I kept telling myself that it is time to update my blog but I am still too busy with my assignments and stuff. So here it is, for the first time I am actually slack enough to put my academic assignment from uni straight up here in my blog. It does have a point though, I hope.
IntroductionOrganic foods is the fastest growing session in the food industry worldwide, with more than 15-20% annual growth in retail sales comparing to the 2-3% of the food industry as a whole. (Willer and Yussefi, 2006) On one hand the strong growth reflects the awareness of organic food to consumers and the strong concern of them towards their well-being. On the other hand, many of the consumers who ‘eat organic’ do not even have a proper idea of what organic food is and what are the benefits of organic foods, let alone what impact organic foods have in terms of the environment, growers and various other aspects. Most consumers who ‘eat organic’ believe that organic foods are beneficial to health, more nutritious than conventional foods, environmentally friendly, taste better, sustainable. Is that really so?
What are Organic Foods?According to a USDA definition (NAL, 2002), organic food is
“Produced without: antibiotics; growth hormones; most conventional pesticides; petroleum- based fertilizers or sewage sludge-based fertilizers; bioengineering; or ionizing radiation”
This definition is similar to the definitions given by other scientific authorities; however, there is no implications of health benefit, food safety, enhanced nutrition or even sustainability of the farming practise in the definition of organic foods.
History
Before broad-acre/industrialized farming was introduced in early 20th century, all farming practise could be considered ‘organic’ according to the definition referred to above. It was long after the industrialization of farming that the term ‘organic food’ emerged.
In the earlier years of organic foods while no certification authorities are available, people who are interested in organic foods have to buy direct from the grower, visit their niche farms and get to know the farming practise going on in the farm, the so-called ‘Know your farmer, know your food.’ With the continuous growth of demand for organic food, certification authorities for organic foods were initialized by either government or private organizations and the certified products are then labelled ‘certified organic’ in the marketplace for identification.
Practise
As in practise, production of organic foods could use certain chemicals at limited level if they are sourced naturally instead of synthetically. For example, Bt toxin, a bacterial extract from Bacillus thuringensis, is applied in organic farming as a ‘natural’ pesticide. (Goldberg, 2000)
Instead of sticking to cultivating on niche/boutique style small farms when organic foods were first introduced into the market, as the demand for organic food products continues to grow, large broad-acre style farms practising organic production had emerged. There are concerns that large-scale farming of organic products undergoing similar processes as conventional production, and furthers the intimacy of farmers and consumers to their food. As a result, the concept of ‘beyond organic’ is developed, which aims at stricter legislation on organic production without compromising to synthetics. (Pollan, 2006)
Certification
As demands for organic foods growing fast that people who do not have time or willingness to get to know their farmers are willing to eat organic, many governments establish specific agencies for organic product certification. In Australia the most recognized certified organic products bear a 'Australian Certified Organic’ label awarded by Biological Farmers of Australia.
Current Condition
Organic food is the fastest growing section of the food industry within Australia and around the globe, which accounts for 2-3% of the total retail sales in the year 2006. (Willer and Yussefi, 2006) A large proportion of Australian organic foods are exported to Europe and Japan. While traditional niche farms continue to grow in numbers, the industrialization of organic production is kicking in with large cooperative farms producing in large scales while their products are still certified organic and a large proportion of the products of such farms go into the organic section of supermarkets. (Willer and Yussefi, 2006)
This emergence of large-scale organic farming had sparked debates on whether the cooperative organic farms should still be certified organic. Supporters would say the large scale of organic production helps with the problems of limited availability to demanding customers and relieve the premium price of organic foods and more importantly, take up more market share for organic foods. Opponents of large scale organic farming insist that this architecture undermines the sustainability and community development of organic foods, which are the silent and unregulated implementations of organic farming. (Lyons, 2001)
Difference of Organic Foods Comparing to Conventional FoodsBiology
Contrary to many beliefs, there is no biological difference when comparing conventional products to organic. The plants and animals function the same way despite the different approaches in planting/feeding because such differences do not affect the physiology of the plant/animal. For example, plants will take up nitrogen the same way (uptake from the root system as ions dissolved in water) no matter whether it was from manure or synthetic fertilizer, plants recognizes the ions not the source of the ion. Animals do not recognize whether their feed was from organic crops or not in the same way.
