Organic Offshoring: As Demand Rises, Increase In Imports Poses Safety Risks

Corn infected by the fungus Aspergillus which can produce aflatoxin (Iowa State IPM)

(This post originally appeared on Forbes, 6/3/15)

There is a trend in the organic food industry with the potential to damage the entire Organic brand.  This risk was highlighted by a recent Canadian Food Inspection Authority decision to institute mandatory mycotoxin screening of corn imported from India.  This began after CFIA found dangerous levels of aflatoxin in shipments intended for organic chicken feed.

A little background on aflatoxin. It is one of the most toxic and carcinogenic chemicals known.  It is the third highest cause of cancer death world wide. Aflatoxin is a serious threat to health.  So - highly toxic feed transported half way around the world seems seriously “off-brand” for organic. It should. Many consumers willingly pay a price premium based on their belief that organic means safer/better*.   That trust is being seriously violated by the phenomenon behind the recent Canadian incidents.

Canadian farmers can certainly produce wheat, and for the last 30 years
the gains have mostly been through yield (my graph based on FAOStats data)

A logical question is, “why would Canadians import corn from India when Canadian farmers are fully capable of producing that crop.” The answer is that Canadian production of organic corn (and other organic grains) has not kept up with demand. The same is true for the U.S. This shortfall has induced some animal producers and human food manufacturers to tap distant sources.  Why the gap?  Some of this is related to the three-year transition required for a farm to qualify as organic, but much stems from the fact that farmers are not being offered a high enough price premium for organic to justify the logistical, yield and risk-based costs of growing under the organic rules. It simply does not make economic sense for them to make that commitment when they know that the way they are normally farming is perfectly reasonable.  When buyers then choose to source their organic supplies from low-cost, off-shore sources, it only serves to entrench those inadequate premiums for the local producers.  The higher prices that consumers are willing to pay for organic are not being sufficiently passed along to the farmers in their own region.

This organic off-shoring phenomenon is much broader than some corn for chickens in Canada.  Much of the recent growth in organic sales has been outside of its traditional niche of fresh fruits and vegetables.  This growth has been in meat, dairy and packaged foods, all of which involve non-perishable ingredients which, like that Indian feed corn, can be cost-effectively shipped from around the world to Canada or other rich countries.  These importable ingredients include animal feeds, but also cereal grains/flours; dried milk, fruit and vegetable products; spices, nuts; fruit juice concentrates and frozen items. There can be mycotoxin issues with many of these ingredients, but in the rich world we have systems that manage that risk quite well.  If you go to the low cost market, there is no such guarantee. Andrew Porterfield has recently described enhanced pesticide risks associated with this same import trend.

Importation as such is not the problem.  There are many completely logical and safe reasons for international food trade from reputable sources.  The problem is that some of this organic-supply-driven-sourcing exposes us to crop production in regions that don’t have the basic environmental and food safety protections that we who live in the rich world normally have the privilege to assume.  Keeping fungal toxins out of the food supply requires careful attention to pest control, careful harvesting and proper storage.  It requires monitoring and rejection protocols.  These precautions are well integrated into developed world food systems. When companies go outside of the mainstream supply to cheaply fulfill organic or non-GMO demand, these safety features are often missing.  How often does that lead to dangerous contamination as in the Indian corn incident?  No one knows because there had been no routine testing of imports until this recent Canadian decision to look at one category.  Corn is certainly not the only ingredient with the potential for mycotoxin issues.  There is nothing in the organic rules to address these risks.  In fact the organic limitations on insecticide and biotech options increase the risk of the pest damage that initiates contamination.

The aflatoxin incident and policy change in Canada attracted very little attention in the North American press.  Perhaps it would be different if/when someone finds mycotoxin contamination in an organic human food ingredient.  It is tragic that this danger is still prevalent in many parts of the world, but it is absurd to be importing it so that it becomes a “rich world problem.”  If food companies are unwilling to pay farmers for the true cost of organic or non-GMO production, they should not be profiting from a consumer illusion of safety when in fact those customers are being put at greater risk.

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

Footnote:

*There is actually no convincing data to support the idea that organic is more nutritious.  There is also no reason for modern consumers to be afraid of pesticide residues on conventional food.  Some of the most environmentally beneficial farming options are not allowed or are impractical under the organic rules.  Consumer beliefs are also influenced by certain organic food marketers who actively misrepresent conventional farming as a way to enhance their own fear-based sales.

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Why Is The USDA Getting Involved In A 15th Method Of Food Labeling?

