Battle in Print: Nature knows best? - the organic food debate

Rob Lyons, 3 October 2006

Organic farming is an irrational system of agriculture. It imposes upon itself a set of rules which reduce productivity while producing none of the claimed benefits in terms of environmental improvement, nutrition or safety. It is, literally, a waste of time.

Yet organic food appears to be increasingly popular with consumers. According to a YouGov poll conducted for Sainsbury’s, around one in three shoppers expect to buy organic food over the next month (Guardian 31.8.2006). Mintel estimate the organic food market in the UK to be worth £1.2billion per year, roughly double what it was five or six years ago (BBC News 22.12.2005).

Before anyone gets over-excited, this growth is from a base of almost zero. According to the same Mintel report, organic still only accounts for about one per cent of overall food and drink sales in the UK. Only 3.4 per cent of the UK’s total agricultural land is farmed organically (Soil Association 2006a). While a number of the big supermarkets have gone overboard on organic products, the hype about organic food seems to outstrip the degree to which people are actually prepared to part with cash for it. Even this increase should not be taken as a sign that organic food is twice as popular as before. How many of those extra sales are the product of people finding that their local supermarket has sold out of the cheaper, non-organic products and being forced to buy what is left?

The main reasons given for buying organic are health and the environment. People believe that organic food is more nutritious and less dangerous than ‘conventional’ foods. They also believe that somehow organic food is better for the environment. These assumptions are worth analysing.

The most oft-quoted reason for buying organic is pesticide residues. In the UK, the Pesticides Residues Committee is tasked with ongoing monitoring of residue levels. In about 70 per cent of samples of non-organic food, no residues were found at all. In almost all other cases the residues were below the maximum permitted levels. These levels are, in turn, tiny – usually expressed in parts per million, and of no known threat to human health. The golden rule, ‘it’s the dose that makes the poison’, suggests such minuscule quantities of chemicals will not harm us.

It is also worth bearing in mind that consumers are exposed to naturally-occurring pesticides and other carcinogens in food regardless of whether it is organic or not. To quote Sir John Krebs, the former head of the Food Standards Agency, ‘A cup of coffee contains natural carcinogens equal to at least a year’s worth of carcinogenic synthetic residues in the diet’ (Krebs 2002).

So where would people get the idea that pesticides are dangerous? Statements like this from the Soil Association’s website don’t help:

Along with chemical weapons, chemicals used in farming are the only substances that are deliberately released into the environment designed to kill living things. They pose unique hazards to human health and the environment (Cook 2004).

Juxtaposing pesticides (known deaths from residues: zero) with chemical weapons is pure propaganda, particularly when the ‘unique hazards’ are never specified. Perhaps they are ‘uniquely vague’.

Elsewhere, the Soil Association (2006b) states:

Around 31,000 tonnes of chemicals are used in farming in the UK each year to kill weeds, insects and other pests that attack crops. There is surprisingly little control over how these chemicals are used in the non-organic sector and in what quantities or combinations. What we do know is that 150 of the available 350 pesticides commonly used have been identified as potentially [my emphasis] causing cancer and many of us would have been exposed to these pesticides before we were born.

Again, the idea is floated that chemicals used in farming are deadly, without concrete evidence backing up such claims – because there isn’t any. Force-feeding lab rats large quantities of chemicals to the point where cancer rates increase does not imply that absolutely tiny quantities of chemicals will have the same effect. The amounts really are small: those 31,000 tonnes amounts to about 0.7grams per square metre, per year, across Britain’s approximately 4.5 million hectares of arable farmland. To put it into perspective, the next time you use a domestic weed-killing spray, remember that each squirt is about three years worth of pesticides on the average square metre of British farmland. Farmers are stereotypically tight-fisted – they apply their sprays judiciously.

