How Wrong Is The Latest Dirty Dozen List?

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) says that it "helps protect your family from pesticides." The purpose of this Applied Mythology post is to "help protect your family from dangerously misleading information from the EWG." Each year since 1991, the USDA has been publishing the results from a large-scale pesticide residue monitoring program called the PDP.  Each year, a different set of crops is chosen and samples are purchased from regular stores and tested. Year after year, the results of those studies confirm the safety of the food supply. Year after year the EWG misrepresents the data to say otherwise. To understand what that is like for the people who farm those crops, consider this analogy.

What if you were taking a college course that was critical for your graduation, but your entire grade was going to be based on a giant group project involving thousands of other students you didn't even know and with whom you could not even communicate.  Some of those student's test results would be chosen at random and the grade for everyone in the class would depend on how they did. When the grading is done, you find out that the class score was over 99% - a clear A+!  Then,  someone who doesn't really understand the topic of the class, or chooses not to,  re-grades the test and tells your potential future employers that you got a D, and many of them believe the incorrect grade.

This is much like what farmers have been experiencing for years. They grow a crop as best they can, and use pesticides only as necessary and within the strict rules established by the EPA. Much of what they use are pesticides with very low toxicity.  In years that their crop is selected for the PDP, random samples of their commodity are purchased in stores, including examples coming from other countries.  They are taken to federal and state laboratories and scrutinized for trace residues of hundreds of different chemical pesticides. When the data is finally published (usually two years later), the highly qualified experts of the USDA, EPA and FDA conclude that the system is working and that consumers should confidently purchase and eat the crop without concerns about residues.  In fact, studies show that the anti-cancer benefits of eating things like fruits and vegetable far, far outweigh and minuscule risk associated with pesticides.

Then each year, the EWG takes advantage of the transparent availability of the USDA-PDP data, but then performs their own "analysis" which experts have rejected as utterly anti-scientific.  They generate an incorrect "grade" for the crop and post it as part of their "Shopper's Guide," and on their notorious "Dirty Dozen List."  The grower's virtually perfect grade gets forgotten and what is passed along by an un-critical press and blogosphere is the distortion that the crop is "dirty." Many consumers believe this and heed the EWG's suggestion that they need to buy organic versions of that crop (the actual agenda of the EWG is the promotion of organic and also their own fundraising). Worse still, there is some evidence that this disinformation causes consumers to purchase and eat less produce. At a minimum, many consumers feel guilty for not buying organic.

As you can imagine, this is very frustrating for farmers. Some have joined in groups which are trying to get out a much more accurate interpretation of the data which is to say that the PDP confirms the that pesticides are well regulated and that the farming industry is doing a very good job.  They want to reclaim their rightful A+!

What Does The Data Really Say?

I decided to do an independent analysis of the latest PDP data (for growing year 2011, released earlier this year). The information is freely available from a USDA web site, but using it is a non trivial exercise. The zipped file expands to 92MB because it contains 2.2 million rows of information covering each of the hundreds of pesticides or metabolites looked for in each of the thousands of food samples. 1.75 million of those are for fruits and vegetables. Fortunately, even using the extremely sensitive analytical techniques available today, less than 1% of these rows are cases where some detectable residue was found.  I'd be happy to email you the 15,450 row Excel table left after eliminating all the non-detects.

To understand the significance of each detection it is necessary to know what the chemical is and what "tolerance" the EPA has established for it on each crop.  The tolerance is a very conservative threshold for how much residue represents an acceptable margin away from any health risk.  It is based on the best data and risk assessment tools available to EPA.  Not surprisingly, the tolerances for different chemicals are very different based on the details of their toxicological profile.  I've plotted the distribution of all the detections relative to crop/chemical-specific tolerance in the graph below.

For all 20 commodities tested from 2011, there were only 0.18% of residues found which were higher than the EPA tolerance.  In fact fully 1/2 of the detections were of levels more than 100 times lower than the already conservative tolerance.

There are differences between crops and between country of origin, but they are only between good and very good.  Snap peas were the "worst" example, particularly those imported from Central America (see above), but they still had 94% of detections below tolerance.  The few that were above are not particularly scary either (you can see the detail in the complete analysis I posted on SCRIBD).  Many crops had a "perfect score" of keeping all the residues below the tolerance (see graph to the right)




Quite appropriately, one of the "cleanest" crops was pear baby food.  When EPA sets the tolerance for baby food it is even more conservative than ever.  In this case all the detections were below tolerance and more than 99% of them were 10 times or more lower than the tolerance (graph below).