(This post originally appeared on Forbes, 5/28/15)
A couple of weeks ago I was deeply disappointed to read that the USDA might get involved in an aspect of “non-GMO food labeling.”  The marketing of non-GMO food is an opportunistic, fear-based phenomenon – not something worthy of aid from a science-oriented agency like USDA.  Also, if the goal is to allow consumers “know more about their food,” then why not transmit knowledge with context and perspective that would diminish, rather than promote, superstition? Printing was state-of-the-art in 1435.  We can do better in the 21^st century!

Superstition?

It may seem extreme for me to declare that the fear of GMO foods is a superstition, but consider the history of this phenomenon.  For two decades, the opponents of crop genetic engineering have promoted the idea that transgenics, a particular means of genetic modification, is something sinister and frightening.  Their arguments are typically accompanied by emotive images such as hypodermic needles full of colored liquids protruding from ripe fruits and vegetables.  Such images bear absolutely no connection to the actual process of plant genetic engineering.

Examples of what crops looked like before humans began the process of genetically modifying them
(From Genetic Literacy Project)

These websites don’t communicate the fact that virtually all crops have been “genetically modified” in many ways for centuries and that transgenics have been the most carefully introduced and independently tested of all.

Although all of the major scientific bodies around the world have affirmed the safety of “GMO crops,” the fear-based messaging has worked. This has created an up-selling opportunity in the food industry, and that kind of marketing is well served by the two word message, “non-GMO.”  The seller can tap in on all the emotive, doubt-sowing efforts to date without any potential confusion that would be created by knowing the full story.  It’s effectively a “right to not know.”

Wikipedia example of a scan code

In an era of scan codes and smart devices, a curious consumer could have all the resources they need in an interactive, multi-media form.  They could ask: “What are the ingredients in this food?”  “Where has it been sourced and why?”  “What is known about the safety of the ingredients and the food as a whole?”  “What does the nutrition labeling information on the back mean?”  “What kind of farms and farmers were involved in the production of this food?”  “Why do farmers choose to use certain agricultural technologies?”  Consumers could “know” a great deal.

A Suggested Role For USDA

The drawback with this is that as with all information available today, it is very hard for the consumer to sort out what is true.  Here is where a public agency with extensive expertise in the practice and science of agriculture could play an appropriate role.  They could be an independent “third party” that could vet the information offered via 21^st century methods.  To do so would require more resources for the USDA because their workers are already engaged in other important work.  As consumers, we would be better served by a modest increase in USDA funding via our taxes than by spending billions on “GMO-free” food marketed based on superstition. If you have not heard it in a while listen to Stevie Wonder’s classic song, “Superstition” , particularly the repeated lyric:

“When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer... superstition ain’t the way.”

Now imagine the lyric,

"When you're afraid of things you don't understand, and you pay more... superstition ain't the way."

Wikipedia image of Stevie Wonder from 1973 - Lyric slightly modified

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

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Pests In Paradise

Our adventure started here after an 8-mile hike to Snowmass Lake near Aspen, Colorado

(originally posted on Forbes, 5/11/15) 

I learned something very important about crop pests in a most unexpected setting – a paradise-like wilderness area in the Colorado Rockies.  It was the summer of 1978 and I had gotten married the year before. This was my first chance to share a favorite place, the Snowmass/Maroon Bells Wilderness Area, with my wife.  We backpacked into Snowmass Lake and day-hiked to high passes through huge meadows filled with beautiful wildflowers.  However, on this trip, I noticed details I had never observed on earlier visits as a suburb-dwelling teen.  With “new eyes” from my first year of agricultural training, I saw that many of the plants showed signs of insect feeding damage or gall formation.  They exhibited symptoms of fungal infection – such as rusts and leafspots.  There were pests in this paradise! And they were host specific – not interlopers carried in on the boots of visitors like us.

View from Buckskin Pass

Thinking about it, I realized that this wasn’t really surprising.  Plants have the unique “super power” of turning sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into the food that directly or indirectly feeds everything else – including us.  It makes perfect sense that insects and fungi have evolved to “harvest” that energy, in even this pristine ecosystem.  I then realized that what we call “pests” are simply part of the natural order.  Thus, it is to be expected that we often have to find ways to deal with “pests” of cultivated crops.  The need for pest control isn’t an artifact of human farming. Practical farming needs may complicate pest control, but the basic phenomenon of pests is entirely “natural.”

