The Truth About Organic Foods

By Alex Avery*
Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Food Issues Churchville, VA USA
September, 2007

Summary: Fatal flaws in the recent report from Badgley et al. claiming that organic agriculture “could produce enough food on a global per capita basis to sustain the current human population, and potentially an even larger population, without increasing the agricultural land base.” Among the serious problems identified: Over 100 non-organic yield studies were claimed as organic; organic yields were misreported; false comparisons were made to unrepresentative low non-organic yields; high organic yields were counted 2, 3, even 5 times by citing different papers that referenced the same data; favorable and unverifiable “studies” from biased sources were given equal weight to rigorous university studies. This report is being submitted to the editor of the journal, Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, for publication and response. It is only being released in the interest of public debate and discussion during the much-touted “organic fortnight”. The recent report from Catherine Badgley et al. at the University of Michigan (Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, July, 2007) claimed that “organic agriculture has the potential to contribute quite substantially to the global food supply” and said “organic methods could produce enough food on a global per capita basis to sustain the current human population, and potentially an even larger population, without increasing the agricultural land base.”

This claim is simply not credible given the following internal fatal flaws:

1. Claiming yields from non-organic farming methods as organic;

2. Comparing “organic” yields to non-representative “non-organic” yields;

3. Double, triple, even quintuple counting of organic yields from the same few research projects;

4. Omitting non-favorable crop yields while using favorable yields from the same studies;

5. Misreporting yield results.

1. Non-organic Yields Used to Inflate Organic Productivity

In perhaps the most brazen example of research misrepresentation in decades, 105 to 119 studies claimed as “organic” by the University of Michigan group were not organic. Only 11% to 21% of “developing world” yields cited were from studies actually using organic farming methods. Some “organic” examples even used GMO crops; many (if not most) used synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. The researchers did not provide enough detail to determine the exact number of misrepresented studies, but their main source (Pretty and Hine, 2001) stated clearly in their reports that only 14 of 208 studies in their database are “organic.” The Michigan group relied on 70 of these for their paper. They also labeled as “organic” 49 yield ratios from the “System of Rice Intensification” which is not organic. Combined, these represent 79% to 89% of the 133 “developing world” yield ratios included in the study. As an example, Badgley et al. claim organic methods increased Argentine maize yields by 37%. (Source: Roberto Pieretti in “Pretty and Hine, 2001”) In fact, this statistic comes from Argentine farmers using herbicides to kill weeds, growing GMO herbicide-tolerant soy (~98%) and GMO insect resistant maize (~25%), and extensively using synthetic fertilizers and organic-prohibited herbicides and pesticides. To label these yield gains as “organic” is absurd. (Source: Mr. Roberto Peiretti, past president of the Argentinean No-Till Farmers Association: sdrob@idi.com.ar)Another misrepresentation is China maize yield increase of 38%, reported from the East Gansu project run by the Chinese government. The primary source (Pretty and Hine, 2001) reports that “Grain output and food per capita [in the project area] have increased greatly because of improved crops varieties, runoff harvesting and water-saving irrigation, and fertilizers and pesticide use.” [emphasis added]

These facts are made clear in the research reports used in the Badgley et al report, so their ignoring the non-organic reality of these projects is hard to explain. It is especially hard to explain given supervising author Ivette Perfecto’s clear statement in a press release issued by the University of Michigan that “My hope is that we can finally put a nail in the coffin of the idea that you can’t produce enough food through organic agriculture.”

2. False Comparisons with low non-organic yields

The amazingly high yield increases reported in the developing world should have been a red flag that the non-organic yields used in the comparisons were uncommonly low.

For example, Badgley et al. report one study where Peruvian organic potato yields were 340 percent higher than non-organic (yield ratio of 4.40). Yet the “higher” organic potato yields (reported as “8,000 to 14,000 kg/ha”, or 11,000 average) are below the year-2000 average potato yield for Peru, reported by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization at 11,221 kg/ha in the year 2000. Many farmers in developing countries using non-organic methods report potato yields well above 15,000 kg/ha and non-organic potato yields in developed countries are routinely above 40,000 kg/ha – each considerably higher than the “high” organic potato yields.

3. Double, Triple, even Quintuple Counting of Yields from the Same Research Projects

The paper claims to analyze a “global dataset of 293 examples, yet there are numerous instances of repeated counting of yields from the same long-term studies.

For example, the maize yields from the long-term Farming Systems Trial project conducted by the pro-organic Rodale Institute (Kutztown, Pennsylvania, USA) are reported 4 times: once in a “case study” in a 1989 report from the National Research Council, twice in a report from Pimentel et al., and once in a 2001 newsletter article by Bill Liebhardt.

