There's no free N...  

One of the rather blatant errors made by the organic community is the idea nitrogen in manure is somehow placed there by totally natural processes. Hardly.

A further source of confusion is the misconception that animals make nutrients. Animals do not fix nitrogen or (aside from one known exception, the shipworm⁷) acquire significant amounts of nitrogen directly from nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Nor do they make other nutrients, like phosphorous and potassium, so their manure contains no more nutrients than their feed. This is a point which Dan Barber, the influential New York eco-chef, seems to miss when he urges environmentally-conscious New Englanders to eat “a lot of meat” in part to avoid dependence on synthetic fertilizers. According to Barber, it’s important to raise a lot of animals so that we’ll have enough manure, which he terms a “free ecological resource,” to fertilize our vegetable crops. This advice stands in stark contrast to the recommendations of the UN fertilizer report, which explains that “inclusion of livestock in the food chain substantially reduces overall nutrient use efficiency, leading to large pollution releases to the environment” and identifies as a “Key Action” the reduction of animal protein consumption in affluent regions.
The discrepancy is explained by considering the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, the small non-profit farm which raises meats for Barber’s Blue Hill restaurants and is, in Barber’s words, ”a replicable model for the future of good food.” At Stone Barns, the manure of pigs, chickens, geese and turkeys is largely derived from feed of corn, soy, sunflower, and flax. While sheep, the farm’s ruminants, may take in some “free” nutrients like nitrogen fixed in the roots of clover on the pasture, that pasture is fertilized in part with the manure of grain-fed animals, so even their manure is made possible by the grain inputs.
That’s important because the nutrients in grains need to come from somewhere. Manure from grain-fed animals doesn’t solve the problem of soil fertility so much as transfer that problem to the grain farm. And although animal manures are natural, they aren’t entirely benign. Like synthetic fertilizers, nutrients in manure can run off in groundwater or escape into the atmosphere. This means that growing grains for animals to produce manure for vegetables tends to increase pollution by adding another opportunity (on the grain farm) for nutrients to escape. While recycling nutrients in manure is more efficient than discarding them, the possibility of doing this does not amount to a strong argument against reducing nutrient inputs, an end that would be achieved by eating grains and legumes in place of grain-fed meats. [More - interesting throughout]

I could not find a comparison of N content for grass/grain fed cows, although did see one source that showed a range of 3-20 lb/T. I think it's safe to say the less grain in, the less N out, however.

The key here is to remember to make the point that animals cannot create nutrients when rebutting unreasonable organic claims.

Out of the industrial closet...

Slowly, it seems, more farmers are getting comfortable with their true identities as industrial producers.  Hiding behind an agrarian "cover" has become increasingly unmanageable in this age of unavoidable transparency.

Critics of “industrial farming” spend most of their time concerned with the processes by which food is raised. This is because the results of organic production are so, well, troublesome. With the subtraction of every “unnatural” additive, molds, fungus, and bugs increase. Since it is difficult to sell a religion with so many readily quantifiable bad results, the trusty family farmer has to be thrown into the breach, saving the whole organic movement by his saintly presence, chewing on his straw, plodding along, at one with his environment, his community, his neighborhood. Except that some of the largest farms in the country are organic—and are giant organizations dependent upon lots of hired stoop labor doing the most backbreaking of tasks in order to save the sensitive conscience of my fellow passenger the merest whiff of pesticide contamination. They do not spend much time talking about that at the Whole Foods store.
The most delicious irony is this: the parts of farming that are the most “industrial” are the most likely to be owned by the kind of family farmers that elicit such a positive response from the consumer. Corn farms are almost all owned and managed by small family farmers. But corn farmers salivate at the thought of one more biotech breakthrough, use vast amounts of energy to increase production, and raise large quantities of an indistinguishable commodity to sell to huge corporations that turn that corn into thousands of industrial products.

Most livestock is produced by family farms, and even the poultry industry, with its contracts and vertical integration, relies on family farms to contract for the production of the birds. Despite the obvious change in scale over time, family farms, like ours, still meet around the kitchen table, send their kids to the same small schools, sit in the same church pew, and belong to the same civic organizations our parents and grandparents did. We may be industrial by some definition, but not our own. Reality is messier than it appears in the book my tormentor was reading, and farming more complicated than a simple morality play. [More]

Because the change in our operations occurred over a lifetime, many of us still don't appreciate how sterile, artificial, and frankly "industrial" our farms appear to non-farm visitors.  We've all seen the vague disappointment in strangers' eyes when they look for something more picturesque than big machines, big bins and big sheds.

At the same time, agrarian enthusiasts are slowly beginning to do the math.  And that business model has its own problems.

