Tonight's Horizon programme on BBC 2 could be worth a viewing. Called Professor Regan's Supermarket Secrets, obstetrician Prof Lesley Regan asks whether the food industry's claims about certain "superfoods" really stand up to close scrutiny.

As the programme makers say: "Friendly bacteria, superfoods, cholesterol busting spreads, 99% germ free, whiter than white...it's almost impossible to find a product in the supermarket today that doesn't come with impressive claims...scientific claims...with an inflated price tag to match. Are they oversold? Or are they worth the extra cash?"

One key part of the programme is the debate about organic versus conventional agriculture. The following clips give a flavour:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/supermarket/vote/

I'm normaly a big Horizon fan but I have to bring up the makers on one point in this program.  The two farms in this program were supposed to be organic and conventional, but they appeared to only show the difference between free range and intensive.  There are many conventional farms which keep animals outside and feed grass with little supplements, while at the same time there are many organic farms which are intensive, like the 900 cow dairy herd near where I live.  Whether consciously or not the program pushed the misconception of organic animals living in a flowery meadow while conventional farms lock up the creatures in sheds, when the opposite is true just as often.

Other than that it was, as usual, a very informative program and I enjoyed seeing the myths behind various claims were clearly shown to have no merit. 

You are right robexel, but looking into all those different types of products they were unable to probe each sector thoroughly. At least they came to 3 conclusions. 

1.Organic food is no more nutritious than conventional food.

2. Organic food is no safer to eat than coventional food.  

3. Organic food production is no better for animal welfare than conventional food production.

It is what most of us already know, paying more for organic is a complete waste of money.                                

It is what most of us already know, paying more for organic is a complete waste of money.                                

 

I am happy to keep taking their cash as long as they are daft enough to give it to me

The part about pigs showed 2 extremes presumably for television purposes, I think if they had showed indoor conventional and organic most people would have said "so what's the difference?" The intensive farmer was quite brave in appearing in front of the cameras, I'm sure the farrowing crates and slatted floors must have put some people off pork if not turned them onto free range products. There was also the question of breeds and taste which were not covered but I suppose they were only looking at the scientific aspects.

No one mentioned the ridiculous concept of organic cereals which are a complete disaster as far as efficiency of production is concerned. Or the fact that this government pays organic farmers to grow weeds which are on the ''injurious-weeds list, to produce cereals which are more likely to have dangerous levels of toxins from septoria and fusarium moulds, and potatoes where blight cannot be effectively controlled.

The whole subject is a sad joke.

And as someone pointed out recently, organic farmers not only produce lower yields at higher environmental cost; they result in the need to import more food to make up the shortfall.

As we have a septic tank and can't use "biological" washing powder we are unable to benefit from the highly rated blue- white wash powder from Proctor & Gamble, I therefore have to face the animals every morning in grey whites. I know they are all laughing at me!  

Just had a visit from a group of students studying organic farming at university.

"Do you all eat organic food?" I asked.

"Yes, when we can afford" they answered, "it is better for us".

Five out of seven were smoking!!!

The organic cigerettes are also too expensive I understand!

 

I not a torch bearer for the organic sector but was disappointed with the programme and I don't think it shed much light on the issue at all.

I had the distinct impression that Prof Regan had made up her mind before the investigative process even started - and, even more disappointingly, that she had based her decision on her preconceptions as a trained scientist rather than the available evidence.

I also found it amazing that, as one of the country's leading obstetricians, who presumably has extensive experience of environmental factors affecting the development of the unborn foetus, she was so relaxed about chemicals in the environment and had such faith in the FSA's ability to ensure our health.

Branston, as a scientist she WAS looking at evidence. There was NO evidence to show that organic was better.

 

   I agree with Branston, what people put in their shopping baskets is largely a matter of taste – many choose organic on flavour alone and I doubt if even Prof Regan is quite as 'scientific' when she gets to the wine counter. She was a bit inconsistent rejecting probiotics on the grounds that they may benefit some but not others and yet buying antibacterial cleaners because one boy had been discharged from hospital and gone straight on the computer without washing his hands.

