Myth 7: Organic could be an option for feeding the world and saving the environment

Humanity is facing a daunting problem.  It is projected that human population will rise from the current ~6 Billion to ~9 Billion by 2050 or so.  At that point, population growth may have leveled off, but only if standards of living and women's empowerment rises as it has in many developing nations over recent decades.  This means that we will not only need more food to feed the extra 3 Billion people, many people will also be eating better diets as they become more affluent and that will increase overall demand for agricultural production.   

For the last century, agricultural productivity has increased sufficiently to keep up with population growth, somewhat by farming more land, but mainly by increasing yield per unit area.  As described in myth 6, it is critical that we find ways to produce all this additional food without more farmed land.  There is an another challenge.  The population that will be facing this challenge will be getting older and older over time.  Already today most Western countries are below "replacement rate" meaning that populations are decreasing unless immigration is significant.  The countries of the world that have been blessed with the soils and climate to help feed the rest of the world are getting old rapidly (US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Eastern Europe, Western Europe...).  Most of the remaining population growth is in Africa and a few parts of Asia in places that will be very hard-pressed to grow nearly enough food for themselves.  It will be critically important to find more productive models for small-holder agriculture in the third world, but it will also be critical to continue to produce far more food in the intensive, large-scale agriculture of the developed world.  This also has to occur without creating an environmental disaster.  

Organic agriculture with its yield limitations, vulnerability to climate change, fertilizer problems and high labor requirements is not a viable option.  Much of the way that conventional farming is done today is also not an option.  What is needed is the most progressive, scientifically sound and economically viable forms of agriculture that we can pursue.  The challenge is huge, but it is not impossible to address.  The widespread myths about organic seem harmless enough unless they stand in the way of making the right consumer and policy decisions to do what has to be done.  That is my fear.  President Obama's family made the symbolic gesture of planting a garden at the White House.  That is great.  They chose to make it organic because they are normal city dwellers who have no perspective on agriculture.  I have tremendous respect for both Obama's, but they have accepted the same myth that is so wide-spread in our society.  In Obama's case this is actually dangerous because he and his advisors appear to be letting this myth influence their policy decisions.  Obama has said he will bring science back into the policy process and that is a welcome change after the last eight years.  Unfortunately, in this case the myth is trumping the science.

There is a way forward.  It is critical that we pursue it if we don't want to see either mass starvation or environmental degradation or both.  That way cannot be "organic" as currently (and almost immutably) defined.

Myth 6: Organic farming would be better to reduce global warming

Global climate change and agriculture have three distinct interactions.  The first is that climate change is already making farming more difficult in many areas and this trend is likely to accelerate. The second is that agriculture itself is a significant contributor to the problem generating 8-14% of the greenhouse gas emissions world-wide. Third, agriculture has the potential to be a significant part of the solution is done properly.  Organic production has disadvantages for all three issues, but this is rarely talked about.

As the climate changes, insect and disease problems shift.  Conventional farmers have many options to deal with these new challenges while the options for organic are very limited.  California's precipitation is shifting from winter snows to spring rains.  This means that diseases such as apple scab are increased.  This has been a major problem for organic apple growers and the California part of that industry is in decline.  Warming temperatures have allowed new apple and potato pests to successfully over-winter in the Pacific Northwest.  They will be very difficult to control for organic growers.   More problems with drought is one of the expected effects of climate change.  For the non-organic growers there have been some recent advances in drought tolerance through the application of biotechnology and with agents such as "Invinsa."  Biotech traits and Invinsa are not allowed in Organic.

Moving to the "carbon footprint" of agriculture itself, organic has some problems.  We have already discussed the methane problem (see Myth 3) that makes organic fertilization far worse than synthetic.  The single most important thing that farmers can do to help with climate change is to produce enough on the land already farmed to avoid the need for more and more farmland to feed the growing world population.  Starting to farm new land leads to a huge release of the carbon that had been sequestered in those soils (e.g. 17 metric tons/ha for Brazilian forrest, 10.2 T for grassland).  Organic production typically leads to lower yields/acre so if it were ever to be a significant part of our food system it would increase the pressure to farm more land.  Misleading statistics about the carbon footprint of Organic tend to be expressed on a per-acre basis rather than per unit if output.  It is entirely possible for the per acre footprint to be smaller but the per-bushel or per-ton footprint to be larger and thus drive things in the direction of needing more land to produce the same amount of food.  Because organic is so small, this land issue is not a significant problem today, but if organic were ever to be used at a significant scale, it would lead either to food shortages or more land use change.  

