THE Annals of Internal Medicine recently published a Stanford University study that examined 40 years of crop growing research to determine if organically grown fruits and vegetables were more nutritious than the conventionally grown food crops of the modern industrial farming system.
The Stanford study and a followup opinion column in the New York Times created a thunderstorm of controversy in the U.S. On one side, those who believe that the industrial farming machine is best suited to feed the hungry billions of people in our world. On the other side, organic farmers and millions of people who believe that genetically engineered foods and pesticide loaded food production is slowly killing humans every time they sit down to eat dinner. Canadian farmers generally grow crops with industrial farming methods similar to their American counterparts.
In the New York Times op-ed, columnist Roger Cohen stated, "Organic has long since become an ideology, the romantic back-to-nature obsession of an upper middle class able to afford it and oblivious, in their affluent narcissism. . . ."
Cohen went on to say "the (Stanford) study found that fruits and vegetables labelled organic are, on average, no more nutritious than their cheaper conventional counterparts." This led to outrage and criticism against Cohen and the Stanford researchers. According to naturalnews.com, "One of the key co-authors of the study, Dr. Ingram Olkin, has a deep history as an 'anti-science' propagandist working for Big Tobacco. Stanford University has also been found to have deep financial ties to Cargill, a powerful proponent of genetically engineered foods and an enemy of GMO labeling Proposition 37 (California)."
These food growing controversies make it difficult to understand who is right, who is selling something, who is trying to protect market share and who is genuinely sincere about the issue. The only comment that put the whole debate into perspective for me was made by Donna DeViney of Soilent Greens, responding to Cohen's op-ed column by commenting at nytimes.com, "Organic farmers like me gladly sell our products to restaurants and grocery stores. We have to make a living too. The slightly higher prices offset the admittedly higher labor hours needed to not poison ourselves, our customers, and the planet. Spraying Roundup is easy. Mulching and hoeing in the hot Texas sun on this little patch of organic acreage is way freaking harder. But we find it worth the extra work to not develop tumors, disease, genetic defects, or the sense that we're above it all, out here in the actual dirt . . . you know, where food comes from."
DeViney's comments also highlight a big part of the problem with determining which food production method is healthier by showing how both sides disagree over what exactly constitutes healthy food production. Is it just the nutritional value of the food? Is it the way food is grown? Should the definition of healthy food also include food grown with or without pesticides or genetically engineered crops?
It's a big money issue with powerful players who stand to lose or make billions of dollars depending on which choices consumers make. And consumers in Canada are currently not told on food packaging labels if their food contains pesticide residue or genetically engineered food.
There are people who believe that organic farming produces healthier and better tasting food with the added health benefit of having no pesticides residue on their fruits and vegetables. And that organic farming protects the land and grows food sustainably so children can have something to eat in their future. Remember that pesticide residue limits on fruits and vegetables in Canada are set by Health Canada which determines pesticide residue levels deemed to be acceptable for human consumption.
On the other side of the debate are large multinational biotech (genetically engineered food), fertilizer and pesticide companies that make billions by selling their products to a hungry world.
Those companies also routinely lobby government bureaucrats and politicians to maintain the status quo of industrial farming machine laws and regulations. There are people who believe you simply cannot feed the world by growing organically. As Cohen said in his New York Times op-ed, "To feed a planet of nine billion people, we are going to need high yields not low yields; we are going to need genetically modified crops; we are going to need pesticides and fertilizers and other elements of the industrialized food processes that have led mankind to be better fed and live longer than at any time in history."
In the end, consumers hold all the power in the food debate as they decide on organic versus chemically grown by voting with their wallets at the grocery store. So before you buy food for Christmas dinner, seek the truth and make your food choices wisely.
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