Think about it. When most of us imagine what a sustainable food economy might look like, chances are we picture a variation on something that already exists—such as organic farming, or a network of local farms and farmers markets, or urban pea patches—only on a much larger scale. The future of food, in other words, will be built from ideas and models that are familiar, relatively simple, and easily distilled into a buying decision: Look for the right label, and you're done.
But that's not the reality. Many of the familiar models don't work well on the scale required to feed billions of people. Or they focus too narrowly on one issue (salad greens that are organic but picked by exploited workers). Or they work only in limited circumstances. (A $4 heirloom tomato is hardly going to save the world.)
Such problems aren't exactly news. Organizations such as the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (which despite its namesake is a real leader in food reform) have long insisted that truly sustainable food must be not just ecologically benign, but also nutritious, produced without injustice, and affordable. And yet, because concepts like local or organic dominate the alternative food sector, there is little room left for alternative models, such as Fred Fleming's, that might begin to bridge the gap between where our food system is today and where it needs to be.

And how big is that gap? Using the definition of sustainability above, about 2 percent of the food purchased in the United States qualifies. Put another way, we're going to need not only new methods for producing food, but a whole new set of assumptions about what sustainability really means. [More]

Indeed even farmers markets have been invaded by commercial sentiments threatening to swing them completely over into "eatertainment".

Here's the underlying problem: In 1994, there were 1,755 farmers markets in the United States; by 2008, there were 4,685. In the big scheme of things, this is terrific news; it means Americans are learning to feed themselves properly. But not all parts of the country have seen commensurate explosions in the number of small-scale local organic farmers. And the driving force in opening a farmers market is less often the organic revolution than it is economic revitalization, maybe a local chamber of commerce hoping to tempt people back to Main Street on weekends. When either is true, that chamber of commerce might take the path of least resistance and give the market contract to one of many farmers market associations populated by commercial growers, who then dominate the booth space. Nothing wrong on the face of this, except that, lured by funky folding tables in a parking lot, the consumer ends up going out of his way to buy produce he could get, probably cheaper, at any supermarket. (In Oakland, some small farmers quit a market when they discovered other produce vendors doing just that.) Many market managers have their hearts in the right place, and do want to support local, sustainable agriculture. Perhaps they also know that without some cute local farmers, the market ain't gonna fly. But what if you're managing one of these markets, and the chamber complains that you're not bringing enough people downtown? Well, hey, okay, maybe it's time to bring in more entertainment—street performers, guys who can tie balloons into poodles. Maybe you reach out to some restaurants, too, asking them to set up burrito booths. They aren't required to use produce from local farmers—but you can charge them a lot more for a booth, which helps the bottom line. And now Saturday mornings are really jamming, crowds are gathering for the coffee and the banjo player, and some of your core vendors guess accurately that a lot of these folks are more interested in scented candles than in cauliflower. So they gradually switch their product mix, and that, in turn, encourages still more scented-candle buyers. [More]

We have arrived at our present food system by focusing on what customers want. It is not perfect, but it does offer immense efficiencies. Many of the criticisms of our food industry - especially as it impacts our health - may be valid.

But devising another system to get the job done will not be so easy.

Reality eventually overcomes all attempts at distortion. I don't think arguing about hyphenated-agriculture is necessary to defend our own work. The market is sorting this argument out.

[Thanks, Steve]

The remorseless market...

The fact the organic milk market is faltering is not particularly surprising to me, but it is one of the sharper downturns in the otherwise dismal dairy industry.

 

[More]

(We are seeing too many of these cliff-diving charts for my comfort)

Painful too are the stories of shattered dreams for the mostly small producers who invested to make the switch.  The combination of feed prices and the reality of hard-to-prove organic "benefits" have consumers substituting "down" to regular, cheaper milk, while expenses obliterate margins.

But soon the price of organic feed shot up. Then the recession hit, and families looking to save on groceries found organic milk easy to do without. Ultimately the conglomerate, with a glut of product, said it would not renew his contract next month, leaving him with nowhere to sell his milk, a victim of trends that are crippling many organic dairy farmers from coast to coast.
For those farmers, the promises of going organic — a steady paycheck and salvation for small family farms — have collapsed in the last six months. As the trend toward organic food consumption slows after years of explosive growth, no sector is in direr shape than the $1.3 billion organic milk industry. Farmers nationwide have been told to cut milk production by as much as 20 percent, and many are talking of shutting down.

Certainly their own byzantine regulated milk pricing system (hardly an efficient market) isn't helping.  Nor is the ability of enormous dairies to produce milk very cheaply. But this final round of consolidation is even uglier than the hog or cattle consolidation due to the strong consumer attachment for cows.

Doubtless corn prices are one powerful factor in this grim picture, and despite glib assurances that corn farmers have ample productivity to supply the ethanol plants and our old customers like the dairy industry. What we are actually hoping is this supply is sold at much higher prices, regardless of the downstream consequences.

Feed accounts for 50 percent to 60 percent of the cost of producing milk. Escalating feed costs, fueled by the growing demand for corn to make ethanol, have eroded potential profits. [More]

Probably we can mandate more replacement corn markets as the meat industry shrinks, and arguably this could be a good thing for our diet. But the livestock industry is not fooled, and justifiably is feeling increasingly betrayed by legislators who took the corn farmer side for whatever political reason.

Grain producers are facing similar future, I think. And not many in the rest of agriculture will be sympathetic.

Another data point...

Anecdotal information is merely that, of course.  But it is reports like this that reinforce my belief that organic benefits are almost entirely subjective.