Finally, agriculture has a chance to play a very positive role with respect to climate change.  Plants do a great job of grabbing carbon dioxide out of the air through photosynthesis.  In a natural setting like a forrest or prairie a good deal of this carbon ends up "sequestered" in the soil in very long-lived forms of carbon that are now out of the equation for climate warming.   Traditional farming practices actually "mine" the carbon that was stored in the soil from whatever natural growth that existed before it was farmed.  The huge expansion of agriculture over the past centuries has released vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, rivaling the contribution from burning fossil fuels.  Fortunately, there is a relatively new way to farm that reverses this process.   The new approach is called "no-till" because the land is not plowed as it has been for centuries.  This was first tried back in the 1970s with the purpose of saving fuel for tractors and to prevent the wind and water erosion that tillage allows.  The seed is "drilled" through the residue of the previous crop that is simply left on the surface of the field.  Weeds are controlled not by mechanical destruction with plows, discs or harrows, but with chemical herbicides.  When land is farmed this way carbon builds up underground as in a natural system particularly if it is paired with the use of "cover crops" to continue feeding the soil when the crop has been harvested (to their credit, many organic farmers use cover crops).  There are many other advantages in terms of fuel use, farmer's time to manage the crop, erosion control and biodiversity both above and below ground.  Over time the no-till soils become better at capturing and retaining rainfall or irrigation.  In the same time-frame that organic went from zero to 2.5 million acres, this highly desirable no-till practice has gone from nothing to over 70MM acres of conventional farmland in the US.  Organic farmers cannot practice no-till because there are no suitable herbicides allowed under the rules.  There are attempts to develop an organic no-till, but it is not clear that they are practical.  Organic farming can lead to increases in soil carbon, but it requires in part the importation of carbon from other farmed land in the form of manure, compost etc.  At least on the large acreage crops (wheat, corn, soybeans, canola...) organic could not allow carbon sequestration at the scale that no-till and cover crops can.  If carbon trading develops as expected and "carbon offsets" are allowed (as most economists encourage), agriculture could shift to "farming carbon."  This could represent around 1/2 metric ton of carbon dioxide per year for every no-till acre and carbon dioxide could end up trading at $15-$30/ton.  There are hundreds of millions of acres where this practice could be used around the world, but not for organic.

There is one excellent practice that is more common in Organic today and it would be highly desirable for more conventional farmers to use it as well.  This is the planting of winter “cover crops” that extend the period each year when organic matter is being built-up in the soil.  That practice combined with no-till and very careful use of synthetic nitrogen is the way that agriculture can best help to counteract climate change.  

Myth 5: Organic food is more nutritious

A great many studies have been done to compare organic and non-organic food for nutrient levels and taste.  Some have shown no consistent differences and some have shown moderate differences either way.  There is certainly no clear-cut advantage either way. The marketers of Organic are quite selective in which studies they cite and they simply ignore all the studies that fail to say that organic is better.  

In fact, all fresh produce is highly variable in nutrient content and taste, and most Americans would do well simply to eat more of it from any source.  If someone eats less produce because they can only afford to buy smaller quantities of organic, then there is certainly no nutrition advantage.  

 There are a huge number of factors that effect the nutritional content of something like fresh produce.  A crop like wheat has a very different protein content depending on the weather.  Taste is similarly complex.  If you look at the foods that have become popular because of superior taste the explanations are diverse but not related to organic/not organic.   Pineapples have seen a large increase in per-capita consumptions in recent years because someone finally figured out how to successfully ship the new "golden" varieties that are so much better than the old "Cayenne" variety.  Breeding of hothouse tomatoes lead to the "Campari" and "Amorosa" varieties that are increasingly popular.  Breeding was also responsible for the many new apple varieties that are seeing increased consumption.  Another part of that phenomenon is the post-harvest product, "SmartFresh" that maintains the crunchiness of the fruit.   If any even slightly affluent family is malnourished in America today it is from poor food choices, not any deficiency in the options available - organic or not.

Myth 4: Organic food is not produced on "factory farms"

The image of Organic that is most often communicated is that it is produced on small and/or local farms.  Natural food chains such as Whole Foods actively promote this impression with pictures of example growers and with their story.  This is a very comforting image, but it is not accurate.  Yes, there are many small organic farms, but today the bulk of organic produce now comes from very large farming operations.  Some, like Earthbound Farms, were originally organic-only entities that were later bought by mainstream companies, in this case the very large vegetable grower/shipper, Tanimura & Antle.  Others are large, mainstream entities like Grimmway, Boscovitch or Stemilt that have developed organic subsets of their business.   This process started in the late 90s as the definition of  “USDA Organic” began to become clear prior to the issue of the “final rule” in 2002.  On a percentage basis, most of the Organic produce in stores today comes from operations of a scale that activists would normally call “factory farms.”  For the organic purist this would not be considered a good thing, but in fact the emotive term "factor farm" is itself misleading.  In fact these are progressive, efficient, highly professional farms for both their  “organic” and “conventional” output.  The term “Factory Farm” does not reflect anything accurate about the safety, quality or responsibility of the producer for either organic or non-organic food.   Each crop tends towards the size balance that makes the most economic sense for production and marketing.  We no longer live in a time when small grocers go to local terminal markets to find produce that has been collected from small growers by brokers.  Today the dominant grocery chains demand year-round supply commitments that can only be filled by farming companies that have both scale and geographic reach.    The same is true for organic in most cases.