Another reason for going organic is to protect the environment and wildlife. Yet organic farming is much less productive than ‘conventional’ farming. As a result, to produce the same amount of food would require putting more land under cultivation. On the basis that our approach to the countryside should prioritise wildlife, it would make more sense to set aside land to grow wild. But surely the purpose of farming is to grow food, not nurture birds and bugs?

The other big scare put about by the Soil Association and popularised by food writers and celebrity chefs is that industrialised food is bad and organic food is our saviour. So, conventionally-grown is less nutritious than organic food and modern techniques are inherently bad: BSE and foot-and-mouth are proof of the dangers of intensive farming. The language used is also carefully chosen, with the use of ‘intensive’ being particularly pejorative, encouraging the view that ordinary farmers suck the last vestiges of fertility from the soil – something that is clearly far from the truth if one looks at ever-increasing farm yields.

In fact, the most comprehensive review on the subject found that there was no consistent evidence that organic was more nutritious than conventional food. Having mentioned nitrate content, pesticide residues and dry matter, the authors conclude:

With regard to all other desirable nutritional values, it was either the case that no major differences were observed in physico-chemical analyses between the products from different production forms or contradictory findings did not permit any clear statements (Woese et al 1997).

Differences related to freshness, variety and preparation are far more important than whether something was grown under organic rules or not. Britain has plenty of food. As a nation, if we have a problem it is over-nutrition, not malnutrition.

The precise arguments of the Soil Association and other organic food groups are actually neither here nor there because no one is really holding them to account. Ultimately, the temper of our times is that anything processed or industrialised is seen as adulterated and harmful while anything that appears to be natural or close to nature is regarded as pure and uncorrupted. The precise facts about residues, nutrition or environmental impact are rarely discussed.

The organic movement would have us believe that modern farming is destructive. The fact that conventional farming techniques have meant the end of any kind of food shortage in the UK is simply ignored.

The ‘don’t mess with nature’ approach is best illustrated by the organic movement’s approach to genetic modification. Rather than embracing GM as opening up the possibility of far greater control over the properties of plants, it is rejected as dangerous interference with all sorts of unknown potential problems. GM crops have the potential to allow greater productivity, reduced use of pesticides and increase nutrition, particularly in regions where vitamin A deficiency is a problem. The organic movement prefers to smear GM crops as the work of malevolent agribusiness trying to create monopolies.

Even if it were found that a particular GM crop did not live up to expectations, or that there were unexpected problems associated with it, that would not be a cause to dismiss the whole technology out of hand. Any process involving experimentation and new techniques will have problems along the way. The most logical approach would be to learn from our mistakes in order to continue improvements. If the entire world were well-fed and food was as cheap as it could be, the discussion might be academic. But when a large proportion of the world’s population is still undernourished, society must constantly explore ways to grow more, better, food.

If the organic movement took a critical but constructive approach to modern farming, I might have more sympathy for it. After all, the best way forward in any sphere is to bring a wide range of different points of view to bear on a problem. Instead, the organic movement wants to freeze agriculture in a time warp without rhyme or reason.

Perhaps society could go further and seek out other social rules that impose pointless restrictions on the way we live. Anyone for Old Order Amish?

Rob Lyons is deputy editor, spiked

 References

BBC News (22.12.2005). British organic food sales soar. BBC News website.

Cook, A. (2004) What’s your poison?: The Soil Association guide to pesticide residues in popular food. Soil Association

Guardian (31.8.2006). One in three buying organic food. The Guardian.

Krebs, J. (2002). Review of “Naturally Dangerous: Surprising Facts about Food, Health, and the Environment” by James P. Collman. Nature 415: 117.

Soil Association (2006a). Organic food: facts and figures 2006. Soil Association Information Sheet. 11 August 2006.

Soil Association (2006b). Pesticides in your food. Soil Association Policy Document. 11 August 2006.

Woese K., D. Lange, C. Boess & K. Werner Böel (1997). ‘A comparison of organically and conventionally grown foods: results of a review of the relevant literature’. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 74: 281-293.

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