to understand or predict the effect of raising or lowering nutrient levels in one food or another. As Michael Pollan writes in his new book In Defense of Food, “Even the simplest food is a hopelessly complicated thing to analyze, a virtual wilderness of chemical compounds, many of which exist in intricate and dynamic relation to one another, and all of which together are in the process of changing from one state to another.”

Long-term human feeding trials are notoriously difficult to control, and, though epidemiological studies show a correlation between eating fruits and vegetables and decreased incidence of disease, these studies don’t identify which compounds in the food correspond with which health effects.

But even granting the many gaps in our knowledge of nutrient and health interactions, reducing the nutrient density of our whole foods seems a poor public health gamble. Americans already have trouble consuming the recommended daily amounts of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Diminishing the nutrient levels in the servings we do eat would seem to only compound our dietary problems.

Doctors don’t see many patients walk into their clinics with obvious deficiency-related illnesses like scurvy, says Dr. Alan Greene, attending physician at Stanford University’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. But doctors are, he says, seeing a lot of suboptimal intake of nutrients. “For instance, a huge percentage of the population doesn’t get its recommended levels of calcium. Pregnant adult women should be getting 1,000 milligrams of calcium. By the time a healthy baby is born, the baby will have about 30,000 milligrams of calcium in its body, and all of that has to come from mom’s diet or mom’s body. The average mom is only getting about 700 milligrams a day during pregnancy, so that gap is mostly coming out of her bones, and is related to the osteoporosis we’re seeing later.”

Greene encourages patients to include fresh produce in their diets and to eat organic as much as possible. “I’ll talk about how fruits and vegetables are really important, and that when you choose organic you’re getting more of the great stuff, less of the bad stuff.”

Unfortunately (or fortunately for those of us who like to eat), we haven’t yet been able to design nutrient supplements that provide the same benefits as eating whole foods. “In all well-designed dietary intervention trials, where a carefully monitored amount of nutrients – vitamin C, vitamin E, antioxidants, etc. – were delivered to the animals or people in the form of fresh whole foods versus the same levels in the form of supplements, the animals or people who ate the whole foods universally responded better and were healthier,” says Benbrook of the Organic Center.

Ironically, less nutrient dense foods may be partly why we’re eating more and more. Phytochemicals contribute to the satisfaction we derive from foods. Some contribute to foods’ flavor profiles, while others, like resveratrol, help trigger satiety. It could even be that the second helping is an instinctive attempt to secure sufficient micronutrients.

“In cattle and animals, this is known as hay belly,” says Hepperly at the Rodale Institute. “If your hay gets rained on, you wind up with very low-quality hay because the water leaches out all the nutrients. You’ll see animals eating more of this hay than they normally would. They get these big bellies, and they’re unhealthy, but they’re just trying to get their nutrients. Ranchers know that if they have animals with hay belly, they have poor quality food. What we’ve done with the erosion of nutrient content in our foods – what we’ve done with additives, processing, and artificial production methods – is that we have basically produced a hay belly nation.”

Pesticides for Breakfast

The toxicity of many of the chemical pesticides used by conventional farmers is of little dispute. Indeed, the EPA’s pesticide registration process is based upon identifying a level of exposure that is acutely toxic to lab animals, then working backwards to identify an exposure level that the EPA feels poses an acceptable threat to human and environmental health.

As our understanding of the body’s biochemistry advances, however, EPA-sanctioned levels of pesticide exposure are becoming harder to swallow.

Caroline Cox is the research director for the Center for Environmental Health based in Oakland, California. One of her favorite examples of the complex interactions of pesticides comes from a study undertaken by Texas Tech University researchers.

“The researchers were looking at possible hormonal effects of the herbicide Roundup, and they looked at the production of male sex hormones,” Cox says. “Before a sex hormone can be made, cholesterol has to be carried by a special ‘dump-truck’ molecule from the blood vessel to the place in the cell where the hormone is synthesized. What the researchers found was that one of the ingredients in Roundup interferes with the production of that dump-truck carrier molecule. You’d have trouble dreaming up something so complicated. It’s no wonder that it has taken us decades to identify effects like that.”

Cox and other toxicology experts disagree that “the dose makes the poison,” the rationale underlying the EPA approach to regulating pesticides. It may be that there is no safe dose for many of the pesticides we are regularly exposed to.

“If you think of pesticide use starting right around World War II, since that time science has progressed and researchers have gotten more and more sophisticated in the kinds of science that they can do,” she says. “And what they are doing is identifying effects of pesticides at lower and lower exposure levels. For example, there are studies on amphibians that find effects from atrazine [used to control weeds in almost two-thirds of all US corn and sorghum acreage] at the tenth of a part per billion level, which is such a tiny amount that it is almost impossible to grasp just how small an amount that is. … What they found was this condition called intersex in the frogs, meaning that the frogs had both male and female sex organs.”

