A much trailed report on todays media about a piece of research by the Food Standards Agency in which the health benefits of organic over non-organic are not proven according to the researchers.

The organic groups are understandably 'disappointed' with the report and call it 'selective' in it's conclusions; because I am a cynic it won't come as much of a surprise to you dear reader that one conclusion the researchers did come up with was that they need to do more analysis and research. This is the more honest conclusion of this study but doesn't grab the headlines in quite the same way as selecting negatives from the data to justify their existence to protect the health of the food buying public. The management of the FSA recently raised concern that their 130 million pound annual budget may be under threat as UK Gov looks to make cuts. Mmmm their analysis on this point is I suspect far more accurate than their conclusions about the health benefits of organic food.

i wonder how much the fsa squandered on this load of tosh.

There's been a lot of reaction to this following on from reports in the press yesterday (I noticed the Times led with the story yesterday). Here's today's letters page from the Guarniad: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/jul/31/food-standards-organic-farming 

Joanne Blythman has given her two-pence worth in the Mail today but I can't find a link for that at the moment...

          It's a bit like the old vegetarian debate. I have nothing against organic farming but I get a bit fed up hearing from those who are always telling us of the advantages of organic food. In their over-patronising expertise they tell us nothing that we do not already know. What they fail to point out is the economics of the system and the fact that we could not feed the world without intensive production.

          I have often thought about going organic. - No more fertiliser bills; no more spray bills. Every farmer would agree to that but I have seen some terrible messes, and from farmers who are very conscientious and work hard. Does it really pay? Would each year be reasonably consistent? I have no doubt it depends on which crops are grown and in what system they are grown in. I would never have been able to "pay the rent" so to speak if I had gone organic. I would like to hear from people like Glasshouse and He his-self. Can you really make a wage from organic farming? I have no doubt that there will be some farmers in a very special niche who can make good money out of it but I rather suspect they will be the few. What I mean is - there must be some other income. 

           In the Guardian link I became interested when Mora McIntyre (I think) started to discuss the taste advantage of organic food but when she came up with that utter nonsense about the damaged taste buds, she completely ruined a good subject for debate. I think there could be a difference here as a slower growing product may have more nutrients and/or flavour in it. That doesn't mean organic quality is neccessarily better and I still hear that fund raising song "Feed the World" loud and clear. We could require a bit more than just intensive production to do that in the years ahead. So even if organic produce was of a better quality, would it really matter?.

when the world,s oil runs out in 30 yrs, there will be no nitram, and everyone will be organic.

then the price of wheat will rise to about £500/ton, which will give a fair return to farmers. unlike today at £100.

adjusted for inflation, wheat should be £500 today.

chemical farming ensures constant surplus, and pitiful prices.

Ally r, organic can pay , if it is done well in the right place.

but it is incredibly hard work.

Has everyone seen this blog post that went up? Thought it made interesting reading towards the end (warning if you are an organic farmer you won't like the first half! )

http://www.fwi.co.uk/community/blogs/landstrategies/archive/2009/08/05/fsa-research-furore-shows-organic-movement-must-get-back-to-its-roots.aspx

What would be a real shame if conventional farmers capitalise on this to slag off the organic guys (in the same way that some of them have used research to slag off their conventional counterparts in the past). No one wins that argument - consumers just hear bad news about food!

I am sure there can be new lessons learned from the by-the-book organic methods and the actual working organic farmers I have talked to are actually as down to earth as any other farmer.  However, what really annoys me is the likes of Melchet basically accusing the rest of us of poor animal welfare.  There is little difference in the way husbandry works in my neck of the woods, regardless of the label, but that is not what is put about.  No doubt the organic prosletisers will claim that they are talking about intensive housing methods, crating, etc., but no distinction is made in their rhetoric and we outside their hallowed towers are all tarred as abusers.  I would like to see this argument met head on and in fact I would argue that many of the requirements the organic people have actually go against welfare, especially once you get away from their blanket requirements and start to look at the needs of individual species.

Sorry I couldn't get the link Isabel and so have probably missed something important. I read Allyr's piece and can see what he means and I guess many are in a mental no-mans land as to decisions on 'do I stay or do I jump.' There is another land however, and it is the one in which we earn our present livelihood.

For those over sixty five our childhood was spent at the end of the 'organic age.'  Yields were low, labour requirement high and even then there were questions about some of the chemicals (and quantities) that were used and some production methods were 'restrictive' on animals.The present world however is quite quite different.

Wracking my brains and reading all sides of the debate and listening to all the writers on FWI, I simply cannot see how, despite more effective/efficient use of land, labour and capital (the three factors of production) how, organic can 'feed the world.'  It can feed the wealthy and maybe the discerning but it cannot feed the world's current population.

In theory, organic farming should have been sufficient to have fed Africa but it didn't. Even when Africa almost fed itself, it was due to the large scale farming organised by the colonialists who were quick to use the tools, practices and chemicals of the modern era.