I was in one of those farmers' markets yesterday and the first thing I saw was some people making a TV show about farmers' markets. You get that a lot in London. Now that we have no economy to speak of, people have taken to making documentaries, often about FMs. Personally, I'm all for FMs - really - but I am always disappointed. Gill was splenetically and amusingly disappointed in one organic joint recently and, having been to the same place, I can tell you he's right. Yesterday, at the FM, I bought one russet apple and one cox and they were both worse than the ones in Sainsbury's. To be honest, I'm almost always let down by organic food. The worst meat I've ever eaten was all fantastically expensive and came from organic butchers. I remember having to listen to a five-minute lecture on the gold-plated pedigree of some steak only later to find it inedible. I suppose this is because 'organic' like 'green' has become just another marketing label used to raise prices and, as a result, the underlying idea has been lost. [More]

Nonetheless, I support the right of everyone to choose.

At last, the arithmetic sinks in...

What a relief!  My crude ciphering about the organic scalability problem wasn't all that far off.  Some people with initials after their names decided to check and see if the local/organic movement could get the job done.

Think about it. When most of us imagine what a sustainable food economy might look like, chances are we picture a variation on something that already exists—such as organic farming, or a network of local farms and farmers markets, or urban pea patches—only on a much larger scale. The future of food, in other words, will be built from ideas and models that are familiar, relatively simple, and easily distilled into a buying decision: Look for the right label, and you're done.
But that's not the reality. Many of the familiar models don't work well on the scale required to feed billions of people. Or they focus too narrowly on one issue (salad greens that are organic but picked by exploited workers). Or they work only in limited circumstances. (A $4 heirloom tomato is hardly going to save the world.)
Such problems aren't exactly news. Organizations such as the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (which despite its namesake is a real leader in food reform) have long insisted that truly sustainable food must be not just ecologically benign, but also nutritious, produced without injustice, and affordable. And yet, because concepts like local or organic dominate the alternative food sector, there is little room left for alternative models, such as Fred Fleming's, that might begin to bridge the gap between where our food system is today and where it needs to be.
And how big is that gap? Using the definition of sustainability above, about 2 percent of the food purchased in the United States qualifies. Put another way, we're going to need not only new methods for producing food, but a whole new set of assumptions about what sustainability really means.

...


In fact, most of the familiar candidates for alternative food would have trouble operating on the kind of scale necessary for a world of 6.7 billion people. Consider what it would take to make our farm system entirely organic. The only reason industrial organic agriculture can get away with replenishing its soils with manure or by planting nitrogen-fixing cover crops is that the industry is so tiny—making up less than 3 percent of the US food supply (and just 5.3 percent even in gung-ho green cultures like Austria's). If we wanted to rid the world of synthetic fertilizer use—and assuming dietary habits remain constant—the extra land we'd need for cover crops or forage (to feed the animals to make the manure) would more than double, possibly triple, the current area of farmland, according to Vaclav Smil, an environmental scientist at the University of Manitoba. Such an expansion, Smil notes, "would require complete elimination of all tropical rainforests, conversion of a large part of tropical and subtropical grasslands to cropland, and the return of a substantial share of the labor force to field farming—making this clearly only a theoretical notion."

[More of a must read for industrial producers in a surprising source]

Matt Yglesias adds his two cents as well.

Now a couple of things on the plus side. There’s pretty ample reason to believe that it would be desirable for dietary habits to not “remain constant.” Americans, and other big-time meat consumers, seem to eat substantially more meat than is healthy for us. A switch to a dynamic in which less meat is eaten, but meat-dollars are held constant so that you get less of a higher-quality product, would be tastier and healthier and move in the direction of sustainability. At the same time, most people aren’t Americans. If the billions of extremely poor people on the planet become less poor (which we should certainly hope for) they’ll want to eat somewhat more meat. So you’re still left with the same basic dilemma.
Roberts has some ideas for more realistic paths to sustainability. But it’s worth highlighting just one insight, namely that one problem with the current organic paradigm is that it’s an all-or-nothing proposition. No-till farming, which Roberts explores, has some substantial environmental benefits over conventional methods including a substantial reduction in the use of artificial herbicides. But because it doesn’t reduce herbicide use to zero it doesn’t qualify as “organic.” Consequently, the current market set-up doesn’t provide any real reward from switching from a less-sustainable to a more-sustainable model.

That kind of focus on all-or-nothing issues reflects organic farming’s origins in quasi-mystical movements and it suits the business model of the “Big Organic” enterprises that have sprung up in recent years. But sound public policy is usually all about impacts at the margin. Doubling the proportion of the U.S. food supply that comes from organic sources would still leave us with 94 percent coming from conventional farms. You would accomplish much more by policies that produce a mild reduction in the ecological footprint of the entire conventional center. [More]

This is not solely an I-told-you-so.  Really. I hope it's more of a plea for industrial producers to contemplate whether we really need to get into the faces of consumers over our issues with organic. Conflict is a luxury, I think right now, so why not let reality and hard numbers lead the food movement to a place where compromise is at least thinkable?