Health
There are suggestions that organic foods are healthier to consume than conventional foods, in the sense that organic foods are produced in a more natural way using natural supplies. In fact, as less chemical is applied to organic foods, they are healthier in the sense that less chemical residues would present in organic foods. At the same time, less application of chemical is likely to expose the crops to pest and microbial attacks, which may pose health risks on bio-toxins and infections.
Hygiene
As manure is used in organic production of crops, faecal contamination such as Salmonella and pathogenic E. coli could present a hazard in the product. Although the risk is low as the manure used has to go through disinfection treatments before application, the risk is still higher than conventional foods using fertilizers that are not manure-sourced. (Goldberg, 2000)
Natural Toxins
Preservatives, herbicides and pesticides are strictly limited for application in the production of organic foods. As a result the risk of natural toxins developed by fungi or other organisms growing on the plant may increase. However, under current study no evidence is supporting this claim.
Chemical Residual
As strict limitations are applied to the practise of organic farming, organic foods are expected to have less chemical residues comparing to conventional food product.
A study (Lu et al., 2006) had shown that organophosphorus, a widely used conventional pesticide level in the body dropped dramatically when changing the diet of elementary school children to organic foods. As for children, pesticide uptake of the body is mainly through diet, replacing conventional food with organic food which contains far less chemical residue cuts the main source of uptake of pesticides in children. This is one aspect that organic foods are better than conventional foods.
GM foods should also be mentioned here. With biotechnological engineering, pesticides could be replaced by introducing genes that expressed as pesticidal proteins in the plants, which kills the pest if it tries to attack the crop. This method literally reduces the need of application of pesticide to zero without risking the yield as in the case of organic products.
Taste/Nutrition
Supporters of organic foods always talk about how much better organic foods taste comparing to conventional foods. However, many blind tests had failed to differentiate the difference in taste between organic and conventional foods, (Goldberg, 2000) instead, it might be more of a psychological influence. Besides that, organic food producers do focus on improving the taste of their food produced (Clarke et al., 2008) in a bid to win over customers who do not believe in the cause of eating organic.
People tend to think that organic foods are more nutritious than conventional foods, through the implication of the term ‘organic food’ itself. Again, there is no evidence of better nutrition value for organic foods comparing to conventional to date. (Goldberg, 2000)
On the other hand, organic foods do have the potentials to be more tasty and nutritious than conventional foods when it comes to grocery shopping in the markets or supermarkets. As less preservative was approved for organic production, organic products are more subjective to spoilage and hence the shelf life would be reasonably shorter than conventional foods, which means they could be fresher when reaching consumers’ kitchens. Fresher food does mean tastier and more nutritious food, but that is not actually a benefit of organic food itself.
Environmental Impact
Supporters of organic food claim that organic farming has less impact on the environment because the application of toxic chemicals such as organophosphorus are prohibited in the practise, plus that no fossil oil based fertilizers are used so that greenhouse gas release could be significantly lower than conventional farming. However, increased cattle numbers to produce enough manure would also produce additional greenhouse gases. Burp of cattle is the main source of methane, a greenhouse gas far more effective than carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. Methane is the second most contributing climate change driver after carbon dioxide at a far lower concentration (Forster et al., 2007), and it would eventually oxidize into carbon dioxide and water in the presence of oxygen.
Energy Efficiency
Energy efficiency is a great concern when it comes to farming with the rising cost of crude oil and other fossil sourced energy while any renewable energy alternative is not yet industrialized at a broad scale and at low cost, while the price of agricultural products continue to drop. For conventional farming, higher yield is assured by application of petrol-based fertilizers and pesticides and the heavy machinery to apply them. If a large scale organic farm is the same size as a conventional farm in the same area and they use the same sort of machinery the energy consumption for sowing, irrigation and harvesting should be the same. So it is only a question of whether the additional chemicals applied worth the increased yield in conventional farming, the Yield session of this article suggests that in this case organic farming could be more energy efficient. If the organic farm concerned is a niche style farm the energy consumption would almost definitely be higher.