The people collecting samples for the PDP  do track whether the sample had an organic claim.  For most crops the number of organic samples is too low to make a meaningful comparison, but for pear baby food, 11.5% were organic.  Interestingly, among those 67 samples, there were 101 pesticide residues detected, only 33 of which are for the organically approved insecticide, Spinosad. The rest were for synthetic pesticides including some that are applied after harvest (such as DPA which prevents scald in storage). As with the conventional samples, these residues were at such tiny levels as to be of no concern, but for this and other crops, choosing organic does not guarantee "no pesticide residues,"  instead the same risk assessment process suggests safety for both the organic and conventional options.

How Does The EWG Ranking Compare to One Based on Science?

What I have been presenting is an analysis that pays attention to what the chemical is, what levels are found, and what the EPA has concluded from its risk assessment process.  The EWG's ranking ignores all of those factors.  I've taken the EWG's ranking (higher numbers are supposedly "cleaner") and  compared it with a tolerance-based measure which is the percent of the detections that are not even as much as 1/10th of the tolerance (again, high number = cleaner).  Not surprisingly, there is really no correlation between these two approaches (see below).

Again, none of these examples are really problematic, but cauliflower, which EWG calls part of the "clean 15" and ranks as number 34 in their list has the has more detections over 1/10th of the tolerance than other crops.  Apples, which are the worst according to EWG have 92% detections below 1/10th of tolerance - more than a great many other crops. Canned beets, for which not even one detection was noted among 756 samples from 2011, doesn't appear on EWG's "Clean 15" list or in the list at all. Again, the real "grades" are all "A's," just to different degrees.  It's like Lake Wobegon - all the crops are above average.

What is the take home message from all of this? Eat more fruit and vegetables! And don't worry about whether it is organic or not. The fact is that we know less about what is on organic produce than on conventional.

Full analysis posted as An Independent Analysis of the 2011 PDP Data on SCRIBD.  If you would like to look through the 15K row Excel table of detections, email me at savage.sd@gmail.com

Feel free to comment here or to email me.

Is It OK To Eat Cloned Fruit?

Cloned fruit is widely sold in grocery stores.  Some of it is cloned mutant fruit. None of these fruits are labeled as such. They aren't even regulated. You can't avoid this kind of fruit by going to Whole Foods or Trader Joe's.  Should you be concerned?

Actually, almost all fruit is cloned for good reasons that I will describe below.  I like to use this question as a way to show people how emotive language can be used to make something ordinary sound scary. That is why a healthy dose of skepticism is needed as we encounter so many alarmist allegations about our food supply. The danger is getting drawn into a conspiracy-theory mindset which leaves people unable to listen to reasoned explanation.

The Advance of the Clones

Yes, virtually all fruit is technically "cloned" because it is not grown from seed. Cloning means the genetics of the offspring are identical to the parent. For fruit, this has been the means of propagation for centuries.

If you plant the seeds from an apple variety that you particularly enjoy - several years later you will be disappointed to find that the fruit is not at all like the one you originally ate. It will probably be more like a crab apple. People long ago discovered that desirable specimens must be propagated by rooting, grafting, or budding onto some other root stock, and all of those are means of cloning. And yes, some fruit varieties were developed using mutation breeding. The Ruby Red Grapefruit is an example I enjoy on a regular basis. Nectarines are a spontaneous mutant of a peach which lacked the fuzz.

But What About Johnny Apple Seed?

As children we all heard the mythologized story of Johnny Apple Seed who supposedly planted apple trees across the US for the benefit of little children.  As Michael Pollan so nicely explains in his book "The Botany of Desire," Johnny was just opportunistically starting apple tree nurseries at the front of Western settlement because of a provision in the Homestead Act which required each land recipient to cultivate 40 apple trees.  Johnny was there sell them what they needed.  The actual goal was to insure that the settlers would be able to make their own alcohol supply in the form of hard cider (how's that for a "nanny state!"). For cider, it didn't much matter what sort of fruit was produced, so the variable seedling trees were acceptable.  If the settler wanted a good eating apple they could graft a branch of it onto Johnny's seedlings.  Today, the rootstocks for most fruit trees are selected for specific dwarfing and/or pest resistance traits and also clonally propagated.

Nature Also Clones

Cloning sounds creepy to us because it isn't something that happens naturally in mammals.  Among animals like insects, worms and some amphibians there is a fair amount of non-sexual reproduction we typically call parthenogenesis - but it is a form of cloning because the offspring are genetically identical to the parent.  Plants use clonal reproduction widely.  Bananas generate "sons" that bud off at the base of an existing trunk.  Grapevine canes on the ground or which get buried will sprout roots and generate a new, independent plant.  Whole groves of aspen trees can be clones that arise from the root system.

There is desert shrub called Guayule, which is being developed as a new, sustainable source of natural rubber.  It produces seed both through regular sexual reproduction and also through a process called apomixis.  The seed looks normal, but it is genetically identical to the mother plant (thus technically a clone).  Plant breeders would like to find a way to generate apomictic seed of major crops to avoid either expensive hybrid seed production or to avoid the extensive back-crossing needed to develop a line that will "breed true."