A glance at the data gathered for the USDA Pesticide Data Program reveals that even at breakfast we consume several servings of pesticides. In 2005, 88 percent of apples, 92 percent of milk samples, 52 percent of orange juice samples, 67 percent of wheat samples, and 75 percent of water samples were contaminated with pesticides ranging from herbicides to post-harvest fungicides. None of these pesticides we eat for breakfast gets a clean bill of health. The EPA lists some as probable carcinogens, and others as affecting reproductive and nervous systems.

Exactly how each of us tolerates daily low doses of pesticides will vary according to our genetic heritage, the other industrial toxins we’re exposed to, our health, and our age. The very youngest and oldest of us will probably suffer the most damage from pesticide exposure. “At particular moments of development, the immune and neurological systems of infants are profoundly vulnerable to exposure to chemicals,” says Benbrook at the Organic Center. “And in the case of the elderly, their livers don’t work as well at detoxifying chemicals as they did in the middle part of their lives.”

Logically, the more often we can eat food grown without pesticides, the fewer pesticides we’ll consume. The connection between food choices and pesticide consumption was demonstrated in a 2006 study led by Chensheng Lu of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. Lu measured the metabolites of organophosphorus pesticides in children’s urine as the children alternated between eating conventional and organic diets for five days at a stretch. Results of the study showed that metabolites of two organophosphorus pesticides commonly used in agriculture decreased to nondetectable levels when the children’s diets were switched to organic and quickly escalated to detectable levels when the children returned to their normal conventional diets.

Daily doses of pesticides are particularly unappetizing given the existence of a highly productive model of farming that doesn’t need these toxic chemicals. “If you could give me a magic wand and I could make any changes that I want, I would have the EPA researching, developing, and helping farmers implement sustainable agricultural processes so they don’t need pesticides,” Cox says. “There are better ways to manage pests. Organic is a great example that it can be done.”

200,000 Farmers NeededCox’s wish hints at what official acknowledgement of the interaction between farming practices and the healthfulness of our food could mean. As a country, we’re stuck in the mode of regulating and mitigating the negative effects of conventional farming.We could instead be spending our time and resources expanding and improving upon the organic model of food production and removing the structural barriers that limit regular access to organic food to a geographic and economic elite.

“Organic will be five to eight percent of the US food economy in the next couple of years,” says Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF). “But to go from five percent to 40 is another story. That will involve policy work and institutional change.”

For starters, the nation’s agricultural colleges will need to develop the capacity to train more organic farmers. “Organic systems are more complex and biologically intricate compared to a conventional agri-chemical based production system,” says Hepperly of the Rodale Institute. “Right now, the official number of organic farmers is approaching 20,000 in the United States. If we were going to have 30 percent of US agriculture in organic, we’d have to have 200,000 organic farmers. We’re talking an enormous ramp-up in our education system.”

For that to happen, Congressional action is sorely needed to redirect the Farm Bill away from status quo conventional farming and toward farm and food healthfulness.

“Overall, the USDA has been spending about $2 billion per year on research, extension, education, economics and statistics. Less than one percent is specifically directed at the needs of organic production, processing, and marketing,” Mark Lipson of OFRF testified before the newly formed House Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture in April 2007.

The list of structural barriers goes on. Because there isn’t good pricing data for organic crops, organic growers pay a five percent penalty surcharge on crop insurance. When organic growers incur an insured loss, they are repaid at conventional crop prices even though conventional prices are usually far lower than organic prices.

Many regions lack the distribution infrastructure even to supply organic farmers with compost. “Organic is highly geocentric,” says Steve Diver, who worked for 18 years for the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA). “The organic infrastructure sucks to hell for most of the heartland of the country.” In California, Diver says, farmers can pick up the phone and order whatever soil amendments they need, in whatever quantities, from a local dealer who will deliver the goods right to the farm. But in many parts of the South, five to six farmers have to band together, order a 22-ton semi-truck load from out of state, then off-load the product into their own vehicles and truck it home.

Organic meat producers lack access to slaughterhouses. “You can’t sell meat unless it’s been slaughtered by USDA packing houses, and these slaughterhouses are mostly at CAFOs [concentrated animal feeding operations],” says Scowcroft. CAFO slaughterhouses generally won’t deal with the smaller numbers of animals that most organic meat producers are slaughtering at any one time. Even when they do, the CAFO slaughterhouse has to first be steam-cleaned and sterilized before animals can be slaughtered there for the meat to still qualify as certified organic. “And even then,” says Scowcroft, “there are a lot of chemicals used in the sterilization and the cleaning process, so what you really need are dedicated certified organic slaughter rooms.”