   She quoted studies that showed organic produce higher in certain respects (vitamin B and Omega 3) and lower in others (Vitamin A) .. and then agreed with the FSA that there was no difference. She quoted surveys that said 40% of conventional produce has traces pesticide residues with 3% being over the legal limit – that means anyone eating their 5 portions a day 2 of those will have residues and once a week one will be over the legal limit.

   Animal welfare is more subjective (I didn't see the clips on tail docking from the website in the programme) but most farmers care for their animals as well as they can afford to and currently organic systems of production offer a higher return.

  Didn't notice any mention of GM plants producing fish oils from the website in the pro gramme or is that for a future edition?

I sometimes wonder why (I think I know really) propagandists do not stop to ask,  "WHY, are we are where are at this moment?"

• Why was there pressure to increase yields?
• Why did our ancestors spend precious time (they only had short lives) in developing the various breeds of cattle and other stock? 
• Why were cropping plants modified by selective breeding and other means?
• Why has farming replaced labour with capital? (machines)
• Why were chemicals introduced in both arable and stock farming?
• Why is farming now intensive?

An awful lot of the hype would disapear from the Organic debate if people understood why food production went the way it did. I think the issue comes down to a decision by the consumer to spend their money on what they want or what they can afford.

Of course there are food safety issues and accurate weighing issues but I really don't see why politicians should be mounting, at our expense, moral crusades which promote a view of life at variance to the historical record.

 

 

 

 

Peter Wells:

the hype would disapear from the Organic debate if people understood why food production went the way it did

 

Your right there!! The consumer needs more education! I recently did coursework on the GM crops and Organic debate. To be honest after studying the organic side, i dont think it was anybetter than conventional. Yes, they dont have pesticides,fertliser etc etc but the environmental impact is much greater than your conventional system. We really need to make the consumer aware and, its then up to them. but they need the facts, and not to be encouraged byTv chefs to be biased, if they know where there food comes from, they can then make an informed choice!!

The organic question can be answered very easily;

What is preferable?

More chemicals or less chemicals?

Eating organic exposes the eater to almost no chemicals, only copper occasionally used on potatoes and veg in small quantities.

Non organic food has been exposed to over a dozen different chemicals routinely.

When my chemical/ nitrogen bill went over £100,000  i decided i had to try something different.

Ten years on i have a better quality of life,the sprayer has rusted away, i have fathered 2 children, and i have not looked back.

glasshouse:

What is preferable?

More chemicals or less chemicals?

I understand what you are saying but there have been times in the past when the question was do we spray or do we starve? I for one believe those times will come again in the US, UK and Europe. In fact those are questions already being decided in China, India etc.

I do not like indiscriminate use of chemical anymore than anyone else and see problems in both agriculture and human health through their overuse, but the debate has become polarized and emotive by propagandists on the one side and possibly commercial interests on the other.

On a practical level however, I simply cannot see how everybody in the world can be fed using organic methods and pesticide and chemical free. Providing we keep a thriving organic industry alive and continue to develop chemically minimised systems and methodologies I cannot see why the bulk of food should not continue to be farmed as now.

The long term commercial threat to farming as food production is I believe, the work being done in laboratories by growing cultures prior to the techniques being translated into industrial factory production. Monsanto, or someone like that, will suddenly announce that they can produce X millions tonnes of nutritious Meat and five veg from a 50000 sq ft unit site in Maida Vale or somewhere such.