Cloning Does Limit Genetic Diversity

While cloning provides us with high quality fruit, it limits the germplasm in use for some crops. There may be plenty of genetic diversity where a crop originated, but breeding diversity into elite lines is a very slow process for perennial plants.  It would be far more efficient to move selected genes, such as those for disease resistance. Genes for disease resistance were moved from wild potatoes into commercial potatoes by a famous European public institution using genetic engineering.

Examples of landrace potatoes from Peru which were the source of the resistance genes

This trait could be extremely helpful for European farmers, but it has predictably been opposed by anti-GMO activists. Yet, strangely, no one seems to worry about the crops developed decades ago by very clumsy methods of mutation breeding involving the use of radiation or toxic chemicals.  Although the track record of such crop improvements has been positive, there is a far more reasonable basis for concern with that method than with genetic engineering.

So, what is the purpose of this botany lesson?  I guess I'm trying to make the point that not everything that can be made to sound scary about food is really scary. Think about that the next time you enjoy some cloned fruit!

You are welcome to comment here and/or to email me as savage dot sd at gmail dot com

Cloned apple image started from Ala_z via Wikimedia.  Apple seed image from Artotem.  Andean potato image from Wikimedia commons

Six Reasons Organic is NOT The Most Environmentally Friendly Way To Farm

Contrary to widespread consumer belief, organic farming is not the best way to farm from an environmental point if view. The guiding principal of organic is to rely exclusively on natural inputs.  That was decided early in the 20th century, decades before before the scientific disciplines of toxicology, environmental studies and climate science emerged to inform our understanding of how farming practices impact the environment.  As both farming and science have progressed, there are now several cutting edge agricultural practices which are good for the environment, but difficult or impossible for organic farmers to implement within the constraints of their pre-scientific rules.

There was one window during which the rules for organic might have been adjusted to reflect a more modern understanding.  In 1990 the US Congress charged the USDA with the task of setting a national standard for what products could be legally sold as Organic.  That agency was inclined to include more science in a definition of “what is safest for us and for the environment,” but the organic community of that day was adamant that the rule should only reflect the purely natural definition embraced by their existing customer base.  Long before the final Organic Standards were published in 2002, it was clear that the industry preference had prevailed and that the rules of organic would still reflect their pre-scientific origins.  That is why the following six environmental issues exist for organic farming. 

1. Less Than Optimal Fungicides

Copper Sulfate

Organic farmers use pesticides, but only those qualified as sufficiently natural.  Thus, copper-based fungicides are among the few options available to an organic grower for the control of fungal plant diseases.  These are high-use rate products that require frequent re-application and which are quite toxic to aquatic invertebrates.  There are much more effective, and far less toxic, synthetic fungicide options without environmental issues, and which, unlike copper, break down into completely innocuous materials. Organic growers can't use those fungicides.  Similarly there are many environmentally benign, synthetic insecticides and herbicides which cannot be used.

2. A Surprisingly High Carbon Footprint for Compost

The greatest original contribution of the early organic movement was its focus on building soil health.  One of the main ways that organic farmers do this is by physically incorporating tons of organic matter into the soil in the form of composts.  Unfortunately, during the process of composting a substantial amount of methane is emitted which means that broad use of this soil-building approach would be problematic from a climate change point of view.

3. Practical Barriers to Implementing No-till Farming

No-Till Field

The best approach to building soil quality is minimizing soil disturbance (e.g. no plowing or tilling) combined with the use of cover crops.  Such farming systems have multiple environmental advantages, particularly with respect to limiting erosion and nutrient movement into water. Organic growers frequently do plant cover crops, but without effective herbicides, they tend to rely on tillage for weed control. There are efforts underway to find a way to do organic no-till, but they are not really scalable.

4. Difficulties Implementing Optimized Fertilization

Fertilizers are associated with many of the biggest environmental issues for agriculture because of the challenges in supplying all a crop needs without leading to movement of those nutrients into surface or ground water or to emissions of the highly potent greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide.  The best practice is to “spoon feed” the nutrients through the irrigation system at levels designed to closely track the changing demands of the crop throughout the season.  

Drip Irrigated and Fertilized Grapes

This requires water-soluble forms of the nutrients and that is very expensive to do for the natural fertilizer sources allowed in organic.  Since the plants absorb those nutrients in exactly the same molecular forms regardless of source, this cost barrier is a non-scientific impediment to doing the best thing from an environmental point of view. Organic fertilizers like composts or manures are also much less practical for variable rate application, an environmentally beneficial option for rain-fed crops in which different amounts of fertilizer are applied to different parts of the field based on geo-referenced soil and yield mapping data.  Finally, the organic avoidance of "synthetic fertilizers" would mean that these growers would not be able to use what appear to be promising small-scale, carbon-neutral, renewable energy-driven systems for making nitrogen fertilizers. 