On one hand, we might say that a “pest” is simply a human concept for cases where this natural phenomenon interferes with our agenda.  However, it seems that plants “agree” with our assessment that these damaging, dependent organisms are pesty. Plants are obvious targets, but they don’t just take it.  I once heard a presentation about the genetics of a particular alpine wildflower that grows in exactly the same kind of meadows we were visiting in 1978. This species has genetic “factions” employing two different strategies to deal with insects that want to eat it.  One is to put energy into rapid growth and seed production, so that even with bug damage, the species survives.  The other strategy is making chemicals to protect the plant from the bugs, leaving less energy for seed production.  Depending on the season, one strategy or the other is more successful.

Chemical defense is common among plants.  In some cases we have come to like the pesticidal chemicals they make. The caffeine in coffee and the capsaicin in hot peppers were “intended” by those plants to ward off “pests.”  Many vegetables we enjoy, such as tomatoes, eggplants and cauliflower, still make some of a not-so-nice “natural insecticide” called nicotine.  But don’t worry. You would have to eat an enormous amount to be hurt by the nicotine, caffeine or capsaicin.

So since pests are part of the natural order, and since plants fight back with their own “pesticides,” human use of pesticides makes sense as part of a pest management strategy for the plants we tend.  That is particularly true now that we have developed many products that are quite specific for certain pests, and very low risk for us or for the environment. Pesticides are also necessary tools for those farming under the organic rules.  Synthetic pesticide residues are present at even less consequential levels in our produce than plant-made chemicals.

A slightly modified quote from the Princess Bride (modified from https://www.pinterest.com/lemai13/the-princess-bride/)

If you have the chance, I encourage you to visit those Colorado wildflower meadows.  They are beautiful, and unless you look for it, you probably won’t notice the battle between plants and pests that is going on in the background.  The wildflowers survive, even with the damage.  The season is also short, so there are not many generations of the pests. We humans require a higher standard of pest protection for our crops. To make the most responsible use of our land, water, fuel or other inputs, we cannot tolerate too much pest damage or the crop is diminished.  Besides, as even my grand daughter realizes, pests are yucky!  

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

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Does Science Belong On Your Dinner Plate?

(Originally published on Forbes 5/5/15) 

I was recently asked to give a talk in Toronto addressing this question: “Does science belong on my plate?” The quick answer is:

“No, because Science isn’t a “thing” you can serve or eat. Science is really a verb - a process, a method, a conversation.”

A longer, better answer is:

“There is a rich history of innovation and change in the human food supply extending over millennia. More recent innovation examples that have been achieved using sound science are a continuation of that tradition. They certainly belong on our plates.”

Many consumers have the impression that, until recently, food and food production was something little changed. This mistaken view is understandable considering modern society’s isolation from the production of food, and marketers’ penchant for using romanticized imagery and narratives to sell food products.

This is a great bread product, but that image has nothing to do with how the wheat for that is produced today.

The truth is that innovation and change have been central to food and farming throughout human history - both before and during the scientific era. One of my goals as a new Forbes contributor will be to tell some of the stories behind interesting and important innovations that have changed what is “on our plates” in very positive ways.

Feast or Famine

From the beginning, a fundamental challenge for humanity has been that sources of food tend to be either over-abundant or scarce. Thus, innovations around food storage and preservation have been key to our survival (e.g. drying, salting, pickling, cheese making, fermentation…). Even the ancient storage of dry grains involved innovations like using herbs to line the urns to reduce damage from insect pests.

Cold storage has been used to spread-out the supply of food beginning with caves or cellars. Later people used stored ice from the winter, and eventually came up with refrigeration. Susanne Freidberg’s excellent book, Fresh, describes just how transformative and controversial the innovation of mechanical refrigeration was as it was slowly adopted around the turn of the 20^th century.

Genetics

Another major theme of human food-supply innovation has been “genetic modification.” The “natural,” pre-domesticated forms of our food plants are barely recognizable vs their modern forms. Over millennia, humans consciously or unconsciously selected for more desirable specimens, and in so doing, they achieved dramatic genetic changes even with no understanding of the underlying biology. While this worked well for grains and vegetables, a few thousand years ago people realized that you cannot propagate a desirable specimen of a tree or vine by replanting its seeds, because they don’t grow up to be the same as the parent. So, people innovated various ways to “clone” these desirable cultivars – rooting, grafting, budding etc. A “transgenic” innovation of that category saved the European grape industry in the 1870s when it was on the verge of collapse due to a deadly new pest. The innovated solution was to use American grape species as the protective rootstock on which to graft venerable varieties of the traditional species, Vitis vinifera. That system still protects virtually all of the world’s grapes today.