Myth 3: Organic is better for the environment because it does not use synthetic fertilizers

In 1918, German scientist Fritz Haber received the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the new process by which a bit of the 80% nitrogen gas in the atmosphere is converted to forms of nitrogen that plants can use (by the way, whether the fertilizer is "synthetic" or "natural" it is converted to either nitrate or ammonia and these are the only forms of nitrogen that a plant can use).  A process called Haber-Bosch is still employed today to make fertilizer and this technology has enabled vast increases in agricultural production and much higher protein diets for much of humanity. The process is energy intensive as it takes about 1 lb of fossil carbon emissions to make every 1 lb of nitrogen for crops.  This is indeed one of the larger components of the energy and carbon “footprints” of the modern agricultural system, but the world could not be fed without it.  

A common claim for organic is that it avoids this greenhouse gas “footprint” by using legume crops and “natural” fertilizers based on animal manures and other animal by-products.  (“Conventional” agriculture also generates some of its nitrogen from rotations with legume crops, e.g the standard corn/soybean rotation of the American Midwest).  The problem is partly that there is only so much manure, but also that manure is a problematic fertilizer.  It tends to have more phosphate than needed relative to nitrogen so that the excess becomes a water pollution issue.  Manure also is a “slow release” form of nitrogen, which often means that nitrate (NO₃), a source of water pollution and a source for conversion to the very potent greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, (N₂O, 310X the warming potential of CO₂) continues to be released long past the time when the crop needs it.  But the real problem with manure as a fertilizer is methane (CH₄).  When manure is stored for later use on fields, even as well as it can be, 1-2% of the biomass in it is converted to the potent greenhouse gas, methane (21X the warming potential of CO₂).  When manure is composted to make it safe to use as a fertilizer on food crops (to eliminate E. coli, Salmonella etc) 2.7% of the biomass is converted to methane and a little of the nitrogen to nitrous oxide.  To put this in perspective, if steer manure is composted and then used as a nitrogen fertilizer on an organic crop, the “carbon footprint” of that fertilization is ~17 times as large as that for a crop fertilized with synthetic nitrogen.  The stored manure has 3-8 times the carbon footprint of synthetic nitrogen. For more details on this see this document:http://www.scribd.com/doc/17356325/Carbon-Footprint-of-Organic-Fertilizer 

This fact is not widely known as it is rare to measure the methane emissions from commercial-scale composting.  For instance, the city of San Francisco is encouraging separate recycling of food scraps which are composted to generate fertilizer for organic crops.  No one has looked to see if this process is generating methane, but it is very likely that it is.  The carbon in the methane is not "carbon neutral" because it started as carbon dioxide fixed by a plant, but it has now been emitted as a much more potent greenhouse gas.   

Judicious use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is the best option from a climate perspective.  Manure or compost would be better used as a fuel - by processing it in anaerobic digesters to generate clean, renewable energy.  In that case it is turned into methane intentionally, but the methane is burned and returns to the air as a carbon neutral carbon dioxide molecule.  Better yet, the energy from digesting the manure could be used to make ammonia from the air to generate a carbon-neutral synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.

Myth 2: Organic food is the fastest growing segment of the food supply

For decades we have been hearing about the "double digit" growth in the organic segment. The claim that it is the fastest growing food segment is also commonly made by proponents of organic.  This is a classic case of the misuse of statistics.  Consider this analogy.  If I start a new religion and in one year add one new convert, I could say that I have 100% growth in a year and thus the “fastest growing world religion” (on a percentage basis).  The situation with organic is similar - it is only "fast" on a percentage basis.  On an absolute basis it is actually growing very little.   Organic has indeed been growing at as much as 20%/year, but that was from such a small base that it is still very small.  The reality is that after more than 30 years of growth, the percentage of organic cropland in the US is 0.6% and the other 99.4% is "conventional" (US Census of Agriculture, 2007).  For pasture land the percentage is somewhat larger (2.4%).  What is remarkable about Organic is not how fast it is growing in real terms.  What is remarkable is how SMALL this segment is considering that it enjoys a substantial price premium, extensive marketing, wide-spread media and celebrity support, federal and state research support, and the implied government endorsement of “USDA Organic” certification.   Considering the “buzz” around Organic it is stunning how small it remains.  A good part of the explanation comes from the fact it is very difficult to produce economically viable crops in many regions under the restrictions of the Organic guidelines.  At its historical growth rate, Organic will still only represent a small percentage of US cropland in 2050.  The reason that this particular myth is dangerous is that it gives people the impression that it is possible for organic to become a significant answer to our food needs and environmental issues.  This can lead to naive policy choices or to a failure to grapple with how we should encourage the best environmental practices in agriculture as a whole.  It is unrealistic to believe that organic could get large enough to be a solution even if it were the best option (there are many reasons it is not a desirable direction).  Organic is a niche and will remain so.