5. Lower Land-Use-Efficiency

The per-acre yields of organic crops are significantly lower than those for conventional.  This has been well documented both by meta-analysis of published research comparisons and by public data generated through USDA commercial production surveys.  

The shortfall is driven by limited pesticide options, difficulties in meeting peak fertilizer demand, and in some cases by not being able to use biotech traits.  If organic production were used for a significant proportion of crop production, these lower yields would increase the pressure for new land-use-conversion - a serious environmental issue because of the biodiversity and greenhouse gas ramifications.

6. Lack of an Economic Model to Move Beyond Niche Status

Finally, agriculture needs to change in ways that accomplish both productivity and environmental goals.  That optimal farming approach must become the dominant system over time. Even if organic had maintained its growth trend from 1995 to 2008, organic acreage in 2050 would still have represented less than 3% of US cropland. 

Trend line for US organic cropland as of of 2008

Then, between 2008 and 2011, USDA survey data showed no net gain in US organic acreage.  Environmentally desirable "conventional" practices like no-till, cover cropping and a variety of other precision agriculture innovations are already practiced on a much broader scale and have the potential to be economically attractive for farmers without any price premium mechanisms.  Innovations in farmland leases could greatly accelerate the conversion process if growers could be guaranteed long-term control of fields so that they could profit from their investments in building soil quality.  

Consumers Who Want To Do The Right Thing

There are many consumers who are willing to spend more for organic food because they believe that they are making a positive difference for the environment.  While it is commendable that people are willing to do that, the pre-scientific basis for the organic rules means that the environmental superiority of organic cannot be assumed. While “only natural” is appealing as a marketing message, it is not the best guide for how to farm with minimal environmental impact. Between rigorous, science-based regulation, public and private investments in new technology development, and farmer innovation, modern agriculture has been making excellent environmental progress. That trend, not organic, is what we need to encourage.

You are encouraged to comment here and/or to email me at applied.mythology@gmail.com

Pennsylvania farm image from USDA Images.  Vineyard image Agne27.  Copper Sulfate image from Wikimedia commons.  Organic yield and acreage information from the USDA-NASS. 

The Livelihood of Small Coffee Growers Is Threatened By A Plant Disease

Some of the world's best coffee comes from the tropical highlands of Central and South America.  Recently these regions have experienced heavier rainfall.  This is probably due to climate change, but in any case it fosters severe epidemics of the Coffee Leaf Rust pathogen, Hemileia vastatrix.   This disease has a long history of disrupting coffee production around the world.  One reason the English drink tea is that the Ceylonese and Javan coffee plantations which once supplied them were devastated by this same fungus in the late 1800s.  Coffee production was moved to the Americas (among other places) and it wasn't until the 1970s that the rust pathogen made its way to the New World.  For the next several decades it remained a manageable disease in those areas, but in recent seasons, the disease has been severely affecting yields.

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the fifth Symposium organized by the Specialty Coffee Association of America which was held in Boston. The coffee rust problem was a major topic of presentations and discussion.  What we heard is that after increasing losses for the last two years, yield losses as high as 40% are anticipated in the 2013/14 season.

Leaf infected with the Coffee Rust pathogen, Hemileia vasatrix

Diseases Happens

It is not unprecedented for a crop/industry to be faced with a new plant disease challenge, and there are a range of solutions. However, the high quality coffee industry of the Americas is largely dependent on small-holder farmers in relatively poor communities. There are logistical, informational and sociopolitical issues for those communities which leave its producers and their families economically vulnerable, particularly in a situation such as this. To make things worse, these farmers' reduced crop yields are coming at a time of low international coffee prices. There is a very real possibility that  many of the small producers will either shift to alternative crops/jobs or into unrecoverable poverty. Coffee grown by small farmers on mountainsides is a romantic narrative for those of us who consume coffee.  Things are not looking so romantic for the families fighting coffee rust.

Untapped Genetic Resources

Although there are diverse, wild sources of Coffea arabica, and there are scores of other Coffea species to broaden the germplasm-base, existing coffee plantings represent a very narrow spectrum of genetics.  This leaves the industry vulnerable to disruptive shifts in the weather or pest populations. Coffee is unusual among perennial crops in that it is propagated by seeds rather than by cuttings or grafting. These seeds are cheap and easily saved, so there has never been a commercial coffee breeding industry.  Instead there have only been modest and regionally focused, breeding efforts based on governmental support.  Having been warned about this situation several years ago, the Specialty Coffee Association of America began funding the World Coffee Research (WCR) organization to conduct basic research on coffee genetics and to institute multi-country variety trials.  Their goal is to develop pest resistant lines which can still achieve the desired quality. While this investment by downstream players is commendable, coffee has a complex genome and long time to reproductive maturity. That will mean that a WCR-generated solution to something like the rust issue won't reach farmers for something on the order of 15 years - even with the use of biotech advances like Marker Assisted Selection.  That is far too long from a grower point of view.  It might be possible to speed the process using a transgenic approach, but WCR has clearly stated that they will not pursue a "GMO solution." I'm sure that makes sense for the realities of marketing to many specialty coffee consumers in the rich world. However, taking that technology option off the table may significantly postpone the delivery of a scale-neutral solution for the coffee growers.