 

 

Im curantley doing a coures at collage over here on organic production manley of feald crops. And from what iv learnt from that about organic farming over here most of them are hardley staying in buisnes. they may be doing as an exampal over here 900 acers of organic weat say but there only brining in the same as some one doing the same coventonaley because the yealds are that mutch lower. Personley i think that organic will stay increas to taking 15 to 20% of retail sales but not rise above that. Manley because of the simpal reazon is that it is harder to make a profite because of the extra laber needed than growing conventonal and the markup that the super markets and whole salers charge for organci products. A whole saler charges around 50% markup from what he buys the produck from the farmer for or the elavator. as for a supermarket charges in exes of 300%. And if the price of organic produce rizes as dimand rises at the farm end then it will encreas evan more for the consumer making people look a lot harder at what they buy unless there stinking ritch and can afourd to for ot the cash. As well in an organic store over here that sells organic weet a frend of mine found a load of Ergat seeds for thow of u who dont know what that is its used to make LSD and oter halusajenick drugs. Im sure that if people new that that was in there they wouldent be buying it. thats just my $0.02

Good on you glasshouse for changing and not looking back .However the answer to this debate is not in your simple question about more or less chemicals.

Tom Rigby, I wonder how many of those people you mention who choose organic because they think it is tastier would be able to tell the difference in eating trials. Perhaps they would be looking for black marks and caterpillar bites to give them a clue? 

i am in no doubt that the many farming couples i know who have struggled or failed to have children is due to over exposure to chemicals in their 20,s. I include myself in that category.

Whats the point in flooding the world in unwanted(up to now) food, if you cant produce the next generation?

Organic farming starts and ends with the soil and its health.

I have learnt first hand what happens to the soil when no one cares for it ie landlords who let on short term cropping tenancies, or employ contract farmers.

My farm was(mostly) let on a year to year basis for about 20 yrs before i got it, and it was in a terrible state of incredibly low p&k, couch, wild oats, etc.

I dont blame the previous tenants , as they had to survive, and the owner couldnt care less, as long as they got max rent.

By going organic, i have survived an agricultural depression which will be seen to be as bad

as the thirties.

The positive reaction you get from customers is a huge phsychological boost compared to the misery of selling wheat at £60 .

I think if i had not changed my system to organic, i would have lost interest and quit farming altogether. (and probably gone bust)

The main thing i have learnt is that soil fertility is paramount, and spraying exhausted soil with nitrogen, pgrs, trace elements, & fungicides is a fast road to ruin.

Unfortuneately, vast swathes of england are contract farmed in this way,which i believe is a ticking timebomb.

Until the government orders me to increase production,( i believe it will happen) i will not change back

If

The lady was a scientist. That's all there is to it! The chemical companies have got agriculture right where they want it, and no scientist would dare say anything to change that!

Agchem companies cannot make any profit from organic farmers, thats why they go out of their way to discredit the system.

You have to ask the question; why has monsanto not developed a wheat plant that has nitrogen fixing rhizobia in its roots? that would be progress.

I havnt heard of any US farmers becoming rich thanks to gm crops.

The biggest barrier to improved yields in england is short leases and contract farming.

The dainage on these farms is not being maintained, which is the first requirement for good soil and yields. The landlords grow fat on eu subsidies,while the land is raped.

GM crops will not grow any better on waterlogged or depleted soils

I could only watch the clips and not the entire show.  I will agree that the fewer chemicals you use the better off you are, but I disagree that somehow the chemical companies are trying to discredit organic agriculture.  Farmers such as myself had problems with various bugs and weeds, and diseases.  Chemical companies came up with solutions.  There are perhaps alot of downsides to the cure, but we hope the downside of the cure is not as big as the downside to the problems the chemicals solve. 

I grow 60 acres of alfalfa to feed my cattle, as their source of protein.  It also will fix enough N in the soil that supposedly the first year after plowdown you don't have to apply N to your corn.  We have a pest called alfalfa weevil, that you can set your clock buy, each year the middle of April it invades the alfalfa and can take a cutting in 3 days.  What am I to do to combat that?  If you can burn the alfalfa after frost you can kill the eggs, the problem with that is alfalfa is hard to get to burn, and it usually won't kill all of them(not to mention the carbon footprint of burning).  My dad tried buying lady bugs and releasing them for a few years, it didn't work very well.  So, we spray with Furadan. No chemical company makes me do this.  It is costly, but it is either that, or lose one entire cutting and have the stand weakened severely. 

