The 20/20 Organic Food elicited a few comments about food quality
and nutritional differences between organic and conventional.
As an alternative to more scientific studies as the bell-weather for
descriminating between organic vs conventional, I offer the following
story, relayed to me by Richard Thompson the farmer from Boone,
Iowa:
Richard Thompson, as many of you know, is a well known
farmer in Boone, Iowa. His farm has been featured in The
New Farm magazine, he regularly conducts on-farm research
with the Practical Farmers of Iowa, and his annual field day has
been a popular sustainable farming event for many years.
One year Mr. Thompson pulled corn plants with intact root systems
from his field to demonstrate the organic-biological production
method. For whole plant comparisons, he pulled conventional corn
stalks out of a neighboring field raised by conventional methods.
It is fun to see and talk the about differences in root ball size,
appearance, or whatever, with these side by side comparisons that
illustrate differences in farming systems.
Following the field day, he was too busy so he just stacked the corn
plants in the back of the garage and forgot about them. About six
weeks later he came across those corn stalks he'd forgotten about.
On observation, it turns out that mice had eaten all the ears of
corn off the biologically-organically grown plants but did not touch
the ears of corn from the conventionally-grown plants. In essence,
he had just observed a preference feeding trial by on-farm mice.
Some months later Mr. Thompson was attending an agricultural
conference where the topic of fertilizers and food nutritional
comparisons between agricultural systems became a topic of
discussion. One or two soil scientists declared that plants can't
tell the difference between organic and conventional fertilizers,
that nitrogen is nitrogen is nitrogen.
At this point, Mr. Thompson rose to relay the story about the mice
eating the organic-biological corn but not touching the
chemically-grown corn.
To summarize his point, he came up with the following statement:
"Men say no, but mice know the difference"
It should be noted I have used the term organic-biological as a
descriptor. I don't know for certain whether this field was organic
or not. I know Richard Thompson employs biological farming
methods and that is the critical point.
Organic is not the only alternative farming system. In fact,
organic is a minor farming system in comparison to the total
acreage under management by low-input and eco-farming methods.
These farmers emply plenty of biological farming methods, they
are reducing or eliminating use of herbicides and pesticides, but
they may also use certain chemical fertilizers. The eco-farmers in
particular tend to employ sophisticated approaches towards fertility
that may include goals of enhanced pest management and crop
quality.
Nevertheless, this mice story speaks volumes in favor of biological
farming method in general. We have to look at food quality and
nutritional differences from a holistic perspective, not just
comparisons between mineral analysis.
For example, William Albrecht at the University of Missouri was very
keen to look at the effect of fertilizer systems on animals; i.e.,
biological feeding trials. In addition, he would feed the animals
through several generations to see the effect on progeny.
Organic agriculture, and specifically the biodynamic researchers,
have made tremendous strides towards understanding food quality and
furthering the methods of healthy soil management that improve
food quality and food vitality.
OK, here's one more story.
Just a couple weeks ago many of us were down in Jekyll Island,
Georgia to attend the Southern Sustainable Ag Working Group
conference. There, a long-time biodynamic farmer named Hugh Lovel
had a booth display. In response to on-going threads regarding
differences between organic vs conventional, Hugh is known to just
say "let the consumer taste the difference!"
At his booth Hugh had some jars of dried herbs and red pepper.
The fragrance and smell of these biodynamically grown products
was simply amazing, they had a superb fragrance!
There is plenty to say in favor of food quality grown by holistic
farming methods versus chemically-intensive farming methods.
The progressive herb companies that purchase organically grown
herbs for their prized medicinal herb products know what the
story is.
The California and European wine growers who are employing organic
and biodynamic farming methods to enhance the subtle flavours of the
berry figured this out too.
Steve Diver
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Mar 12 2000 - 14:00:21 EST