We could do much in our production methodology to address the concerns of more consumers, and simply listening without becoming biotech or herbicide marketers could create a less confrontational atmosphere. Some of the ideas may still strike us as far-fetched, but as this story indicates sooner or later the math forces reality into the mix.


Choice for food buyers is never a bad idea.  Real numbers for food producers isn't either.

The food that didn't bark in the night...

I have long felt the issues surrounding the claims of organic food superiority would erode as time failed to provide any real evidence of superior safety or nutrition, or at least differences so minor as to warrant very little premium.

Like too many other business models, organic production is being hit hard by customers with less to spend.

“Organics continue to grow and outpace many categories,” the Nielsen Company concluded in an October report. “However, recent weeks are showing slower growths, possibly a start of an organics growth plateau.”

If the slowdown continues, it could have broad implications beyond the organic industry, whose success spawned a growing number of products with values-based marketing claims, from fair trade coffee to hormone-free beef to humanely raised chickens. Nearly all of them command a premium price.

While a group of core customers considers organic or locally produced products a top priority, the growth of recent years was driven by a far larger group of less committed customers. The weak economy is prompting many of them to choose which marketing claim, if any, is really important to them.

Among organic products, those marketed to children will probably continue to thrive because they appeal to parents’ concerns about health, said Laurie Demeritt, the president and chief operating officer of the Hartman Group, a market research firm for the health and wellness industry. But products that do not have as much perceived benefit, like processed foods for adults, may struggle.

The economy has “crystallized the tradeoffs that consumers are willing to make,” she said. “Fair trade is nice, but fair trade may fall off the shopping list where organic milk may not.”

Thomas J. Blischok, president of consulting and innovation for Information Resources, a market-research firm, said shoppers were not moving entirely away from categories like organic products in the grocery store. But they are becoming more selective, buying four or five products instead of seven or eight, he said. [More]

Another factor impacting organic sales has been the recent (and seemingly unending) peanut contamination issue and the revelations concerning organic certification.

The national outbreak of salmonella in products with peanuts has been particularly unsettling for shoppers like her who think organic food is safer.
The plants in Texas and Georgia that were sending out contaminated peanut butter and ground peanut products had something else besides rodent infestation, mold and bird droppings. They also had federal organic certification.
“Why is organic peanut butter better than Jif?” said Ms. Devlin-Sample, a nurse practitioner from Pelham, N.Y. “I have no idea. If we’re getting salmonella from peanut butter, all bets are off.”
Although the rules governing organic food require health inspections and pest-management plans, organic certification technically has nothing to do with food safety.
“Because there are some increased health benefits with organics, people extrapolate that it’s safer in terms of pathogens,” said Urvashi Rangan, a senior scientist and policy analyst with Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. “I wouldn’t necessarily assume it is safer.”[More]

Most difficult for organic proponents to counter are claims organic inspectors looked past safety problems because that wasn't their job, or submitted reports way too late to prevent the contmination from spreading. There is an apparent conflict of interest between organic inspectors and the food companies who pay them.  Bad reports could close plants and end inspector's fees.

But the problem now is when organic shoppers for whatever reason switch back to conventional food supplies...and can't tell any difference.  Since the benefits have always been vague and subjective to begin with, the economic thrill of saving money may make the needed organic premium harder to sustain in the marketplace.

Investors are taking note as well, as organic merchants like Whole Foods suffer stock price declines.  While it has bounced off lows, it is still a mirror image of cheap food purveyors like Aldi.

Some hope for the organic sector strangely enough can be found in two developments.  By moving customers away from a now dubious "organic" label to virtually undefinable labels like "natural" and "local", they are reaching shoppers looking for some social aspect to their food buys without ever having to prove much.

The second is the appointment of Kathleen Merrigan as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture.  Her extensive background includes particpation in the organic foods certification process.  But this is double-edged sword.  More rigorous and consumer-pleasing certification of would likely increase costs for an industry already showing inelastic demand.

With the economy heading the wrong way, and many organic customers in the path of possible job losses (i.e. upper middle class) organic could be hit even harder as safety and economics clobber sales.

There will be temptations for gloating in the conventional food industry, I fear.  This would be a mistake.  If we have confidence what we grow and sell is safe and a good buy, we need only let the marketplace inexorably unravel the questionable claims of organic products.

Which is what we are watching right now.  This is a time to not bark in the night.

Resistance is futile...

The problem with agrarian production, as I remind y'all way too much, is it's non-scalable. In other words, in order to get enough Hyphenated Food (free-range, grass-fed, cage-free, etc.) you necessarily have to adopt industrial techniques like technology and management.

Some evidence for this assertion from the organic sector, which has seemingly fallen into foodie disfavor because organic production is largely being supplied by big companies.



[Link]

Despite complying with the rules, many food advocates are outraged at large operations providing products they imagined would come from smaller and frankly, quainter farms.

The rise in the local food movement underscores this disappointment. My own feeling is it's not really about the food characteristics - it's about the desire for an attractive and pleasantly rustic rural population to grace modern life at the convenience of non-farmers.

Yeah - and I'd like a gracious and sophisticated urban environment when I go to the city.

You can't always get what you want, folks. Deal with it.

Has "organic" jumped the shark?...