This cool vineyard I saw in Sicily a few weeks ago survives because it is on American rootstock

In the last century, increasing scientific understanding has enabled continued innovation to enhance the food supply in terms of quality and availability. By better understanding plant physiology, innovative controlled atmosphere storage systems were developed that have greatly enhanced our access to fresh fruits throughout the year. Similar packaging and shipping innovations have reduced post-harvest waste and expanded value-added, “fresh cut” options for consumers. Science-based advances in chemistry, biology, and toxicology have enabled innovative new methods of crop pest management with far better health and environmental profiles. Rapidly advancing understanding of genetics has enabled a growing and increasingly precise “tool box” for crop innovation (cross breeding, hybridization, wide crosses, mutation breeding, genetic engineering, marker assisted selection, genome editing).

The long tradition of food and agricultural innovation continues, enhanced by the application of the scientific method.  So, yes – “science” in that form certainly belongs on our plates.  I'm happy to talk about this in the comments here and/or at savage.sd@gmail.com 

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My Comments To The USDA On Agricultural Coexistence

Today I submitted a comment on the official USDA regulatory forum on the question of coexistence in agriculture.  Here is a link for background from a workshop on this topic held in North Carolina this March.  Here is a link of you want to comment (>4500 people have so far and the comment period is open until May 11, 2015).

The point I hoped to make was that coexistence between different kinds of farming is something people have known how to do for a very long time, but it requires a certain level of reasonableness and cooperative spirit.  That is rarely a problem when you are talking about real farmers and if there are rational standards for "adventitious presence."  The issues to do with coexistence today arise from downstream players making unreasonable demands and by those which are not, by their own statements, interested in coexistence.  The USDA seems to be trying hard to make this an open dialog, but there are aspects of this debate that need to be recognized for what they are.

Text Of The Comment I Submitted 4/28/15

While the coexistence of diverse commodity and identity preserved crops is a long-standing, successful feature of American agriculture, some aspects of the current coexistence discussion warrant careful consideration.  Particularly for row crops, the definition of acceptable “adventitious presence” is critical in any identity preservation effort.  That threshold drives the costs of isolation and segregation protocols as well as the level of risk for the producer.  The threshold of adventitious presence should logically be driven by objective issues of functionality in the intended use and/or by levels that are practical in the real world.  That sort of system has long enabled coexistence in farming.

The current problems for co-existence arise in what many participants in the North Carolina workshop described as "sensitive markets."  Principally this means products intended for "non-GMO" and/or organic markets.  Unfortunately, a significant proportion of those markets have been established at the consumer end through fear-based marketing and advocacy.  For these IP segments there is no "reasonable level of adventitious presence," because the categories were never based on any reason-based functionality or safety criterion.  Perhaps "fear-based marketing" sounds like a harsh term, but if you look at examples of promotional campaigns generated by very large, for-profit, organic and non-GMO food companies, it’s hard to come up with a friendlier sounding descriptor:

1. This recent video produced by Organic Only, a consortium of organic marketers including may of the largest ones:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypF15z3euwM

2. Several productions from the large, non-GMO promoting fast food chain, Chipotle:

http://farmedanddangerous.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUtnas5ScSE

3. This humorous, but not fair 2005 production from the Organic Trade Association: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVrIyEu6h_E

Coexistence requires, by definition, some level of fair play and mutual respect from the parties involved.  The corn and soybean growing neighbors who are trying to make a living in commodity and IP markets may have that sort of working relationship, but the demands coming down to them from "sensitive markets" are often driven by rather successful, fear-for-profit business models.   These downstream drivers are certainly not on the "coexistence" page at all – in fact exactly the opposite.  Some explicitly state that their goal is the elimination of biotech crops via the agency of GMO or non-GMO labeling and its effects on markets.  As is usually the case, the farmers have virtually no leverage in these exchanges.  With this enormous gulf in terms of power and intention, the prospects for rational co-existence are not encouraging.

There are certainly players in the organic and gmo-free segments that could be reasonable participants in a coexistence discussion, but their voices do not represent or apparently influence other important players.  It would be irresponsible to fail to explicitly acknowledge this “elephant in the room.”

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Why Organic Can't Fulfill Our Food Supply Ideals

Almost any farmer or consumer could agree on the following ideals for our agricultural system:

"Farming in ways that are best for us, best for the environment, and best for providing an adequate food supply."