To my mind Organic food it is at the top of the food tree, in the same way that Opera is at the top of the musical tree. By this I mean the more knowledgeable, the more technically proficient, the more discriminating and the more sophisticated one becomes, the more discerning their senses become.  The gourmand will go to the best restraunts and eat organic, the musician will go to the opera and listen to radio three, the artist will go to galleries, museums and paint in oils, and so on.

If, as a farmer, you think you are the equivalient of an agricultural  Radio three, La Scala or Tate gallery man; go organic.

If you are not quite as knowledgeable, technically proficient or discriminating, think about it a while longer.

Peter - I haven't had time to digest your reply yet. But in the meantime - a link to this letter has just popped into my email. Such has been the response to the organic report, the FSA has been forced to defend it:

The Food Standards Agency would like to set the record straight, following publication of the study last week that compared the nutrient content of organic food with conventionally produced food. This review was commissioned by us to ensure that our position on organic food is up to date and reflects the weight and balance of current scientific evidence. This research had also been called for by the organic sector to review emerging research in this area.

Pesticides were specifically excluded from the scope of this work. This is because our position on the safety of pesticides is already clear: pesticides are rigorously assessed and their residues are closely monitored. Because of this the use of pesticides in either organic or conventional food production does not pose an unacceptable risk to human health and helps to ensure a plentiful supply of food all year round.

This independent study was carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and is the most scientifically rigorous and independent review of research ever carried out in this area. It looked at 50 years worth of research using standard techniques employed in systematic scientific literature reviews. All peer-reviewed data published within a time period set out before the review began were included.

The report was extensively peer reviewed before publication by leading scientists in this field and, furthermore, was published by a leading nutrition journal. The Agency has complete confidence in the validity of the work carried out by the LSHTM. It is an absolute principle that all our published advice is derived in this transparent way.

Irresponsible interpretation of the review by some has resulted in misleading claims being made concerning higher levels of some nutrients found in organic food.

The review reports the results for all 162 relevant papers. The conclusions of the report were based on the results found in the 55 satisfactory studies that met predefined criteria. It focused on nutrients where statistically significant differences were seen. Arbitrary quotes or selective use of the data from the other papers which were of less robust scientific quality should be treated with caution.

The important message from this report is not that people should avoid organic food but that they should eat a healthy balanced diet and, in terms of nutrition, it doesn’t matter if this is made up of organic or conventionally produced food.

Tim J Smith
Chief Executive, Food Standards Agency

Isabel,

Strangely the FSA's letter echoes exactly what I thought their report said.  I am sure that they hoped that publishing it would quash the unfounded claims often made for organic food but I do think they were completely naive in believing that the press response to it would not be hijacked by the organic lobby to the extent that it would be widely mis-reported.

Being an utterly confirmed cynic as far as media hype is concerned, I'm not really sure how much notice the general population takes of such stuff.  I like to believe that most people discount most emanating from the organic lobby on the basis that 'they would say that, wouldn't they?'

just remember that the types who run the FSA  thought that feeding cattle brains to cattle without boiling it was ok.

i rest my case.

There was an interesting piece on the organic debate by Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times yesterday http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/dominic_lawson/article6788644.ece

He makes some interesting points, especially about health issues in farming, something I hadnt really considered.

You beat me to that, Caroline.  If anyone is interested in the column by Ben Goldacre that Dominic Lawson refers to it was in the previous week's Saturday Guardian available online here.

I am pleased that there are some voices out there who are able to be heard saying that "Organic is not the saviour" and that "not all things conventional agriculture are bad". I too do not want to see conventional agriculturalists try to gain positives by exploiting the negatives in Organics as this is not the way we must work. In the same way it irks me massively when organic followers use the emotive language to rubbish conventional "all pesticides are poisons, etc". I truely believe that there are many practices that are common to both and from those that aren't, there are many which would benefit the other. By this I mean increased crop diversification to reduce disease risk is something that conventional farming went away from due to economic reasons yet make good agricultural sense. One of the worst things we have done in the UK is to rely on 'growing crops out of the bag', soils have been used and abused and not managed as well as they were under mixed farming systems. When you tie this into the future food supplies debate, it is clear that the two conversations are intrinsically linked and that our future food supplies will reply on managing our natural resources as well as we can and supporting them by appropriate use of chemical fertilisers and pesticdes rather than take a blanket approach as has happened previously and still happens to a large extent. Hopefully too the acceptance of fruit and vegetables that are great apart from their non-uniform appearance (which Organic buyers tend to be more) will enable a massive reduction in food wastage.

We must not continue to see it as Organic Vs Non-Organic but as different shades of the broad Agricultural spectrum under which genuine good practice is essential and rewarded and where sustainable (inc financially) food production is the main aim.  

Well no surprises then that once again we are back where we started with the more balanced understanding that there are both good and bad aspects in both organic and non-organic farming systems. Now, perhaps we can find a middle ground called sustainable farming practice that overall does the least harm to our total eco-system with the greatest gain to us lot at the so called top of this thing called a food chain.

Having passed several thousand acres of standing corn this weekend I can definitely say that both organic and non-organic crops are being treated equally by the elements.