ProfitabilityYield
As modern technologies such as fertilizers, pesticides, advanced breeds are restricted to be used in organic farming, the yield of organic products is reasonably lower than conventional. It was the new technologies applied to farming that enables the planet to produce 300% as much of food on the same amount of land comparing to a century ago hiring far less people. (ERS, 2008) One study in 2002 had found that organically grown crops are around 20% lower in terms of yield with, with a 34-54% save on fertilizers and energy, 97% save on pesticides under current technology. (Maeder et al., 2002)
Pricing
The prices of organic foods are significantly higher than conventional foods. The causes of higher price include more labour employed per unit production, smaller farm sizes hence smaller buying power for supplies, slower growth of crops and animals without application of growth hormones during production, risk of pest damage due to limited pesticide application, shorter shelf life due to limited preservatives and a higher margin expected from the farmers who grow organic. There are some costs saved for organic products too, such as less chemical and less machinery used on organic farms than conventional farms.
Misleading Marketing?GM is not Good HENCE Organic is?
In the first place, there had been no evidence so far supporting the view that GM foods are any less healthy or more damaging to the environment than conventional foods contrary to many fears, for the following reasons:
1. Consumption of foods does not mean changing the consumer’s genes, all of the nucleic acid chains are broken down and no longer represent any gene codes in the digestion system, where they are then absorbed as nucleic acids for the formation of new nucleic acid chains representing the genes of the consumer.
2. In some cases GM foods are modified crops that dedicatedly enhance the well-being of human, they can be more nutritious than conventional or organic food is the expression of a particular nutrient is added to the gene. The ‘golden rice’ is a perfect example, fortified with vitamin A planting in developing countries where severe deficiency of vitamin A causes blindness and even death as people in those countries do not have reliable source of vitamin A in their diet otherwise.
3. In terms of environmental impact, GM crops could be engineered so that they are pest-proof and more productive than conventional crops, which mean less chemical (fertilizers and pesticides) would be applied to the land and hence less harm is done to the environment. Tillage of the field is also minimized due to efficient weed management under the GM farming system, which maintains soil structure, traps greenhouse gases in the soil, avoids wind erosion and reserves nitrogen source in the field.
4. Ecologically, GM growers are trying to minimize the impact of GM crops in the ecosystem. There would be a certain size of ‘refuge’ land where crops are non-GM for GM crop production in case that resistance to the pesticidal proteins builds up in the pest population. The mechanism of how refuge works is if a few pests happened to be a mutation that could handle the pesticidal gene, when no refuge available the replication will be limited among these few pests as others die out and eventually the resistant gene would become common in the population; when there is a refuge around, the other pests could be fed on the refuge so that the resistant gene does not expand in the population while the crops are merely affected.
5. There had been studies and researches going on for 15 years before the first GM product is available to the consumers after its development, which is longer than any of the new drugs approved. (Goldberg, 2000) The researches are still going on and GM products are still refused by many of the governments fearing the ‘uncertainty’ of health and environmental issues of GM food.
6. Conventional breeding affects more genes in food than the genetic modification process; moreover, none of the currently used crop breeds appear naturally, they are all domesticated by human to make them suitable for consumption and with feasible yield. GM process is specific, acting only on the target gene/genes, while conventional breeding is completely blindness not knowing what is happening before the outcomes show. Some of the even severer processes of non-specific gene modification such as γ-irradiation are approved for the market, e.g. the yellow or orange capsicums widely available.
As mentioned in the previous sessions, organic foods are no more beneficial to human health than conventional foods in terms of nutritional value. On the food safety side, organic foods have less chemical residuals than conventional foods but might pose a higher risk on faecal contamination. However, GM foods seem to be a have-it-all product, not having problems with conventional foods nor organic foods. It is not responsible saying that GM food is not good and even less hence organic is good.
Feed the WorldLand
With the yield expected from organic farming, it is not possible that organic food could feed the current population in the world, let alone the growth in the future. It was estimated that organic farming could at most feed 4 billion people on all arable lands available on the planet. In addition, cattle which produce manure require large amount of land to be fed on. (Leonard, 2006) The claims of most of the manure source currently present in the industry is not collected (Leonard, 2006) is not persuasive enough because arable land alone is not sufficient.