You Can Ask, But They Won’t TellTry to get guidance from the federal government on the potential health benefits of eating organic, and you’ll find your questions quickly and politely deflected. The US Department of Health and Human Services will defer to its Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA spokespeople will say that “organic” is a term used by the USDA, not the FDA, and that the FDA has no policy on organics. The USDA will say that its mandate does not extend to passing judgment on the relative safety and nutritional benefits of organic versus conventional foods, and that the USDA’s task is simply to regulate use of the “certified organic” label.With that passing of the apple, the federal government excuses itself from exploring whether conventional farming practices compromise the nutritional benefits of whole foods, and whether modern organic farming offers a model of food production that conveys significant health benefits. It’s anyone’s guess how many more studies will be needed before the relative merits of foods produced in different farming systems can become a topic of discussion among federal food and health officials. Agri-chemical companies led by Monsanto will certainly use their considerable influence to delay that day as long as possible.

In the meantime, we will keep eating – but we need to ask just how well?

Deborah Rich raises olives and two children in Monterey County, California, and frequently writes about the interaction of human nature and nature for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Reprinted from the Spring 2008 issue of Earth Island Journal available by membership.

Click here to view the embedded video.

WASHINGTON/LONDON/NAIROBI/DELHI – 15^th April 2008. The way the world grows its food will have to change radically to better serve the poor and hungry if the world is to cope with a growing population and climate change while avoiding social breakdown and environmental collapse. That is the message from the report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, a major new report by over 400 scientists which is launched today.

The assessment was considered by 64 governments at an intergovernmental plenary in Johannesburg last week.

The authors’ brief was to examine hunger, poverty, the environment and equity together. Professor Robert Watson Director of IAASTD said those on the margins are ill-served by the present system: “The incentives for science to address the issues that matter to the poor are weak… the poorest developing countries are net losers under most trade liberalization scenarios.”

Modern agriculture has brought significant increases in food production. But the benefits have been spread unevenly and have come at an increasingly intolerable price, paid by small-scale farmers, workers, rural communities and the environment.

It says the willingness of many people to tackle the basics of combining production, social and environmental goals is marred by “contentious political and economic stances”. One of the IAASTD co-chairs, Dr Hans Herren, explains: “Specifically, this refers to the many OECD member countries who are deeply opposed to any changes in trade regimes or subsidy systems. Without reforms here many poorer countries will have a very hard time… ”

The report has assessed that the way to meet the challenges lies in putting in place institutional, economic and legal frameworks that combine productivity with the protection and conservation of natural resources like soils, water, forests, and biodiversity while meeting production needs.

In many countries, it says, food is taken for granted, and farmers and farm workers are in many cases poorly rewarded for acting as stewards of almost a third of the Earth’s land. Investment directed toward securing the public interest in agricultural science, education and training and extension to farmers has decreased at a time when it is most needed.

The authors have assessed evidence across a wide range of knowledge that is rarely brought together. They conclude we have little time to lose if we are to change course. Continuing with current trends would exhaust our resources and put our children’s future in jeopardy.

Professor Bob Watson, Director of IAASTD said: “To argue, as we do, that continuing to focus on production alone will undermine our agricultural capital and leave us with an increasingly degraded and divided planet is to reiterate an old message. But it is a message that has not always had resonance in some parts of the world. If those with power are now willing to hear it, then we may hope for more equitable policies that do take the interests of the poor into account.”

Professor Judi Wakhungu, said “We must cooperate now, because no single institution, no single nation, no single region, can tackle this issue alone. The time is now.”

For more information visit GreenFacts.

The threat to human health is of a more fundamental kind than is the threat to the world’s economic system, says Professor McMichael, a Professor of public health from the Australian National University. “Climate change is beginning to damage our natural life-support system,” he says.

The risks to health are many, and include the impact of heat waves, floods and wildfires, changes in infectious disease patterns, the effect of worsening food yields and loss of livelihoods.

The World Health Organisation estimates that a quarter of the world’s disease burden is due to the contamination of air, water, soil and food – particularly from respiratory infections and diarrhoeal disease.

Climate change, says Professor McMichael, will make these and other diseases worse. While it is unlikely to cause entirely new diseases it will alter the incidence, range and seasonality of many existing health disorders. So, for example, by 2080 between 20 and 70 million more people could be living in malarial regions due to climate change.

The adverse health impacts will be much greater in low-income countries and vulnerable sub-populations than in richer nations.

Professor McMichael says:

“Poverty cannot be eliminated while environmental degradation exacerbates malnutrition, disease and injury. Food supplies need continuing soil fertility, climatic stability, freshwater supplies and ecological support (such as pollination). Infectious diseases cannot be stabilised in circumstances of climatic instability, refugee flows and impoverishment.”

The relationship between the environment and health is complex. For example, as India modernises it expects the health of its population to improve, yet industrialisation also means a rapidly increased level of coal-burning and greater global emissions. This in turn leads to climate change, the impact of which is felt most by vulnerable populations.

Professor McMichael concludes that the global changes we are seeing now are unprecedented in their scale, and healthcare systems should develop strategies to deal with the resulting growing burden of disease and injury. More bold and far-sighted policy decisions need to be taken at national and international level to arrest the process and health professionals “have both the opportunity and responsibility to contribute to resolving this momentous issue.”

###