Organics in the News

Researchers found infants raised on organic dairy products are a third less likely to suffer from allergies in the first two years of life.

The latest findings come from a Dutch study that followed the lifestyle, diet and health of 2500 pregnant women and their children for two years after birth.

Children weaned on organic milk, cheese and yoghurts and who were breastfed by mums eating organic dairy products were 36 per cent less likely to suffer from allergies, they found.

Study author Dr Machteld Huber said: "There was a clear relationship between organic dairy use and less eczema.

"The difference was significant but only for children exclusively eating organic dairy products."

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan today announced a new initiative - 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' - to begin a national conversation to help develop local and regional food systems and spur economic opportunity. To launch the initiative, Secretary Vilsack recorded a video to invite Americans to join the discussion and share their ideas for ways to support local agriculture. The video, one of many means by which USDA will engage in this conversation, can be viewed at USDA's YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/usda . Producers and consumers can comment on the 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' YouTube playlist, as well as submit videos or provide comments on this initiative by e-mailing KnowYourFarmer@usda.gov.

When communism crumbled two decades ago, Eastern Europeans were only too delighted to discover the fast-food chains that symbolized the West. But today they increasingly long for organic food.

"The general trend is that more and more organic products are being sold in former Soviet-bloc countries," said Amarjit Sahota, head of the research department of London-based consulting firm Organic Monitor

The Romanian capital recently saw the opening of organic stores named Biofood, or Bio Revolution, and in neighbouring Hungary, organic markets are held countrywide on a regular weekly basis.

In Poland, there are organic corners in almost every supermarket, and in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, the country's first specialist organic store, which opened last year, now is extending its activities to a neighbouring cafe.

Even Transylvania's archbishop has converted to pesticide-free food.

Modern seed companies are reducing crop diversity – and this could have serious consequences for food supply as the climate heats up, researchers claimed at the World Seed Conference in Rome this week.

This is the second time in a week that researchers have raised fears about the impact of climate change on crops. According to a study published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last week, climate change could result in severe shortages of two of America’s most important grains – corn and soy. Although yields increase with temperature up to 29C for corn and 30C for soybeans, there is a sharp decline in yield above these thresholds, they said.

Now fresh concerns have been raised that food manufacturers could find it more difficult to source ingredients in the future, as researchers from the International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED) have suggested that large-scale seed companies could squeeze out traditional plant breeding.

The researchers argue that corporate control of the seed industry and widespread use of a relatively small number of seed varieties could mean that traditionally bred varieties for drought and pest resistance could be lost, with devastating consequences for food supply.

IIED project leader Krystyna Swiderska said: “Where farming communities have been able to maintain their traditional varieties, they are already using them to cope with the impacts of climate change. But more commonly, these varieties are being replaced by a smaller range of “modern” seeds that are heavily promoted by corporations and subsidized by governments. These seeds have less genetic diversity yet need more inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers and more natural resources such as land and water.”

A new review from France has concluded that there are nutritional benefits to organic produce, on the basis of data compiled for the French food agency AFSSA. The conclusion opposes that of a UK study published last month.

Whether or not organic food brings nutritional benefits over conventional food has been a matter of considerable inquiry and debate. The issue came to a head last month when a study commissioned by the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) concluded that there is no evidence of nutritional superiority.

Now, however, a review published in the journal Agronomy for Sustainable Development has said drawn wildly different conclusions.

Author Denis Lairon of the University of Aix-Marseille coordinated an “up-to-date exhaustive and critical evaluation of the nutritional and sanitary quality of organic food” for AFSSA, which was originally published in 2003. The new review is based on this, as well as the findings of new studies published in the intervening years.

Lairon concluded that organic plant products contain more dry matter and minerals – such as iron and magnesium – and more antioxidant polyphenols like phenols and salicylic acid. Data on carbohydrate, protein and vitamin levels are insufficiently documented, he said.

Feeding 30 million schoolchildren is a difficult task. As a result, many of today's school cafeterias offerings end up as appealing as a tray of lukewarm airplane food.

And if there's one point of agreement on the state of school lunches, it's that local school districts and the federal government are overtasked. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National School Lunch Program (NSLP) helps feed millions of American schoolchildren. Critics charge that the program is underfunded and misspends money on meals that are overly processed, too rich in fat and not nutritious. The challenge is how to change this on a national and local level.

Help has historically trickled in courtesy of local entrepreneurs and nearby natural-food advocates who supplied some schools with organic and farm-fresh foods. Now, a new campaign supported by national corporations hopes to make more sweeping changes across the country. Whole Foods and a loose coalition of organic-food manufacturers and advocates say that creating a healthier national food policy is the start. In August, Whole Foods launched a fundraising campaign to reform the country's school lunch programs and has so far raised more than $440,000 that will support an online effort to help school districts create healthy and affordable meal options. According to the supermarket chain's chief operating officer Walter Robb, some of that money will also help raise awareness about the Child Nutrition Act (CAN).