Near-Term Solutions- Spraying Safe Fungicides

For now, the only option is to control the rust with the use of fungicide sprays. Technically this is quite feasible. There are several families of fungicides which are highly effective, very low in toxicity, and without significant environmental issues. These same fungicides are widely employed in the European wheat/barley industry and the South American soybean industry, both of which deal constantly with rusts and other diseases. However, fungicide use in this coffee setting has the complication of needing to be applied using backpack sprayers on rough terrain. There are also economic and information-transfer limitations which make this a non-trivial solution. Under this intense disease pressure, it will also be paramount to practice mode-of-action rotation to avoid selecting for fungicide resistance in the rust population.  The possible may not translate to the actual.

Unintended Ramifications of Organic-Environmental Issues and Social Injustice

These challenges are daunting for "conventional" growers, but they are far more challenging for those growers who have been persuaded by their customers to become organically certified. For rust control, the organic growers are mainly limited to the use of copper-based fungicides.  These "natural" products are far less effective than synthetic options, require high use rates, and are easily washed off of the plant by rain so that they must be frequently re-applied. Copper fungicides are also far more problematic for the environment because of their mobility in water runoff and their detrimental effects on aquatic invertebrates. Yet, if the organic growers use the more potent and safe synthetic options, they lose their organic certification for three years. The consumers who buy organic coffee might be surprised to understand that they are driving an option which is less desirable from both an environmental and social justice perspective.

The Coffee Industry Response to the Crisis - Helping the Small Grower

The Boston meeting last week was my first opportunity to interact directly with the specialty coffee community composed of growers, brokers, roasters, equipment suppliers and retailers. I was impressed by the industry's commitment to both deliver a high quality coffee experience for consumers while attempting to address the needs of the people around the world who produce the beans. The people in this industry understand the complex socio-political-economic reasons why life is difficult for small-holder coffee farmers. They have tried to address that through various "fair trade" mechanisms. They also talked openly about the need to do more, particularly because of this disease challenge. There were positive examples described about collaborative efforts between commercially and NGO sponsored efforts to enhance the economic viability and food security of coffee farming families. It is a huge challenge, but there is no question that the coffee industry takes it seriously.

Because of the geographically diversified production of coffee around the world, we who are the consumers of coffee are not at serious risk of losing access to a favorite, caffeinated beverage.  The current threat is to the livelihoods of the small-holder producers in Americas.  Think of them when you enjoy your coffee.

You are welcome to comment here and/or to email me at savage.sd@gmail.com

Coffee farmer image from USAID
Coffee Leaf Rust symptom image from Wikimedia Commons

Moving Towards Fossil-Energy-Independent Nitrogen Fertilizer

It takes about as much energy to make the nitrogen fertilizer for an acre of corn (150 lbs) as it takes to drive a car 600 miles, and because it is made using natural gas it has a carbon footprint equivalent to driving the car 650 miles.  Now imagine that for more than 90 million acres of corn.  That is a lot of energy.  But what if that energy and greenhouse gas footprint could disappear?  This might actually be possible.  

By way of background, nitrogen is one of the three most important minerals that plants need to grow, and the basis of the protein we require in our diets.  Some plants call legumes “fix” their own nitrogen with the help through a mutualistic relationship with a particular kind of bacteria.  From an environmental point of view, this sort of  biological nitrogen fixation is the best way to make nitrogen fertilizer.   US farmers already plant about 100 million acres of legume crops (soybeans, alfalfa...).  We could probably supply a fair amount of additional nitrogen if legume-containing winter cover crop mixes were more broadly used.  Still, to grow our conventional crops like corn, wheat, barley, fruits, most vegetables.... we need to make synthetic nitrogen.  Even organic is dependent on that flow (see previous post, Cows Don’t Make Fertilizer).

Large scale, crop-available nitrogen production became possible about 100 years ago when two German scientists named Haber and Bosch sequentially figured out how to turn the nearly 80% nitrogen in the atmosphere into plant available forms.  All it takes is a source of hydrogen, the air, and a catalyst to make ammonia. They got a Nobel Prize for this, but the big down-side has been that the most cost effective way to do the Haber-Bosch process has been to get the hydrogen from natural gas.  The question is whether there is an alternative to this major use of a fossil fuel (~5% of total natural gas use).