Despite fervent support and frenzied efforts, the basic concept of what "organic" means has fallen prey to food politics. Like a candidate vying for national popularity it has striven to be all things to all eaters, and has been misportrayed by proponents and critics alike.

There is, therefore, huge potential for disappointment. When you buy an organic egg you are not just buying the means to make an omelette, you are buying a dream. It is the dream of something delicious, which will simultaneously be good for your body and good for the hens and people who produced and packed it. It is the dream of being self-indulgent and virtuous at the same time – which essentially encapsulates the main yearning of our consumerist world. As Lynda Brown says: “Everybody wants an organic egg to come from a chicken that has led an idyllic life. But most people don’t actually want to pay for it.” The result is that when you look behind the dreamy label of much organic food – as with Soren the pig – you find it is not so very different from the industrial, compromised food you were trying to buy your way out of. The yolk is still pallid. The workers are still underpaid. The hens are still crowded – just a bit less than for conventionally farmed eggs. [More of a very thoughtful essay]

I still think the core of the problem with organic is non-differentiability - at the consumer level there is no test to prove any of the alleged attributes of "organic" production. Absence of residues, chemical composition, color, size, etc. - all these characteristics can be duplicated by non-organic, industrial farms. And humane production methods or harvesting techniques (slaughter) can only be witnessed to - not verified in a lab.

This simple fact leads me to suspect the "organic" label has lost cachet in the marketplace. This could be the reason for rush to "local" food. Although only slightly more verifiable, it does have one stunning aspect that I think contributes to its attraction for upscale consumers: it's hard to get and/or expensive.

I support the right of growers to market into whatever consumer niches they think will be profitable. But I still wait for any proof that whatever the consumer fancies in food production cannot be supplied cheaper and more reliably by industrial farms.

The slow rejection of rBGH use should hearten food worriers that consumers still are in the driver seat. And the rapid advance of analytical technology may yet identify characteristics in agrarian production that industrial farms cannot duplicate. Or we may invest in a certification process that will be expensive and intrusive to guarantee non-measurable qualities. (Like the Chinese are doing with kosher inspection)

But I think this isn't where the real battle to change our food will be fought. Instead it will be changing our social/family values to elevate the status of preparing food to earning sales bonuses. When eating better at home is finally recognized as source of immense joy and health protection, and our lives and values are rearranged to respect both food and its consumption, the food industry will scramble to supply the very ingredients so difficult to source today.

It makes you wonder how long...

It took before anybody noticed. Once again organic dairies (the big 'uns, of course) are being charged with selling regular old milk as organic.

The lawsuits seek class-action status on behalf of people who bought the milk and ask for their money back as well as punitive damages and attorneys' fees.

Several of the companies declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment, but Target, of Minneapolis, said it stands behind Aurora's organic milk.

"This lawsuit is inconsistent with the fact that the USDA has reviewed and confirmed the organic certification of Aurora dairy farms and its products," the company said in a statement. [More - BTW, there is an interesting comment chain on this article. People have strong feelings about food.]

Other reports about this news include the more salient facts, I think.

Organic milk is one of the fastest-growing segments in the already fast-growing organic market. U.S. retail sales of organic dairy products totaled $2.14 billion in 2005, the most recent data available, up from 24 percent in 2004, according to the Organic Trade Association. JP Morgan predicts that the organic dairy sector will post sales of $3.5 billion by 2010. [More]

As I see it, the growth of the organic market will continue to make it an alluring target for litigation. Add in the nebulous regulation and non-differentiability of the stuff (you can't take a sample at the store and say it's organic or not) and this possible profit center begins to look less and less attractive.

It is curious too, we haven't been reading about widespread reactions, diseases, allergies, plagues, etc. among the consumers who have been drinking the perhaps not-too-organic milk for some time now.

Still, big names like Safeway means the possibility of big settlements. I have seen no evidence of efforts to double-check smaller operations. The presumption of the right appearance (quaintness) as proof of ethereal qualities like organic is strong.

A large scale organic market may never be realized here simply because this market debate is about large scale, not organic.

A battle we don't need...

Once I did the math, I realized the agrarian movement not only is not a competitor, it actually complements my industrial farm. As organic farms - or any other agrarian category - flourish, it suddenly becomes obvious to all that such producers can only fill a small portion of the food market. I'm not the only one to have this epiphany.

Can organic food feed the world? A recent study, published in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems provides new data that suggests it can. However, I have some grave reservations about this prospect that are based on my experience as a scientist and my time living and working with real farmers in developing nations.

The authors of this study assume the major stumbling blocks to organic farming feeding the world are low crop yields and insufficient quantities of approved organic fertilisers. However, I have lived and worked in Bangladesh – as a professor of Cornell University, covering agricultural research and development – for the last 25 years, and I believe that even if these problems could be surmounted, using organic farming to feed the developing world remains a pipe dream. [More]

This should not be taken as dismissive of consumers who make choices for agrarian foods. Heck - Jan prefers some organic ingredients when it's more convenient or occasionally when it's the only choice. (I didn't actually know that - I just asked her now).