CAN determines school food policy and financial resources as well as funds the NSLP. Advocates for healthier lunches say that the Nutrition Act will be reauthorized by the president and Congress (although it may be delayed several months beyond its September 30 deadline, while debate about health-care legislation continues). School lunch programs now get $9.3 billion in federal funding, or about $2.68 for each eligible child. Subtract labor and other administrative costs and some child-nutrition advocates estimate that only $1 goes toward food. That's not enough, said Robb. "It's a Sisyphean situation. We're at a tipping point. We need to raise exposure and do something right now."

A battle raged around the new bill because it threatened to allow the FDA to regulate small farmers as though they were major agribusiness corporations. This bill, detractors feared, would treat small, independent farmers with direct links to consumers as though they were Cargill or Dole. Regulators would be guided by the same false assumptions as my friend at the farmers' market: "Small local farm, big corporation... whatever. Quit selling spinach."

Small, local farms, of course, are good for food security and food safety, not bad. The 5,000 people who die every year of food-borne illness aren't dying from my spinach, they are dying from Dole's spinach. Regulate small farmers the same way you regulate Dole, and we might disappear. And when it comes to food safety and security, you want more of us, not less. The big guys need to be watched much more closely. The little guys need to be encouraged to flourish.

Food security, nutritional quality and safety vary widely around the world. Reaching these three goals is one of the major challenges for the near future. Up to now, industrialized production methods have clearly shown severe limitations such as a worldwide contamination of the food chain and water by persistent pesticide residues, and reduced nutrient and flavor contents through low-cost intensive food production and/or processing. In line with several published literature reviews, the French Agency for Food Safety (AFSSA) performed under my coordination an up-to-date exhaustive and critical evaluation of the nutritional and sanitary quality of organic food. This review is based on the AFSSA report issued and recently published studies. The major points are:

1/ organic plant products contain more dry matter and minerals (Fe, Mg); and contain more anti-oxidant micronutrients such as phenols and salicylic acid,

2/ organic animal products contain more polyunsaturated fatty acids,

3/ data on carbohydrate, protein and vitamin levels are insufficiently documented,

4/ 94–100% of organic food does not contain any pesticide residues,

5/ organic vegetables contain far less nitrates, about 50% less; and

6/ organic cereals contain overall similar levels of mycotoxins as conventional ones. Thus, organic agricultural systems have already proved able to produce food with high quality standards. I propose also improvements of organic production to achieve sustainable food production for humans in the near future.

In the ongoing debate about whether sustainable agriculture can “feed the world,” it’s important not to lose sight of what industrial agriculture is doing to ecosystems—both in specific areas and on a grand scale.

Producing and distributing lots and lots of calories, leveraged by fossil fuel and synthetic fertilizers and poisons, may solve certain short-term problems; but the practice also creates long-term ones that won’t be easily solved.

In June, a study emerged showing that so-called inert ingredients in Roundup, Monsanto’s widely used flagship herbicide, can kill human cells even at low levels—“particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells,” reports Scientific American. This is an herbicide that’s used on virtually all of our nation’s corn and soy fields, covering tens of millions of acres of cropland. (It’s also widely used by landscapers and on home lawns.)

Then there was the recent atrazine imbroglio. For years, the EPA has been assuring the public that the highly toxic herbicide, still widely used in the Corn Belt, wasn’t showing up in drinking water in worrisome levels. Turns out that was a lie, as some excellent muckraking by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund revealed. Atrazine exposure has been strongly associated with reproductive health maladies, including a rise in hermaphroditism among frog populations.

The hills of northeastern Maharashtra are normally green and lush during the annual monsoon season. But this year's spots of brown are a sign of a trouble.

In this region known as the suicide belt, the combination of poor rains, high production costs for farming, low crop yields and crippling debt can be fatal. Some 16,000 farmers commit suicide every year in India, according to India's National Crime Records Bureau. About a quarter of them are in Vidarbha. In July alone, 36 people died here.

Farmers lead a life of severe poverty in India and have a very high suicide rate. Against that bleak backdrop, organic farming -- with its higher margins and overall growth -- is offering a better life for farmers in one region, WSJ's Linda Blake reports.

But as laborers pluck weeds from fields of cotton, soybeans and pulses in this part of western India, Havantro Deshmukh believes he has the answer. Mr. Deshmukh made his farm organic nearly a decade ago. Since then, a consistent profit has helped him to "escape debt," he says, and possible death.

Valued at $20 million, India's organic farming sector is a sliver of the $26 billion global market. But with its promise of higher profit margins and lower production costs, organic farming provides an alternative to this debt spiral by eliminating a farmer's dependence on expensive pesticides.