Some organic vegetables DO have more minerals and a better profile of
minerals--most notably biodynamically grown ones. There is quite a lot of
variation. For example, I grow the sweetest turnips. I grow them as a
companion plant in my winter rye cover crops and they never have enough
nitrate content to have any bitter taste. If you consider nitrate content
as a mineral, then they don't have much of this kind of mineral. But they
have enough calcium, magnesium, potassium, etc. to weigh several pounds
more per bushel than the kind you ordinarily get in the stores, and
commonly they outweigh the organic ones in the whole foods stores too.
One of the measures of mineral content, the brix reading made with a
refractometer, is usually thought of as a measure of plant sugars, but
there is a correlation between minerals and plant sugars that works like
this. A plant builds up higher levels of plant sugars when it has enough
calcium and other minerals in its cell walls to block the radiation of
infrared energy that plants commonly undergo at night. It is common
knowledge that sugars build up as a result of photosynthesis, but it is
less commonly known that they may convert these sugars back into radiation
and give it off at night if they don't have sufficient mineral content to
shield this radiation from escaping. Calcium is the most important mineral
here, but since such things as boron are essential for calcium uptake and
utilization by plants they are important too. What can markedly INCREASE a
plant's loss of infrared radiation is nitrogen salts such as ammonia,
nitrates, urea, etc. There are huge variations in brix measurements and
mineral content between different growers and some chemical growers do a
good job here and some organic growers don't.
What a lot of people DON'T know is there can be huge differences in the
organizational forces present in the growing medium and that this can have
a large effect on the quality of what is grown. I'm copying a post I sent
to the BDNow! List about hydroponics as it contains some useful even if a
bit arcane information about organizational forces.
Hydroponics? Consider this. The ether, which is the insubstantial
organizational force that permeates substance and is especially rich in
organ-isms and organic forms in general (Reich called this "orgone" energy)
parallels the states of matter that in an earlier age were called the
elements--fire, air, water and earth. As each state of matter becomes more
condensed the ether associated with it becomes more intensified. Thus in
the radiant, fire state we have warmth as the organizing principle. In the
gasseous, air state we have light. In the liquid, water state we have sound
or harmonious/dissonant associations of molecules that we know as
chemistry. Lastly in the solid, earth state we have the most intense
condition of the ether which is known in BD circles as the life ether.
Hydroponics grows plants in a solution of water loaded with various soluble
chemicals, but this does not provide the most organizational forces.
Steiner's second agricultural lecture points out these solid state
organizational, etheric forces are most intense in the crystalizing period
(in the northern hemisphere) in mid winter when they are received in the
siliceous rocks of the earth and transmitted to plants by way of clay. The
only way to get these forces in our food is to grow it in soil rather than
hydroponic tanks. Thus I don't know of any attempts to pass off
hydroponically grown food as biodynamic. There just isn't any way it
measures up. So it wouldn't make any difference if it was cheap and
efficient, it grows watery food that simply doesn't have that much life
force. It is insights like this that set biodynamics apart from the rest of
the organic movement, which simply doesn't know much about this sort of
thing.
Best,
Hugh Lovel
P.S. I might add to the above that as we have poisoned the earth and eroded
its topsoils we have diminished the vitality of soils, the atmosphere,
rainfall and the earth as a whole. There simply isn't as much natural life
force available as there used to be either for chemical or organic growers.
Unless the grower is doing something to replenish the life (organizational)
forces in his growing environment the produce will be lower in minerals,
sugars, complex amino acids (complete protein rather than so-called crude
protein) and so forth. When there is enough water available this produces
watery vegetables, but this condition is also reflected by greater
incidence of drought, especially when the atmospheric life forces related
to fruiting and ripening are deadened by pollution. Then you can have a
situation such as we had at our Atlanta organic farmers' market this past
summer where the two farms that best survived the drought and had the most
produce to sell were both using biodynamic preparations.
HL
Mark wrote:
>While I am an organic gardener, I posted a similar question a while ago
>because I too was told that "organic vegetables have more nutrients" than
>conventional ones. After many responses from the group it became clear
>that this was an old saw that had been passed around for years, and that
>the only measurable difference between organic and conventional vegetables
>was that organic had more dry matter. While I would welcome information
>supporting the claims we have heard, I think advocates of organic
>production need to emphasize the clear benefits of the practice: soil
>stewardship, safer for farmers and farmworkers and not laced with chemicals
>for consumers.
>
>Mark
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