Developing countries
Producing organic is another sense of ‘feeding the world’ for developing countries producing organic products for export to the developed world, which produce economic benefits for the growers in those countries. Cuba is a perfect example, with the disbandment of the Soviet Union and the embargo by the United States this country lost supply of agricultural chemicals and was forced to produce organic because the supply of fossil based chemicals are cut. The country is now self-sufficient of food and exports citrus to the EU and the UK, making the country a major supplier of organic food. (Office of Global Analysis, 2008)
Rainforests
With the expansion of organic produce to developing countries who aim at exporting organic product for economic benefit, there is a risk that the people in these countries need more land for the production and start cultivation on rainforests, which is ecologically disastrous as this practise put many endangered species at even higher risk by ruining their habitat. (Leonard, 2006)
Farming Population
Supporters of organic foods claim that organic foods produced in small farms would be more productive than broad-acre farms in the sense that small farms practise crop rotation, plant multiple crops on the farmland in order to balance the soil, and have livestock on site providing manure as nitrogen source for the crops so that the total output of the farm on per-acre basis could get higher than broad-acre farms. (Leonard, 2006)
However, yield is not the only thing that industrialization of agriculture had brought to farmers. The farming population of developed countries dropped dramatically with the application of broad-acre farming, which frees more people into the second and third industry. The United States for example, 70-80% of the population was involved in agriculture in the year of 1870, while in 2008 only around 2-3% of the population was employed in agriculture. (ERS, 2008)
The drop of farming population is achieved by use of heavy machinery which replaces expensive human labour; single variety planted for a massive farmland to ensure the accessibility of machineries and the ease of management; fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and more productive breed of crops which increases the yield significantly while protecting the crop against pests and weeds. The application of new technologies in farming meant that less people working on the farm, while it feeds more people on less farmland.
Organic farming, on the other hand, if expanded by the means of number of niche farms, is destined to become a more labour-intense industry because the use of machinery on a small and mixed variety cropping land is limited under current technology, while the limitation of application of chemicals and conventionally bred higher yielding breeds of crops in order to be certified organic would not assure the yield of the land. This growth would draw more people who were freed by the industrialization of farming back to the farms to produce organic, in turn, less people would be available for the second and third industry.
Fertilizers
As synthetic fertilizers are not certified to be used in organic production, manure is the only source of fertilizers used in organic farming. However, the source of manure is limited because manure comes from livestock and livestock needs space and feed to survive and produce manure for organic farming. With limited arable land available and world population still growing fast, organic farming would not be able to keep up with the demand of the extra food for the extra population. It is estimated that organic farming would at most feed 4 billion people with all arable lands fully used, (Leonard, 2006) while the earth is already feeding more than 6 billion and expecting 10 billion by 2050. (Goldberg, 2000)
What Next?Organic could remain as an alternative of lifestyle and remain luxurious, but saying organic is the future of agriculture and that all farms should adapt organic producing practise is not responsible because in the first place organic products are not able to feed the population on this planet. The industrialization of organic farming is also ruining the intimacy among foods, farmers and consumers which alienates organic foods from its initial attractiveness.
On the other hand, some people are switching from ‘eat organic’ to ‘eat local’ and they are no longer that concerned about being certified organic (Lyons, 2001), instead, they are more concerned of the freshness of their food and the benefit to their local community by consuming local products. The intimacy among foods, farmers and consumers are renewed.
GM food, being as environmentally friendly and healthy as organic food and higher yield than conventional food should be considered the future instead, while it just take time for people to be able to accept the idea that GM foods could be not harmful to either human health or the environment.
Conclusion
Organic food does have some benefits, such as environmentally friendly and energy efficient when practised on a large scale comparing to conventional production. However organic foods should not be advertised misleadingly as tastes better, more nutritious etc which are not true. Organic food is not the future of agriculture because it cannot even support the current population without the efficiency of conventional farming.
On the other hand, GM foods seem to be the future of agriculture as they are more energy efficient, environmentally friendly and just as healthy as organic food, the reputation of GM foods is poor at the moment because misleading claims by hate groups and the fear of the unknown of the people. However, GM foods are picking up paces in the recent years because they are beneficial to the growers by reducing management and assuring yields that growers are more than happy to accept.
Reference
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