But behind the agrarian movement too often is a poorly disguised wistfulness for an imagined past that we could recreate if we only wished hard enough. The aversion to technology associated with agrarianism also means detailed economic analysis of its constraints tends to fall on deaf ears. Still, it is no justification to oppose the expansion of agrarian farms where they fit or to consider them a long-term threat to industrial agriculture.

Our main competitors in industrial ag are 1) each other and 2) other guys just like us all over the world. Any forward-thinking producer figures this out pretty fast or misses the cut one spring.

Closer to an answer...

Researchers are increasingly confident that IAPV (Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus) is a key indicator, if not the actual cause of Colony Collapse Disorder.

The Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health announced a study linking CCD to Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus. I haven’t found a link to the study itself, which is published in the journal Science, but ScienceDaily has published a summery. The authors of the study claim that the presence of IAPV predicts CCD in a colony with 96% accuracy. In other words, if someone selected a honey bee colony in the US and all they told you about it was whether or not it had IAPV, not how big it was, where it was, what kinds of bees they were, you tell them if it had collapsed or not. If you did this 1000 times and had average luck, you’d be right 960 times.

But we don’t know if it actually causes CCD

That kind of accuracy is pretty amazing and makes IAPV a “significant marker” for CCD, but it doesn’t mean that it causes CCD. It might even be the other way around; CCD weakens a colony that was otherwise able to fend off IAPV, allowing the virus to infect the colony. Or something else causes both CCD and facilitates an IAPV infection. [More]

But here is where it slides into ideological carping. Organic beekeepers would really like an answer that show current commercial beekeeping practices to be at fault which would in essence force the industry round to their way of thinking, and not coincidentally, buttress the entire organic philosophy (which is having a hard time finding evidence of their more extravagant claims).

The next-to-last thing they want to see is a solution involving more advanced science, such as a counter agent for IAPV of some sort that neatly ends the problem. Organic advocates want "process" to be the solution.

Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry. And, have we here a solution to the vanishing bee problem? Is it one that the CCD Working Group, or indeed, the scientific world at large, will support? Will media coverage affect government action in dealing with this issue?

These are important questions to ask. It is not an uncommonly held opinion that, although this new pattern of bee colony collapse seems to have struck from out of the blue (which suggests a triggering agent), it is likely that some biological limit in the bees has been crossed. There is no shortage of evidence that we have been fast approaching this limit for some time. [More]

They could well be right. A combination of stressors and weakened immune systems is high on the list of causes.

But science gets done badly if we decide the answer before we do the experiment. And my guess is we could see a decidedly non-organic solution to this problem.

Not pretty...

While I have been willing to allow the market to decide whether organic food is a good idea or not, I have never been persuaded it is better in any way than conventional food. Well, it turns out I am a virtual weeny in this debate. Peruse this anti-organic broadside in the Australian science magazine Cosmos:

THE SURPRISING FACT IS that this mass migration to organic food has not been on the back of scientific evidence. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find comprehensive evidence that organic food is healthier – either for us or the planet. Nevertheless, in the public consciousness, organic farming is unquestioningly bundled with the reigning moral imperatives of sustainability, protecting the environment and reducing greenhouse gases.

If you don't want to read the whole article, it is well (and equally brutally) summarized here, by Ron Bailey at Reason.

I didn't realize I was being so even-handed in my questioning of organic.

The new farming frontier...

The organic advantage - how big is it? Or does it exist at all? In this week's Time, the inescapable Dr. Sanjay Gupta offers some remarkably reasonable comments about eating organic.

The evidence of nutritional advantages is almost as thin. Never mind the idea that organically grown foods fairly burst with vitamins that modern farming techniques drain out of crops. To date most studies have either shown no difference between organic and conventional produce or found very small pluses in the organic column, such as slightly higher levels of vitamin C or other antioxidants. [More]

Such advice is now common, as scientists and science reporters adhere to the scientific method that has carried us to the level of abundance we now enjoy. Nonetheless, the organic sector is growing vigorously thanks to consumer preferences and I for one welcome it.

Organic production is part of a bustling agrarian sector of agriculture that delivers a process (free-range, organic, grass-fed, cage-free, etc.) with a product (meat, eggs, etc.) is a legitimate market response to consumer demand. Farmers have no inherent right to say what the eating public should have to buy.

The agrarian sector, like all emerging industries does have some regrettable baggage. Extravagant claims of non-existent nutritional advantages, for example:

On the question of grain- versus grass-fed cows, some suggest that pasture-fed cows may produce milk that contains more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a special type of fat that may protect against cancer and other health problems. But Michael Pariza, professor of food microbiology and toxicology at the University of Wisconsin, and a leading expert on CLA in dairy products, says grass feeding by itself does not assure increased CLA. He and Bauman both note that cows fed mixed grains with soybeans or other additions can produce milk that has higher CLA levels than milk from grass-fed cows. This may lead you to spend less on milk and more on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish and other healthful foods. [More]

Agrarians have also found a way to tap into the strong animal welfare feelings that I think are overlapping our enormous pet industry. One of the latest battles is for cage-free eggs.