Soy yields from the same Rodale FST project are reported five times: once by the 1989 NRC report, once by Liebhardt, once by Hanson et al., and twice by Pimentel, et al.

4. Omitting Non-Favorable Crop Yields and Cherry-Picking Data

The paper reports the favorable yields of specific organic crops from research, while omitting the unfavorable yields of other crops reported in the same research. In addition, non-favorable study results from organic research groups were entirely omitted.

Four different favorable potato yield ratios are cited from one research project in Germany (90-106% of non-organic yields), while unfavorable organic potato yield data (75% of non-organic potato yields) published in the very same journal in which the Badgley paper appeared was omitted! (Gallandt, et al. American J of Alt Agriculture, 1998 which is now Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems)

The paper cites four separate favorable yield ratios for wheat from the first three years of a long-term California research project (McGuire et al., 1998), but they omit the drastically lower organic maize yields from the same project reported in 2004. The non-organic maize yields were 52% higher than the organic from 1996 to 2004. This result in particular calls into question one of the Michigan group’s major claims: That organic farming can obtain ample nitrogen by growing off-season green-manure crops to replace the inorganic synthetic nitrogen fertilizer that currently underpins roughly half of global crop production. In this case, the legume crop cost half the ensuing corn crop. Thus, the green-manure strategy, implemented worldwide, threatens a major cropland expansion due to lower per acre yields and the ensuing loss of wildlife habitat and biodiversity.

Moreover, while there were “no statistically difference in tomato yields among [the different systems]” during those 8 years, conventional irrigated wheat yields were nearly 30% higher than irrigated “organic” wheat over the same period.

Many of the studies cited by Badgley et al. are from organic activists with a clear agenda in reporting only high organic yields. The Michigan researchers call these sources “grey literature,” but a more accurate term would be “biased observers with a clear economic and reputational stake in the outcome.”

For example, there are numerous yield ratios gleaned from reports from “biodynamic” societies such as the Anthroposophic Society, the Institute for Biodynamic Research, and anti-GM/anti-conventional agriculture pressure groups such as Food First.

This clearly skews the results. A recurrent source for “developed country” yield ratios is an article written by Bill Liebhardt, published in the quarterly newsletter of an organic promotion organization. Liebhardt cites a 0.95 yield ratio for organic maize following a legume soybean rotation in comparison to continuous maize yields – despite the fact that the same research Liebhardt cites shows that non-organic maize following soybeans out-yields organic by 10 to 30 percent. This is a clear case of favoring the organic perspective.

More egregiously, Liebhardt combines tomato yields from two separate projects to claim “equal” organic tomato yields when the studies he cites found organic tomato yields were significantly lower yielding. In the first three years of one project, non-organic tomatoes out-yielded organic by 66 percent. So in the fourth year, the researchers started giving the organic tomatoes a literal head start by transplanting tomato plants started weeks earlier in a greenhouse –while still using tomato seeds in the non-organic plots. Yet the non-organic tomatoes continued to out-yield the organic by an average of 20% in the following four years. So in year seven of the project, the researchers tripled the amount of poultry manure applied to the organic plots, giving the organic tomatoes 3 to 4 times more nitrogen than the non-organic. Only after all these changes did the organic tomato yields surpass the non-organic by 9%. Even then, organic fruit quality was lower, used more irrigation water, had far greater weed problems, and cost hundreds of dollars more per acre to grow – losing money without a high price premium.

5. Misreporting of yields

The authors simply misreport organic yields compared to conventional in at least one instance. Badgley et al. report that organic apples achieve 100% equal yields (ratio of 1.00) in a study published in Nature (vol. 410, pages 926-930, 2001). The study actually reported organic apples achieved only 93% of non-organic yields (ratio of 0.93).

* Alex Avery is director of research at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Food Issues and author of the 2006 book The Truth About Organic Foods.

The calculations outlined in the “Acute Toxicity” sidebar contained an error in presenting LD50 doses as body weight, thereby overestimating the equivalent human body weight doses. Below is the corrected text. I apologize for this error and have brought it to your attention as quickly and transparently as possible.

Alex Avery

Corrected text:

There are two types of toxicity: chronic and acute. Chronic toxicity refers to health problems caused by long-term exposures to low doses of a substance. Acute toxicity is the immediate impact of a high dose of a chemical or substance.

One way that acute toxicity is measured is the Lethal Dose 50% (LD50), the dose that kills half of the population of a test organism. The lower the LD50, the more toxic the substance.