I believe that these are the goals and ideals of organic customers and organic farmers, and I share them. If organic could deliver on these “triple best” goals, I would be among its strongest supporters, but I don't believe that it can.  The organic rules are based on the assumption that “natural” is always best.  That assumption originated in a pre-scientific era, and it does not hold up to what we have learned over the last century.  The "natural" definition is great for marketing purposes, but often not the optimal criterion to guide farming practices. 

The Original Contribution of the Organic Movement

The important contribution of organic early in the last century was its focus on improving soil health/quality.  The pioneers of the organic movement worked out certain farming methods using “natural fertilizers” to mitigate the nutrient-depleting and soil-degrading effects of the plow-intensive farming of the late 19^th and early 20^th century.  The organic focus on natural also meant that it eschewed some of the early pesticides, which were later found to be problematic for health and the environment.  For a period of time, organic may have been, in fact, the best farming option for us and for the environment.

A pretty picture, but for soil erosion and soil health this kind of farming was highly undesirable

Since then we have learned more and more about environmental systems, genetics, microbiology and human health.  Based on that, increasingly rigorous regulatory processes were put in place and farming practices have changed dramatically.  Sometimes organic growers were in the lead in making those changes.  But increasingly, the “natural” constraints of organic are making it difficult or even impossible for organic farmers to implement what we now know to be best for us, best for the environment, or best for the food supply.  I'd like to describe six specific examples of those limitations.

1. Nitrogen Fertilization

One of the greatest challenges of farming is providing a growing crop with the necessary mineral nutrients when it needs them. When nutrients are free in the soil and not being actively absorbed by the growing crop, they have the potential to move into ground water, or to wash off into surface water.  If they do, they can become health issues and/or foster algal blooms that cause “dead zones” in bodies of water.  Excess nitrogen in soils can lead to the generation of the potent greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide. There are specific conditions under which natural fertilizers like manures or compost can reduce these problems, but there are also conditions under which the uncontrolled, nutrient release pattern from natural fertilizers can be quite problematic. Depending on how and when they are delivered, “synthetic” fertilizers can be deployed in ways that do a better job of providing the crop’s need without as much risk of these forms of pollution. For example, drip irrigation systems are very efficient ways to deliver fertilizers but cannot be used for most forms of organic fertilizers. Triple-best farming requires the ability to use both natural and synthetic fertilizers in the right settings and with the right delivery methods. There is even the possibility of making synthetic nitrogen using renewable energy.  

2. Low Risk Pesticide Use

What makes a pesticide safe for us or for the environment is not related to whether it is “natural."  Some of the most toxic chemicals known are produced in nature. The reason that the American consumer can have confidence in the safety of crop pesticide use is that the EPA demands a great deal of data for its multi-dimensional risk assessment for any chemical, natural or not, that is going to be used for pest control.  These tests involve multiple dimensions of human toxicity as well as assessments of environmental fate and environmental impact. Some, but not all “natural products” meet those standards.  Some, but not all, synthetic products meet those standards.  The details of how synthetic or natural pesticides can be used are then dictated in “label requirements” specific to the properties of that chemical (e.g. how long before the crop is harvested, what worker protection standards are needed, what considerations are needed relative to sensitive environmental settings…).  It is this regulatory process, not naturalness, which ensures environmental safety and residue levels that are safe even by very conservative standards.  In many cases the "synthetic" options are the very best choice among the approved options. 
(Note: the graph of California use data shown earlier has been removed.  Sulfur classified in that figure as Category II is actually Category IV for oral acute toxicity, Category III for dermal toxicity)

3. Fully Integrated Pest Control

Baby Spinach Growing In Coastal California

Organic farmers have been early adopters of many pest control options other than classical, chemical pesticides (genetic resistance, biological controls, crop rotations, natural pest enemies, and pheromone-confusion…), but at least since the 1970s, this has also been a growing component in “conventional agriculture” called Integrated Pest Management(IPM).  In many crop systems, modern synthetic pesticides are one important component in these mixed approaches.  For example, there is a problem in the current, California spinach crop, which has around 50% organic production.  There is a disease of that crop called downy mildew and it is transmitted from season to season via survival in the seed.  Through conventional breeding, it has been possible to develop spinach that is resistant to that fungus.  The conventional growers also use a relatively benign synthetic fungicide as a seed treatment against the disease - thus they are using an integrated program of genetics and a fungicide.  For the organic production, the seed treatment is not allowed.  Without the multiple control strategy, the fungus has rapidly mutated to get around the genetic resistance, and six good sources of resistance have been lost within a few years.  Each time, the newly virulent strains have emerged first in the organic fields. This gap in the IPM program is now putting the entire California spinach industry at risk.  There are similarly precarious situations in other crops.