The Answer My Friend, Is Blowin' In The Wind

Bob Dylan was famously vague about what "the answer" actually was, but I'm guessing that he wasn't thinking about a solution to the fossil fuel dependency of crop fertilizers.  Even so, his reference to wind may actually be part of the answer to this real-world dilemma.   The Haber-Bosch process just requires hydrogen and that can easily be made using electricity and water (electrolysis).  The electricity could be from a renewable source like wind, solar, hydro etc.  I once wrote a blog post wondering if it might be possible for someone to develop a small-scale Haber-Bosch process that could be run using something like wind energy.  It turns out that at least three groups were already working on different approaches to just such an invention ( University of Minnesota, Electrogen Hydrofuels, Altmerge).  I am really excited about this possibility, particularly the later two because they are working on very small scale units.  For instance the one from Electrogen is designed to fit in a standard truck/rail container.

If any of these processes can be successfully commercialized, it could dramatically alter the fertilizer paradigm.  It would give farmers a way to locally and independently produce their own fertilizer and thus avoid the price fluctuations driven by the general energy market.  A farm could install a wind turbine and one of these units and let it make the next season’s fertilizer any day that the wind blew.  These companies are also working on ways to turn the ammonia generated into something easier to store like liquid ammonium nitrate (not the dry form that can be turned into a bomb).  

Such a system might also be able to provide village-level fertilizer generation in parts of the world where small-holder farmers don't have practical access to nitrogen fertilizer today.  

This nitrogen fertilizer would be "carbon neutral" from a manufacturing perspective.  Since the energy used to make fertilizer is a large part of the overall carbon footprint of agriculture (about 40% for a corn crop), this change would be highly significant.  Nitrogen fertilizers will still always have other environmental issues, but there are sustainable soil health management systems that best address those.

The irony is that this sort of carbon-neutral nitrogen fertilizer wouldn't qualify under the current rules for use in organic because it would still be “synthetic.”  Of course plants don’t care about this.  They can only absorb nitrogen in its nitrate or ammonium ion form which is the same whether it originated as synthetic or natural fertilizer.  

Wind turbine image from SustainableDevelopment's photostream

You are welcome to comment here and/or to email me at savage.sd@gmail.com

No, Cows Don't Make Fertilizer

Fertilizer that comes from cows or other animals does not really originate with them.  Manure from cows and other animals has been used as a crop fertilizer for millennia, and it is still used today for about 5% of US crop acres and for a high proportion of organic acres.  It is often spoken of as an alternative to "outside inputs" for crops and as a superior option relative to "synthetic fertilizers."  However, just as Obama said about businesses and infrastructure, "you didn't build that," when it comes to fertilizers from animal sources we must also say, "they didn't make that."

Don't get me wrong, I think that cows are wonderful.  It is only because their complex, ruminant digestive system houses certain bacteria that we humans have access to the most abundant form of plant-stored solar energy - cellulose.  Animals also do a rather good job of absorbing the mineral nutrients like nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus in their feed, but they are not 100% efficient at utilizing their dietary input.  So, their manure still contains nutrients which can fertilize a crop.  But the animals didn't "make" any of those nutrients.  For instance the ~2% nitrogen in cow manure came from whatever they ate (grass, corn, soybeans...) and those crops, except for the soybeans, were mostly fertilized with "synthetic nitrogen." The cow is just passing a bit of that along.

Why Organic Needs Conventional

Organic farmers are limited to non-synthetic sources of nitrogen fertilizer.  They can supply some of that through biologically fixed nitrogen produced by legumes as main crops, cover crops or green manure crops.  Still, the reality is that many organic crops (fruit, vegetables, corn, wheat...) are fertilized with animal manures or composts thereof.  Organic growers are allowed to use manures/composts that come from conventional animal sources.  This is necessary because otherwise, organic farmers would be severely nitrogen limited.  Organic agriculture is actually quite dependent on manure from animals fed with non-organic crops.

Manure Isn't Such A Great Fertilizer Anyway

Manure is also a non-ideal fertilizer in many ways.  Cows and other animals are better at getting the nitrogen out of their feed than the phosphorus, so manures generally have too much phosphorus if they are applied at rates sufficient to supply a crop the nitrogen it needs.  That phosphorus can then become a ground or surface water pollution issue. The best way to utilize manures is to supplement the nitrogen with synthetic sources to better balance with the phosphorus.

Manure is also a source of bacteria that are human pathogens.  That is why it needs to be composted to be safer for use on human food crops.  But there are enough methane emissions during composting to be highly problematic from a greenhouse gas point of view.  When manures are incorporated into farmed soils they can also lead to more greenhouse gas emissions as methane.

