Norman Borlaug, the agronomist often called the “father of the Green Revolution,” went so far as to claim that organic agriculture “couldn’t feed more than 4 billion people,” and even then only by significantly increasing cropland by chopping down rainforests.

That argument has been dealt a harsh blow by findings recently published by the Rodale Institute in the United States. The institute conducted a thirty year side-by-side study of organic and conventional agriculture, and found that yields of organic farming were comparable to those of conventional systems, and even outperformed conventional in years of drought.

This study is a great example of a realistic comparison of the two systems side-by-side. Earlier studies that found lower yields from organic farming have been criticized for simply taking land that’s been under chemical agriculture for decades and suddenly stopping the use of pesticides and fertilizers, while still growing hybridized strains that have been bred for industrial cultivation. Under those conditions, of course, yields plummet: the soil ecology has been depleted, so the plants require chemical assistance to get the nutrients they need. But in the Rodale study, real organic agriculture was given a chance to show its mettle.

The trial compared two different organic systems (one using manure and another using legume cover crops to fix nitrogen) to a conventional synthetic system using synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides for weed control. In the latter years of the trial, half of the conventional crops were shifted to a no-till GMO-based system to reflect current farming practices. Likewise, half of the organic crops were shifted to an new system of no-till organic cultivation.

Here are the key findings contained in the report:

• Organic yields match conventional yields.
• Organic outperforms conventional in years of drought.
• Organic farming systems build rather than deplete soil organic matter, making it a more sustainable system.
• Organic farming uses 45% less energy and is more efficient.
• Conventional systems produce 40% more greenhouse gases.
• Organic farming systems are more profitable than conventional.

The last finding is particularly interesting: when measuring the profitability of the farms, in terms of profits per acre under cultivation, organic won the day. Of course, this is partially due to the premium prices that organic produce currently benefits from, but given that yields are equal or greater, and that inputs in the form of fertilizers, pesticides, and fuel are lesser, it should hold that even if organic were to become the norm and prices were to drop to levels similar to current prices for conventional crops, profitability would still be comparable. In the meantime, though, this should provide a good incentive for farmers contemplating a switch to organic practices.

The full report is available as a PDF on the Institute’s website, and is well worth a read. It’s only 2o pages, and it’s written for the general public and full of pretty charts and pictures. My favorite image is this one, showing a side-by-side handful of dirt from the conventional and organic farms. It speaks for itself:

While it’s a laudable initiative–supermarket chains post yearly profits in the multi-billion dollar range, but to pick just one example, pay farmers around 35¢ a kilo for potatoes that retail for $3 a kilo–I do question whether it’s the right approach.

The underlying assumption seems to be that if grocery stores are forced to display the prices they pay to farmers, consumers will shame them into being a bit more generous in their dealings. I’m not sure this is entirely true, for a couple of reasons.

First off,  the bill would give consumers information without simultaneously providing them with courses of action or viable alternatives to act on that information. Many people in urban centres have access to frequent farmers’ markets, but not all of them know they exist, and suburban and rural populations are often not so lucky.

Secondly, a lot of the discrepancy in price between what’s paid to farmers and what’s on the sticker in the store comes from the cost of a national (and sometimes international) supply chain of distributors, wharehousers, and transporters, not to mention the operational costs of a supermarket itself, with all of the marketing and administrative costs that go along with it. This industrial supply chain is a great way of supplying food at a very low cost with a maximum of convenience–and year-round availability of seasonal produce. But it’s definitely not the best way to get farmers the best deal, and it’s also not the best way to encourage consumers to care about the well-being of said farmers.

Supermarket chains are corporations, and while they clearly have an interest in not losing customers by being seen to be treating farmers unfairly, they also have to maintain high profits for shareholders by keeping costs low and margins high. Even with full disclosure, supermarkets still have incentive to pay farmers as little as they can get away with. So overall, it’s unclear how much real impact the bill would have.

I’m not saying this bill is a bad idea, and I’m also not saying it shouldn’t be supported or made into law. It certainly can’t hurt, and might even help–even if it does’t have a huge impact on consumer behaviour, it might bring about an increase in awareness. But I feel that there are other avenues that might be a better way of giving farmers a fair shake, and which might also benefit local communities and public health.