Thiabendazole has an oral LD50 (if ingested by mouth) in rats of 3,100 to 3,600 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg). There are 1,000,000 milligrams in a kilogram, so this is a 0.3 to 0.36 percent of body weight dose. In mice, the LD50 is 1,400 to 3,800 mg/kg, or 0.14 to 0.38 percent of body weight. Using the conservative 0.14 percent LD50 from mice, this works out to nearly a quarter pound (0.217 lbs) of pure thiabendazole for a 155 lb human male (equivalent to 100 grams in a 70 kilogram adult). Even if thiabendazole were toxic at half that dose, the 0.4 mg of thiabendazole in the pessimistically contaminated theoretical pound of apples is still less than 0.01 percent of an acutely toxic dose (1/11,250^th). And even at high doses there aren’t any long-term (chronic) toxicity concerns with thiabendazole, such as cancer.

For comparison, the organic insecticide pyrethrum has a mammalian LD50 ranging from 200 to 2,600 mg/kg. The minimum lethal dose in humans (yes, it has killed humans) is 750 mg/kg in children. Thus, organic pyrethrum is over twice as acutely toxic as thiabendazole.

The organic fungicide copper sulfate has a mammalian LD50 of 30 mg/kg, making copper sulfate at least 45 times more acutely toxic than thiabendazole.

Alex and Dennis Avery
August 9, 2007

A new study published in an alternative agriculture journal has gained widespread attention by claiming that organic farming not only could adequately feed the world, it might even yield more food and require less farmland. It is a truly sensational claim.

In science, the more sensational the claim, the more robust the evidence needed to support it. This time, the evidence doesn’t stack up. In fact, the evidence fell so far short that the journal that published the paper also published not one, but two scathing and dismissive “editorial responses” in the same issue. This is anything but a ringing endorsement.

A simple comparison of the authors of the paper and critiques is revealing. The “organic can too feed the world” authors are a collection of urban academics without any agricultural experience. The lead author studies fossil squirrel’s teeth at the University of Michigan’s Museum of Paleontology. The others are with Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. In contrast, the authors of the two critiques are an agronomist at the University of Nebraska, Kenneth Cassman, and Colorado organic farmer Jim Hendrix.

As Cassman put it, “their analyses do not meet the minimum scientific requirements for comparing food production capacity in different crop production systems.”

First, many of the studies they relied upon to support their claim simply aren’t reliable. One large data set (comprising over half of the “yield ratios” they used to estimate food production in the developing world) are merely guestimates of increased productivity from a questionnaire sent to activists running organic “demonstration” farms. That doesn’t even remotely approach “science,” especially when the returned questionnaires include implausible organic yield increase claims of more than 500 percent. Another large dataset used by the Michigan researchers is so questionable that a paper critical of it published in the journal Field Crops Research was titled “Fantastic yields in the system of rice intensification: fact or fallacy?”

Central to this entire debate is the shortage of organic nitrogen fertilizer, aka manure. Currently, there is only enough animal manure to support one fifth of current global crop production. The only way to get more organically is to devote more land to legume crops or animal pastures that fix more nitrogen – which would require billions of acres of additional farmland the world doesn’t currently have.

The Michigan researchers dismiss this sobering reality by calculating that, theoretically, enough nitrogen can be fixed by growing cover crops during fall/winter and between crops to make up the shortfall. As Dwight Eisenhower once stated, “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from a corn field.”

The final, sadly amusing testimony to the fantasy world occupied by these researchers comes from the conclusion of their policy forum article, where they point to the shining example of Cuba as “one of the most progressive food systems in the world” where organic farming is successfully feeding a country. Ah, yes, the famed Cuban “agricultural enlightenment” brought about by the ending of Soviet industrial fertilizer and pesticide donations.

How has Cuba fared after “going organic?” According to unofficial statistics, Cuba suffers massive food shortages and rations basic food staples. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to these Cuban immigrants interviewed in a December 27, 2006 story on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition:

Joel Lopez, a skinny 19-year-old who arrived on Dec 14, 2006 in Miami through the [immigration lottery], or Bomba as it is called in Cuba. Through a translator: “Everything is so surprising here, the cleanliness of the streets, the food, the shops. Well, there is no comparison. . . . I have been telling [my friends] about a Chinese buffet I went to. I told them about how you can serve yourself again and again!”

Sitting next to him is Louisa Martinez. Her husband was a baker in Cuba. But still for her, it’s the food that is most dazzling. Through a translator: “Oh the food! Here there is a surfeit of food. Over there, there is a LOT of hunger. It’s terrible.”