Also, much of the nitrogen in manure is not in a form that the plant can use until it is "mineralized" into the ammonium or nitrate ions that plants can absorb (also what is in "synthetic" nitrogen fertilizers).  Mineralization is dependent on the activity of soil microbes and they don't necessarily release the nitrogen at the time of the growing season that the plant needs it the most.  In a recent meta-study of research on organic vs conventional crop yields, the authors observe that to come closer to conventional yields, it was necessary for the organic program to use more total nitrogen so that during the period of peak demand it was not as limiting (sorry, it is behind a pay wall, but the authors were willing to share a full copy when I wrote them).   Of course, in such cases the extra nitrogen would also be mineralized at times when the crop was not demanding it, leading to more surface or ground water pollution or to greenhouse gas emissions (nitrous oxide).

Conclusion

So, cows (or sheep or pigs or chickens) are not actual net contributors to our demand for fertilizers.  They just temporarily retain a bit of the supply generated for their feed.  We need sources of nitrogen to enable crops to harvest solar energy and turn it into a form that we can use.  We need the nitrogen to make the proteins that we need for growth and brain development.  We need to make good use of the nutrients that are left in animal manures, but they are only ever going to be a small contributor to our overall fertilizer needs.

You are welcome to comment here and/or to email me at applied.mythology@gmail.com

Cows image from Wikimedia

A Defense of Plant and Crop Related Patents

Patents involving plants are often portrayed as a seriously negative phenomenon.  In fact, they play an important and beneficial role in the development of better and more productive crops.  As I have watched the controversy around the role of patents, particularly as related to biotech crops, it seems that critics have little understanding of why the patent system was created in the first place, how the patent system actually works, and what patents do and don't mean in the commercial realm.

I would like to explain why, rather than being some sort of sinister tool of conspiratorial control, patents on plant varieties and on biotechnology innovations are key drivers of the investment and creativity that we will need if we are to meet the food supply and environmental challenges that lie before us over the next few decades.

The Grand Patent Bargain

Patent systems were set up to provide creative people with the incentive to invest their time, money and talent in the development of inventions that could benefit society.  To do that, the following bargain was struck:  the inventor gets a specifically limited period with the exclusive right to derive economic returns from the sales/use of the invention only if they meet two standards.  First, they must make a sufficiently strong case that their invention demonstrates "novelty," and second, they must fulfill "the obligation to teach."  I'll unpack that below.

Proving Novelty

To receive a patent, an invention has to "exhibit novelty" meaning that it is different from similar inventions ("in the prior art"), and that novelty has to be something that is "non-obvious to one skilled in the art."  Anyone who has ever pursued a patent knows, it is quite hard to meet that standards.  Even after a patent is awarded, the novelty question can - and frequently is - disputed in court if the patent turns out to have any significant economic ramifications.  As I heard in my first company-sponsored training on the subject, "a patent is only a license to be sued."  The effort and originality involved in patenting of plant lines and of genes is often spoken of as if it is some trivial, and thus undeserving activity.  That is only believable if you've never engaged in the process.

The Obligation to Teach

When someone develops something new and hopes to profit from having done so, the main alternative to patents is what is called a "trade secret." If you pursue a trade secret strategy, you hope that the details of your product or process are sufficiently obscure that others can't imitate it.   To get the more certain period of exclusivity offered by a patent comes with a requirement that you explain your invention in detail sufficient to allow any qualified reader the ability to understand exactly what it is and how it works.  This "teaching requirement" is actually the genius of the patent system. To get temporary exclusivity, you have to reveal information that will very often give competitors ideas about how to do something even better or otherwise "work around" your patent.  Also, often years before a patent can get through the process to be awarded, it is"published" so that what you teach is available to everyone else sooner than you get the patent or even if you never get it. The system forces a level of idea-sharing that would never have happened without it.

In my paying job as a technology consultant (as opposed to time I spend blogging), I frequently help companies monitor what their competitors and the academic community are doing in a specific area of science.  I find that recently published patents are an extremely useful window on such a question (try this yourself on the search page for the patent office.  type something like ttl/rose to see how many patent applications have been filed just for roses).  Mind you this is not a collegial exchange of information.  Between the dull, precise nature of scientific language and the obtuse nature of lawyer-speak, patent applications must be in competition for the most tedious form of writing (I know because I have to read these).  Still, it is a form of real idea exchange that is forced by the patent system.  The grand bargain works for the benefit of society.

Who Patents Plants and Plant-related Technologies?

The modern anti-biotechnology narrative would have you believe that certain companies (Monsanto usually being portrayed as the ultimate demon) are using patents in some new paradigm to "control the food supply." This view ignores the fact that plant variety patents have been a common feature of crop genetics since 1970 and that a great many of those patents are held by universities, by the USDA, and by similar international agencies (Patents for vegetatively propagated plants have been an option since 1930).  Actually, the most foundational tools of biotechnology for plant, pharmaceutical or industrial use were patented by scientists at Stanford University.  For a time, any group that did genetic engineering needed a license to the Stanford-held, Cohen-Boyer patents that are now considered a "gold standard" for university licensing.