For instance, the government could invest in providing infrastructure and assistance to farmers markets to make them available to a wider range of the population, which would make it easier for farmers who choose to do so to sell directly to consumers, and likewise give more consumers the option of purchasing direct from farmers. If every consumer and every farmer had access to this kind of market, price disclosure legislation might have a greater and farther reaching impact. And buying directly from farmers means that not just a chunk of corporate profit, but also a lot of the costs involved in a big food supply chain, can be shifted into revenue for farmers.

It’s certainly always interesting to see food issues in the political spotlight, and I look forward to seeing how this plays out.

What do you think?

Feature image by Flickr user Francois Schnell, used under Creative Commons.

A recent episode was all about food, so I thought I’d post it here. Many of the clips early in the episode are related to fast food and obesity, but the later clips are the ones I found most interesting, especially Johann Hari’s bit about antibiotics in livestock production, and the final listener call-in breaking down the ethics of veganism and vegetarianism in a voicemail essay of surprising clarity and balance.

The whole thing is well worth a listen:

Best of the left #535

• Google sources 30% of the produce used in its cafes directly from small farms, and another 60% from distributors who support small farms.
• 45% of produce purchased by Google is organic
• Many campuses have on-location vegetable gardens where employees can plant and harvest whatever they like.
• Google adheres to a set of sustainability policies when purchasing seafood.
• Many Google offices provide CSA programs for their employees, which is a great way of extending food sustainability outside the office and into peoples’ homes.

That last idea is the one I really like, because the cost to the employer needn’t be high, since employees pay for the produce they’re purchasing themselves—but being able to pick up a CSA box at work makes it that much more convenient and accessible. This can also introduce the concept to people who might otherwise never have thought twice about the origins of their produce.

Google’s Mountain View campus also provides employees with access to a CSF, or community-supported fishery. This allows staff to have access to fresh, local, and sustainable seafood every week.

These are great initiatives, and hopefully they inspire other companies to follow suit. I’ve embedded the video from the post below, and be sure to check out Google’s dedicated page about its sustainable food practices.

All the main ingredients are available fresh in winter or early spring here in Victoria, so it’s a great lunch for a day that’s not too cold. This makes enough salad for two lunch-sized meals.

• 2 or 3 oranges (Valencia or blood oranges are good, but whatever’s fresh and in season is best)
• 2 bulbs baby fennel (you could use 1 bulb full-grown fennel if you can’t find baby)—keep the greens if you have them
• about 60 or 70 grams dried black currants
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 tbsp. sherry vinegar
• rocket (aragula), spinach, or other greens
• 2 or 3 carrots

Start by soaking the dried currants in boiling water for about five minutes, then drain them and let them cool.

Next, peel and segment the oranges. Do it with a knife so you can cut away as much white as possible. Try to cut slices out from between the dividing skins so that you have slices that are only flesh. Do this over a bowl so you can collect the juice to use in the dressing.

Thinly slice the fennel bulbs, and chop a small handful of the green top parts. Combine these in a bowl with the orange slices, salad greens, and currants. Peel the carrots and then grate them into the bowl. Set this aside.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the orange juices collected earlier, the sherry vinegar, and the olive oil. Once it’s nicely emulsified, pour it over the salad and toss gently to combine everything. You could serve it with crusty bread or on its own.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

[...] that the “good-food-costs-more” argument is being taken to an extreme that puts at risk the goal of a mass food-reform movement, which is to make good food available to the greatest number of people possible.

I find myself divided on this one. I agree with the main thrust of her argument, that it’s important not to go overboard with the quality-costs-money mentality and forget about the larger issue of increasing the reach of this kind of food. What we really want to do is get more people on board with this way of eating, and that’s harder to do if there’s an economic barrier to it, however slight.

But I just can’t muster the same outrage she does for $8-a-dozen eggs. As the farmer she quotes quite correctly points out, that’s 67 cents for a single egg—which is just about the densest nutritional bundle of food you can get. A hearty breakfast is two eggs worth, or a little over a dollar. And this is outrageous elitist pricing? Please.

A few days before Black’s article was published, I went to see a talk by Joel Salatin in which he specifically addressed the issue of pricing. Referencing that scene in Food Inc. where the low-income family complains of the high cost of fresh fruits and vegetables at the grocery store before buying fast food from a drive-thru, he was incredulous, saying “You can buy a whole pound of my artisanal grass-fed beef for less than the cost of a burger and fries from Burger King.”