So who are you going to believe: The urban pencil pushing elites, or the real farmers and real victims of the so-called “progressive food” movement?

Dennis Avery is a fellow at the Hudson Institute. Alex Avery is director of research at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Food Issues and author of the new book The Truth About Organic Foods.

The Augusta Chronicle
Mark Tribby, D.V.M.
August 12, 2007

Excerpt…

I read with disappointment the announcement in The Augusta Chronicle recently by the Kroger Co. that they would no longer sell milk from cows that have been treated with rBST (a.k.a. recombinant bovine somatotropin, or growth hormone sold under the brand name Posilac). The reason stated was that customers of the grocery chain have preferred purchasing milk “free of hormones and antibiotics.”

It is a shame that Kroger has caved in to pressure from the uniformed rather than educating the public on their concerns. rBST has long been manufactured in Augusta by the Monsanto Co., employing more than 200 of our neighbors. It is simply a cost-effective management tool already used on one-third of the entire U.S. dairy herd (an injection into the cow, not the milk) that allows small dairy farmers to compete with the corporate giants in producing milk in an economical manner. Do we want our milk prices to spiral even higher by taking away a safe product that can level the playing field?

THE RBST supplement safely allows underproducing cows to increase the amount of milk produced to levels near naturally high-producing cows -but only if their health, nutrition and care are optimal. It doesn’t work on unhealthy or poorly cared-for cows.

The Food and Drug Administration has studied this drug more than any other animal drug to date. Its findings consistently show that milk from cows treated with rBST is identical with nontreated cows; the natural levels of BST are the same in treated or nontreated cows. Natural BST and rBST have no biological effects in humans, even when injected, much less consumed as a wholesome food, as has been the case for generations.

The FDA and the Georgia Department of Agriculture does not allow any antibiotics to be present in milk, and each tank from the dairy farm is tested for drug residues down to the parts-per-million level before it can be processed and sold. If any such substance is found then the entire bulk tank contents of milk are discarded, farmers are fined, and risk their livelihoods…(The writer is an Augusta veterinarian.)….

Full article at The Augusta Chronicle.

The Augusta Chronicle
Damon Cline
August 12, 2007

Excerpt…

Milk from rBST-treated cows is safe for human consumption and has not been found to be different from milk from non-treated cows.
– U.S. Food and Drug Administration position statement of March 16, 1994

You might have heard about the recent decision by Kroger Co. to stop selling milk produced by dairies that use the hormone rBST on their cows.

Let me rephrase that: You must have heard about the recent decision, because Kroger said it was you, the consumer, who motivated it to become “rBST-free” by February 2008.
What’s that? You’ve never heard of rBST? How about its full name: recombinant bovine somatotropin? Some folks call it rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone). Still not ringing a bell?

Here’s what it is: A man-made copy of a hormone that is naturally produced in a cow’s pituitary gland. The lab-made hormone, like the natural one, stimulates milk production in cattle. It was approved for use by federal regulators in 1994 and is made here in Augusta by Monsanto Co.,* which markets it under the brand name Posilac.

Dairy farmers who purchase the hormone see their milk production increase by about 15 percent. The milk is not different; there is just more of it.

Kroger acknowledged this when it made its announcement Aug. 1, pointing out that “there is no difference” between milk produced at dairies that use rBST and those that don’t. Companies that shun rBST, including Safeway and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, say essentially the same thing.

So why all the fuss? I’m trying to figure that out, but I suspect it has less to do with health and wellness, and more to do with marketing and merchandising.

Food marketers can create new, more expensive product categories if they can convince consumers that “rBST-free” dairy products are somehow better. Fortunately for the grocers, they don’t really have to work too hard – there’s no shortage of all-natural/organic/free-range/cruelty-free organizations out there passing off junk science as fact. According to these groups, rBST is bad for cows and maybe, just maybe (quick, get Michael Moore on the line!) can cause cancer in humans. The common theme is that because rBST is the result of biotechnology and engineering, it has to be bad.

These folks probably don’t like seedless watermelons, either.

Monsanto says the Kroger announcement will have little impact on its Augusta facility, which employs about 120, because in 2009 the company will begin moving production from a supplier in Belgium to the local plant. Common sense dictates that if every grocer stopped buying milk from dairies that use rBST, there no longer would be a market and the Augusta plant probably would shut down.

If that were to happen, and I doubt it would, I would raise my milk glass and give the facility a farewell toast. I won’t care whether the milk in the glass was produced by an rBST dairy or not, because in the end, it’s the same milk….

Full article at The Augusta Chronicle.