25 years ago the chemicals we had to choose from were very limited and didn't work well.  I am not that old but remember well my brother and I going out with dad on hot humid summer days to hand weed soybeans, even after some of them had been sprayed.  Dad would cultivate twice, rotary hoe, sometimes spray, and we still would have weeds.  By the time I started farming in 1986 there were some pretty good post emerge herbicides, but they were very expensive and harsh to the soybean.  We could live with a few weeds, and used a pretty good rotation,but every time you let weeds go to seed your problem is that much worse the next year. When I first learned about Roundup Ready soybeans I couldn't wait to get my hands on them, Monsanto didn't have to twist my arm, I was very willing.  If you have 25 up to maybe 50 acres of a crop hand weeding is an option, more than that and you are just spinning your wheels, and we can't survive growing 25 acres of beans, plus I don't want to spend day after day pulling weeds. 

Any organic scheme I have ever looked out in the USA prohibits the use of antibiotics in animals.  I think that is stupid.  This winter has been quite harsh and I have given Nuflor and Baytril to at least 20 baby calves.  This would disqualify them for any organic program I know of.  What was I suppose to do, let them die?  I will admit once I get a problem, the calf only has to look like he is thinking about getting sick to get a shot of antibiotic, but to me that just makes sense.  I cannot imagine that 18-24 months down the road at slaughter there would be enough residue to cause anyone any problem.  Take away antibiotics and we go back to weaning 60-70% calf crops in some years. That just won't pay the bills.

I will agree I do not like gestation crates for sows, but I see nothing wrong at all with crates for farrowing. I have seen sows and gilts who could pig with no barrier and never lay on a pig.  I have seen others who would lay on the entire litter.  I don't think the sow is particularly happy in the crate, but the pigs are much safer.  So you balance the welfare of the sow vs that of the pig.  I am no fan of the large pig farms, but it seems they are always able to produce and the stricter regulations hit the smaller guys the hardest.

The biggest problem I have with people pushing organic systems is they try to make conventional agriculture out to be some evil arm of the chemical industry.  They try to tell you you can have your cake and eat it too, ie you can do everything totally naturally and still have profitable yields all the time.  I am more than willing to try anything that works, but I am not willing to give up any and all chemical inputs.  I am not willing to give up antibiotics.  On my farm I use as few inputs as possible, mainly to reduce cost.  But if I grow a mass of weeds year after year, not only does my own ground suffer, my landlords are not going to like it, and anytime additional ground is up for rent I will not be in the running for it, no one will rent to someone who grows alot of weeds and has low yields.  To all those making organic work, my hat is off to you and you have my respect and admiration.  I would appreciate that same attitude to be returned to those of us who farm conventionally. 

Glasshouse, I think you have got the cart before the horse here. It is a case of organic claiming they have a superior product not the other way about. Non converts ask O.K. show us the proof?  This proof never comes, the reasons are all "we think organic must be better because we use less fertiliser" , "it is better to use less pesticides" , "organic food is more tasty", " I think conventional food makes people infertile", not an ounce of science just a feeling that these organic people have.

If farmers can make more money with organic best of luck to them, but when organics claim superiority, conventional farmers have the right to ask for proof not just subjective feelings.

farmerbill, read my post, i never claimed organic was better, i only recounted my experiences.

do you disagree with all my post?

ps i forgot to say, patrick holden just likes to make his mouth go, and has created divisions between farmers. most of iyt is sensationalist rubbish.

there is room for all systems.

glasshouse,

While i am not convinced that organically produced food is any better than convention, i do feel that it is the farmer who benefits the most from organic methods.

I agree with you, the best custodians of the land are family farmers. There are dis-economies of scale as well as economies of scale, we just don't here about them.