And that’s what this comes down to for me. The pricing argument doesn’t really stand—most people who say they can’t shop at farmers markets because they’re too expensive still spend $2 on a bottle of soda or a bag of chips, or five or six bucks on a fast food meal. And that’s just the money wasted on food that doesn’t feed you. Everyone spends money on things that aren’t necessary, so a shift to spending some of that money on better food for yourself or your children is just a question of priority.

Black took a more balanced position on her personal blog after a few bloggers took issue with her initial piece, but I think she’s still mixing up two messages. The deeper point—that we should try to make good, healthy, sustainable food available, affordable, and convenient for more people—is obscured by the more superficial argument—that there’s something wrong with paying $8 for a dozen eggs.

We spend less time and money on feeding ourselves than any other civilization anywhere in the world at any point in history. Nobody’s saying you should spend half your income and all your free time on food, just something an inch or two closer to what every other generation of humans before us did.

Thoughts?

Feature image by John Loo, from Flickr.

Most of what I’ve written here has been about eating locally, ethically, and sustainably. I believe that these are important concerns, and they can have a positive impact on our communities, our environment, and our own lives. But they’re far from the only—or the most significant—issues to do with food on a global scale.

Many of you will already be aware of the current situation in the horn of Africa. For those who aren’t: a severe drought, compounded by high global food prices and ongoing conflict in Somalia, has left millions facing hunger and starvation.

The United Nations’ World Food Programme is one of many organizations acting to provide food assistance in the region. Give generously.

Thumbnail image from Oxfam East Africa, used under Creative Commons license.

Joel presented counterarguments to twelve of the most common and widespread objections to the type of biological agriculture he practices and champions, with a particular emphasis (around a third of the talk) spent on the biggest objection: “You can’t feed the world this way.” The talk is convincing, enlightening, and often very funny.

Whether or not you’re already familiar with Salatin (from The Omnivore’s Dilemma or Food Inc., for example), his views are well worth a listen. There’s no recording of last night’s talk, but fortunately the ABC’s Big Ideas website has video of the same talk being given in Canberra:

But at a restaurant it’s a different story. The menu just tells you it’s a chicken parmigiana. But I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of eating any meat without knowing that it was raised ethically and sustainably.

What put me over the edge was hearing a story by a friend of mine. He has a friend who’s as picky as me about the meat she eats, and one day she was calling a restaurant to make a reservation. She’d seen their menu, and asked the person on the other end of the line if their chicken or pork was free range. The response? “Uh, I think the chicken is free range … but I don’t think you can get free range pork.”

Think about that for a second! This person somehow doesn’t believe that you can raise a pig out of doors. As if somehow exposure to sunlight is fatal to swine. We’ve been raising pigs outdoors for tens of thousands of years, and indoors for maybe 50, but in that short time our perception of animal agriculture has become this warped that the mere concept of “free range pork” sounds like an impossibility.

So I thought to myself, that’s it. I’m going to start doing this. If the restaurant can’t answer my questions, or the staff is too busy, or if they tell me it’s industrially raised meat, I’ll just pick a vegetarian choice from the menu. Easy. Today I tried it for the first time, and was incredibly lucky: the restaurant’s chef happened to be within earshot, and when the waiter didn’t have the answer he was able to step in and assure me that the chicken was free-range and corn-fed, and that the beef was grass-fed, hormone-free, and chemical free.

So, if you feel like I do about meat, I suggest giving it a try: just ask the waiter what they know about the meat they’re serving. When you think about it, it’s really not too much to ask of a restaurant for them to know where their food comes from. A good restaurant should do more than that: they should be able to take pride in it. And if they can’t answer, there’s no need to go on a rant about our food system or ask to speak to the manager; just order the veggie lasagna and you can eat your meal with a clearer conscience.

By the way, the restaurant was Huxtable, which just opened on Smith St. in Fitzroy. I can heartily recommend it: http://www.huxtablerestaurant.com.au/

Image by Flickr user dirkjankraan, used under CC by-nc.

If you’re in Melbourne, the Slow Food market is on the fourth Saturday of every month at the Abbotsford convent. Check it out!