The eggs, from chickens raised in large, open barns instead of stacks of small wire cages, have become the latest addition to menus at universities, hotel chains like Omni and cafeterias at companies like Google. The Whole Foods supermarket chain sells nothing else, and even Burger King is getting in on the trend.

All that demand has meant a rush on cage-free eggs and headaches in corporate kitchens as big buyers learn there may not be enough to go around. [More]

Industrial producers like myself have been trying to write off these developments as consumer fads, but I think they are woven into the cultural shifts made possible by abundance and the differences in values of Boomers and succeeding generations. We also have struggles with a larger issue: agrarians are boldly snatching our outdated "family farm" image which we flog in the halls of Congress to attract subsidy support.

The growing divide between agrarian and industrial producers no longer alarms me. In fact, heated opposition to the agrarian movement is the last thing industrial ag should be spending time on. The market is sorting this one out as we speak.

Besides, the agrarian sector is an appropriate answer for the handful of products that lend themselves to selling the process - seasonal fruit/vegetables, large-purchase (halves, for example) meats, etc. It is also a good answer for ag topography that does not lend itself to large scale production, such as rolling/wooded terrain or near urban areas.

We have seen new business models emerge over the last decade for dozens of industries including travel, advertising, and publishing—all relying heavily on technology-based improvements in productivity and changes in distribution associated with the Internet.

Now we may be seeing the emergence of a new business model for small farms, which have lagged the transformation of other industries and continued to rely heavily on commodity pricing and middlemen distributors.

At the forefront of this revolution is the 10-employee, $700,000-a-year Polyface Farm, a 550-acre producer of beef, chickens, and pork in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. A family farm run by its second generation owner, Joel Salatin, Polyface is thriving thanks to a combination of innovative use of technology to encourage livestock mobility, and streamlined distribution to bypass middlemen and instead sell products directly to consumers. [More]

This new business model also is labor intensive while industrial ag is shedding jobs via technology. For young people aspiring to a rural lifestyle the agrarian model seems more realistic than hoping to rent 1100 acres someday away from guys like me.

And as for the concern that agrarian producers could hijack our farm payments - I think industrial ag has put that idea to rest. When agrarians can't get Reps. Pelosi or Sen. Feinstein to support them, it indicates they got nothin'.

The scary part is agrarians may learn to succeed despite government, not because of it. Now those will be competitors!

Ethanol and organic...

Despite claims to the contrary, rising corn prices - which have been loudly ascribed to ethanol production - do raise food prices eventually. Ask the meat industry. Or dairy. [And stop trotting out the corn flakes.]

The rising food costs fueled by ethanol demand are also affecting U.S. consumers. "All things that use corn are going to have higher prices and higher cost, to some extent, that will be passed on to consumers," says Wally Tyner, professor of agriculture economics at Purdue University. The impact of this is being felt first in animal feed, particularly poultry and pork. Poultry feed is about two-thirds corn; as a result, the cost to produce poultry--both meat and eggs--has already risen about 15 percent due to corn prices, says Tyner. Also expect corn syrup--used in soft drinks--to get more expensive, he says. [More]

So, what will food inflation mean for the nascent agrarian (organic, local, free-range, etc.) food industry and the premiums they need for profitability?

One speaker in particular championed this concept, suggesting that the opportunities for premiumisation were almost limitless. Now don't get me wrong, I am well aware that the likes of Whole Foods and Tesco and brands like Rachel’s Organic and Green & Black’s have successfully travelled down this road in recent years. But something about his unqualified optimism didn't sit well.

I realised it was my own shopping habits that were causing my doubts. Increased inflation and rising interest rates here in the UK have without doubt blunted my own personal spending power, causing me to think twice before I drop the premium sausages into the basket, or reach for organic salad, rather than standard products.

The question must be asked then, how does this theory of unlimited premiumisation sit if we enter a sustained period of economic recession? In the UK and US, this question has been largely academic in recent years. [More]

As Dean Best points out, the answer depends on how the economy fares, or at least the personal economies of those who are likely to favor agrarian food - i.e. the well-to-do.

So far that group is doing very well, thank you. But their numbers may have trouble growing, since the bulk of income growth in the US seems to wind up with the already wealthy. And should recession loom, that tiny group of consumers won't be swelling, I'd bet.

Agrarian producers have more at stake in the fiscal decisions of the government than the farm bill, I think. I mean, it's not like they are getting much government help now, and agrarian production is growing. What this sector has to fear is 1) continued income gain concentration and 2) slow or negative GDP growth.

Those wacky foodies...

Of all the burning issues to take a stand on, our (yes, you're responsible for it) government is pushing back against the the Whole Foods-Wild Oats merger.

The background: We're in the midst of a merger mania, and the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department's antitrust division—the agencies tasked with assuring that mergers don't harm consumers by reducing competition—have approved almost every deal. If the nation's largest hog producer buys the second-largest hog producer? OK. Telecommunications giants SBC and AT&T want to merge? No problem. Giant supermarket company Albertson's and giant supermarket company SuperValu get together? You got it.