When, in the 1990s, commercial biotechnology entered the agricultural seed market space, the fact that such products were patented was nothing new.  For decades, commercial, academic and government researchers have typically patented their inventions.  None of this is sinister.  If someone develops a crop variety that has real economic value to farmers, it does not matter whether the innovation originated in the public or private sphere, it may well be patented.  For any entity to take the following steps to commercialize that trait, the temporary exclusivity afforded by a patent makes it worth their effort and investment to do so.

How Much "Control" Does A Patent Provide?

A patent on something like a gene for potential use in a biotech crop means very little by itself.  There are typically many patents covering parts of or steps in the process of bringing that trait gene to the market - often patents controlled by different entities.  For instance, as soon as genetic engineering became a possibility in the 1970s, many groups were interested in finding a way to make plants resistant to the very broad spectrum, low toxicity herbicide - glyphosate.  It turned out to be difficult to get a form of the effected enzyme, EPSPS that would not be inhibited by glyphosate but which would still serve its normal function for the plant.  It ended up requiring two distinct changes at different positions in the enzyme.  The group that finally generated a modified gene that did the trick (designated as "CP4") worked for a small start-up biotech company in Davis, California called Calgene.  The investors and scientists there were rewarded for that breakthrough when Monsanto commercialized the trait.  Still, that was only the beginning.  For this enzyme to function properly it has to move into the chloroplasts in the cell.  That means it has to be linked to a Chloroplast Transit Peptide and the patent for that was awarded to a European biotech company (there were several major European players in the early days of this science).  Monsanto had to pay a royalty to that company for rights to use the patented sequence.

There are patents covering the steps required to actually get a new gene into a plant.  For some time, the preferred method of doing that has been with the help of an organism called Agrobacterium.  For many years, any company that wanted to use a special strain of that bacterium which would do that job with monocot crops (e.g. corn, wheat, rice...) needed to pay for rights to use a strain that was discovered by scientists at a Japanese company called JTI.

Once a gene is successfully inserted in a particular specimen of a crop in such a way that it is expressed functionally and does not cause any other problems, such an "event" is patented.  This still means little in the commercial realm.  Next the trait has to be "introgressed into elite germplasm," meaning it has to be crossed using conventional breeding methods to get that trait into many of the best hybrids or varieties which seed companies have developed for specific geographies and/or specific uses.  This part of the seed industry is very competitive for the crops which have been engineered to-date.  A company that has developed a new trait has the option of only commercializing in their own seed lines or of licensing it broadly even to their competitors.  Monsanto picked the later path with their Roundup Ready Soybeans, and even though farmers rapidly adopted the technology and used it in over 90% of what they planted, those seeds were purchased from many different seed company competitors whose elite germplasm was every bit as important for the sale as that one trait.

Of course patents have a finite term.  For instance, the key patents covering the original Roundup Ready Soybeans will expire in 2014 and Monsanto will have no future control of those lines.

Patents also don't always block uses.  When Cornell University developed virus resistant papayas that could save the Hawaiian industry, Monsanto gave them rights to certain necessary patents for free.  Similarly, many companies have waived their patent rights for technologies involved in "Golden Rice."

Behind Each Patent, There Are People

Part of why I am so positive about the role of patents in agriculture is that over the years I've had privilege of meeting many of the individual scientists who have been involved in the inventive process of plant biotechnology - the sort of innovations that can be patented.  The people I have met/known have innovated in both small and large companies, in universities and in the USDA and if you met them you would be impressed with both their scientific acumen and their positive ambitions for making a societal contribution.

Cohen and Boyer taught sections of a biochemistry class I took at Stanford in the late 70s.  One of the inventors at Calgene that found the CP4 gene worked in the neighboring lab when I was a graduate student at UC Davis.  One of my previous employers had a partnership with JTI and I met scientists at their plant biotechnology center that came up with the monocot-specific Agrobacterium strain.  I have done projects in which I met several university scientists whose inventions were licensed by the companies that commercialize biotech and other crops.  I've met many of the scientists in the big ag/biotech companies and interacted at various stages of biotech crop development from ideas to full commercialization.  I wish you could meet these scientists.

From what I have seen, the potential of patent protection has been an extremely important driver of creativity and of getting the resources necessary for scientists to be creative.  In every case what I've seen involves scientific rigor, real-world problem solving, and excitement about being able to make a contribution.

I've seen universities get a stream of money to support additional research because of a patent they were able to license.  I've seen small companies reward their staff and investors because of important patents they generated.  I've seen the advanced level of scientific effort that is possible in large companies for whom the potential of patented products allows a high rate of plowing profits back into research - something that does not happen in the companies that sell generic products.

Based on all these experiences, I cannot share the concerns that are being so widely expressed about the role of patents in agriculture.  In fact, I cannot imagine a path forward without them.

You are welcome to comment here and/or to email me at savage.sd@gmail.com

Patent image from Wikimedia commons