4. Biorationals

It takes a lot of money to do the testing needed to commercially develop and insure the safety of any new agricultural pesticide - more than $200MM.  That level of spending is appropriate to meet our modern safety standards, but it means that the commercial development of any new synthetic pesticide can only be justified for a very large market within the agricultural realm.  For problems that only affect a small part of the food supply, it is not possible to justify the investment in a new option.  Fortunately, the EPA has a special, lower cost registration process for low toxicity chemicals that already occur within the food supply. 

The sprouts of potatoes are actually rather toxic, so don't eat them

A good example of this is a new product for preventing sprouting in stored potatoes.  The compound 3-decen-2-one already occurs in at low levels in potatoes as well as in mushrooms, tuna fish, yogurt and soy.  An identical, synthetic version of the chemical can now be used with stored potatoes and it is a better, safer option than the old sprout inhibitor, CIPC.  Because of a purist interpretation of the organic rules, the new sprout inhibitor cannot be used for organic potatoes.  Instead they are treated repeatedly with clove oil – a more costly and less effective option with no other “triple best” advantages.

5. Soil Building

Starting in 1960, farmers have been working out farming systems that do not require physical tillage of the soil.  When these are combined with the use of cover crops and GPS guided equipment use, it is possible to raise the important row crops (wheat, barley, canola, soybeans, corn, cotton…) in no-till or minimum-tillage systems that improve soil health and quality.  It is also an important “best” system to prevent soil erosion, reduce water pollution risk, and sequester carbon to mitigate climate risk. 

No-till Soybeans Following Corn

This system is much more like the way soils are built in natural prairie habitats and is not dependent on outside inputs of organic matter as is the case in the typical organic systems.  In order for these new options to be pursued efficiently on a large scale, herbicides are necessary as are controls for certain pests which are favored in a non-tillage system.  Organic growers don’t have many of the practical tools to manage these issues, and so they are ironically unable to fully or cost-effectively pursue these best, reduced tillage protocols.

6. Genetic Improvements

Genetic modification of crop plants has always been an important means of making farming better able to meet our food supply goals.  In recent history it has become possible to make more precise genetic modifications using the tools of genetic engineering – tools which were in fact drawn from nature. For example,  restriction endonuclease enzymes occur naturally and cut DNA at specific target sites, and the Ti plasmid of Agrobacterium which inserts DNA into chromosomes of plants.  In the last few years, even more precise and efficient tools for genetic modification have been discovered within a group of ancient microbes we call the Archaea (e.g. the CRISPR-Cas9system). 

Diagram of the CRISPR system via Wikipedia

As deployed within the unprecedented and rigorous regulatory framework for "GMO Crops", these tools have become an important means through which triple-best crop improvements can be made.  In her book “Tomorrow’s Table,” UC Davis molecular biologist Pamela Ronald has made an articulate argument for why these tools should be embraced for organic farming. But such suggestions are not even considered by the fierce defenders of the organic rules.  Even when genetic engineering is used to transfer something like a gene from wild potatoes into commercially relevant potatoes, the resulting triple-best crop will not be available to organic farmers (as in the case of the new, Innate 2 potato from Simplot)

European experiment showing healthy potatoes on the left that have the wild potato gene vs susceptible potatoes on the right without that gene

 A Missed Opportunity to Embrace Best Practices by Organic

There was a window of opportunity in 1990 when the organic rules could have been updated to use science-based criteria rather than the restrictive obligation of natural.  In that year, the US Congress tasked the USDA with formulating a national organic standard, and that research-oriented agency was inclined to bring modern knowledge into their rule-making process.  Such an approach was vigorously opposed by key elements of the existing organic advocacy community.  When the national standard emerged in final form in 2000,  at had only enshrined the "natural requirement" which continues to limit the ability of farmers to pursue many triple-best strategies such as those I’ve described above. 

Unfortunately, some of those who market organic products, and some who advocate for organic, continue to make unsupportable claims that organic is best for us and for the environment.  Many consumers accept these claims and believe that they are doing the right thing by paying the premium prices for organic items.  If we really had a food supply that was only safe and responsible for those able and willing to pay higher prices, that would represent a huge failing of public policy.  Fortunately, that is not the case.  Consumers and farmers with high ideals for the food supply can support farming in the ever-innovative mainstream system as it continues to find ways to farm that are best for us, best for the environment.

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

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