 

Myth 1: Organic crops are grown without the use of pesticides

The "no pesticides" claim is frequently made and often implied by the proponents of organic.  As an example, consider this article posted on a site called "The Fashionable Housewife.com".  (http://www.thefashionablehousewife.com/04/2009/is-it-worth-it-to-go-organic/).   It was taken from the Christian magazine, "Guideposts". Here is its repeat of Myth 1:

Here is What Organic Means
For fruits and vegetables to be labeled as organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), no pesticides, genetic modification, growth hormones, artificial fertilizers or irradiation can be used in their production.  

In fact pesticides have always been allowed under organic rules and they are frequently needed for organic crops.  The limitation is that they are "natural," but that does not mean that they are not pesticides that have to be regulated by the EPA like any other pesticide.  Yes, the goal of organic (and progressive conventional as well) is to minimize the need to pesticidal sprays and to use the "softest" options, but in both systems there is often the need for some remedy for pests (insects, diseases, weeds...).  There is a list of pesticides and other products that are allowed for use in organic and it it quite extensive (http://www.omri.org/ ).  In practice, the list of products that are commonly used to control pests in organic crops is not very large.  The allowed pesticides for organic includes some very “soft” products like something called "spinosad".  Spinosad is a "natural product" in that it is produced by fermentation of a microbe that happens to make this insect toxic compound that is virtually non-toxic to us and is also quite benign for the environment.  Spinosad is one of the most effective pesticides available to an organic grower today.  Actually, spinosad was first commercialized by Dow Chemical for mainstream agriculture and it is one of the most widely used pesticides on conventional fruit and vegetable crops.  Later, Dow made an "organic" version of spinosad which only differs in terms of the surfactants used to formulate it.   This is a case where both organic and conventional farmers are using an extremely safe and effective pesticide.

 Organic crops are also threatened by diseases and there are relatively few available organic options to deal with them.   This is one of the main reasons that organic fruit and vegetables are mostly grown in the desert regions of the Western US where rain is uncommon in the growing season.  If growers could grow organic apples in the Eastern US they would have an excellent marketing opportunity, but in spite of many years of effort, this has not proven to be a viable business because of both insect and disease issues that are not adequately controlled using the limited tools available to organic growers.  

Even in the arid West, diseases can be an issue.  One of the effects of climate change has been to shift more of the precipitation in California from winter snow to spring rain.  That has increased a disease of apples called "Apple Scab."  Scab has been a big problem in many recent years for California apple growers and particularly for organic growers.   Unlike the situation with spinosad, there are not organically approved fungicides that are highly effective for this disease.  Organic growers are limited to fungicides that have been used since the mid 1800s.  The main options are copper sulfate and copper hydroxide.  These materials are actually somewhat more toxic to mammals than most modern pesticides and the copper is a heavy metal which persists in the environment where it is sprayed.  On the Whole Foods website  (http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/values/corevalues.php#selling)
there is this mythic statement that obviously does not consider copper-based pesticides:

"Organic production limits toxic and long-lasting chemicals in our environment."

This is a case where the organic pesticides are objectively less desirable than many "synthetic" fungicide options that are less toxic than salt and which are truly not persistent in the environment.  

Elemental sulfur is another pesticide approved for organic and widely used, particularly on organic grapes (and on conventional grapes as well).  Sulfur is a good, cheap option for powdery mildew and mite control that was probably first used in ancient Egypt, but it is highly irritating to the eyes and skin of anyone that has to work in vineyards and other crops treated with this very high use-rate product (I know this from years of doing research in vineyards myself).  Sulfur is a pesticide with both positive and negative features, but it is a mainstay of organic production for several crops even with all its issues.  

The bottom line is that organic growers do in fact use pesticides and the products they use are not always better for us or the environment than many of the “conventional” options by objective measures.   A large proportion of the pesticides used in “conventional” agriculture today are every bit as safe as those used for organic and often safer.  Marketers and supporters of Organic often sell or advocate against the pesticide practices of 30-50 years ago and with the implication that Organic means "no pesticides".  That is simply not true, but the myth is pervasive.

This issue of pesticides is complex.  The reality is that we need them and that they are not monolithically bad as they are often presented in the larger farming myth.  We could never feed the world today, let alone in the future, without pesticides.  Organic needs them, conventional needs them.