But when Whole Foods, the extremely successful, bobo-friendly, high-end, blue-state organic grocery chain and Wild Oats, the less successful, bobo-friendly, high-end, blue-state organic grocery chain, say they want to merge, the answer is no. This week, the FTC sued to stop this puny ($670 million) merger, saying the planned deal would "eliminate[e] the substantial competition between these two uniquely close competitors in numerous markets nationwide in the operation of premium natural and organic supermarkets" and result in higher prices and less consumer choice. [More]

Color me surprised. I didn't think any merger would rouse this administration to anti-trust action. This is a pretty small beachhead to take a stand on and have any legal/historical impact, IMHO. Organic consumption is still a tiny fraction of food sales, regardless of the press it receives.

Meanwhile, the organic soothsayers are parsing the morality of various forms of preservation for apples.

Currently, organic apples that go into storage are refrigerated at 0 °C (32 °F) under low oxygen conditions. The reduced oxygen content is maintained by a constant flow of low-grade nitrogen, the researchers explained in the paper. (The use of nitrogen and the manipulation of oxygen levels are not considered violations of organic growing principles because the storage environment, rather than the produce itself, is affected.) The refrigeration process is so expensive to maintain that most organic orchards have their fruit turned into apple butter, juice, and sauce rather than put into cold storage. As a result, few organic apples are available past the harvest months, driving up the price of the fruit. [More]

I don't know. Smells like science to me. This type of deep pondering over whether a specific technology is appropriate or not - similar to Amish rule making - is difficult for an engineer like me to embrace.

The war against technology and science may never end. But in the meantime, we progress.

There is room for us inorganic, unnatural, remote growers too...

One aspect of the enormous wealth we have and generate in the First World is the ability to underwrite a vast array of arbitrary choices. You can drive a car of any color, for example, unlike the Model T. You can choose housing from an often bewildering range of styles and sizes.

And you can choose food for whatever reason you wish. The latest issue of The Economist has a brilliant article summarizing this trend:

HAS the supermarket trolley dethroned the ballot box? Voter turnout in most developed countries has fallen in recent decades, but sales of organic, Fairtrade and local food—each with its own political agenda—are growing fast. Such food allows shoppers to express their political opinions, from concern for the environment to support for poor farmers, every time they buy groceries. And shoppers are jumping at the opportunity, says Marion Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University and the author of “Food Politics” (2002) and “What to Eat” (2006). “What I hear as I talk to people is this phenomenal sense of despair about their inability to do anything about climate change, or the disparity between rich and poor,” she says. “But when they go into a grocery store they can do something—they can make decisions about what they are buying and send a very clear message.”

Although I neither buy nor grow these specialty items, I welcome their addition to the grocery shelves. The choice of food ideology is no less sacrosanct than reproductive ideology or scientific ideology.

Results, as they say, may vary:

What should a shopper do? All food choices involve trade-offs. Even if organic farming does consume a little less energy and produce a little less pollution, that must be offset against lower yields and greater land use. Fairtrade food may help some poor farmers, but may also harm others; and even if local food reduces transport emissions, it also reduces potential for economic development. Buying all three types of food can be seen as an anti-corporate protest, yet big companies already sell organic and Fairtrade food, and local sourcing coupled with supermarkets' efficient logistics may yet prove to be the greenest way to move food around.

Adherents however may be surprised by the consequences of their success. Our present food system evolved to satisfy the same goals they espouse, by people just like us making rational decisions. And as I have mentioned before, at some point somebody has to start doing the math and realizing what a staggering achievement it is to provide almost every conceivable foodstuff almost everywhere at comparatively low prices.

Our food system ain't broke. It's just not cute enough for some.

The problem of imaginary properties...

The organic issue gets more difficult even as it get more popular. Because organic is about how things are produced and not about the product itself, the rush to secure the market premium for organic food is becoming the realm of lawyers and regulators who can discuss with straight face how many organic angels can dance on the head of an organic pin.

Today's example is organic fish, which my counterpart at AgDay - host Scott Kinrade - has his shorts in a knot over. While it strikes him as absurd, he is young and not wise to the ways of the organic world, where perception is everything, and objective measurement is scorned.

At the moment, there is no federal standard for labeling fish as
"organic." While cows, pigs, chickens and all sorts of other animals can
easily meet existing standards by being fed specific types of food and not
getting any hormones or antibiotics added to them, fish are much harder to pin
down. Part of the problem lies in the fact that many fish are carnivorous and
because there are currently no organic fish, they cannot eat organic feed.
Additionally, to ensure that fish are only eating organically, which is not a
problem for herbivorous fish, they must be supervised and receive specific feed.
If fish have to be supervised to get the "organic" designation, that means that
wild fish will not qualify, which is a sticking point for those who actually
fish wild fish.

He is not the only observer puzzled by the bizarre nature of non-organic nature. Fear not - I shall counsel the young Jedi.

Where the organic definition gets truly theological is in prepared foods. How about organic salad dressing? Or organic macaroni and cheese?

Personally, I would prefer some preservatives in foods that hang around in my refrigerator for a few weeks, but those whose lives are diminished by the presence of extremely low risk materials in their food now have a choice.

I have no beef with organic buyers or producers. I also have no argument with folks who wear those magnetic bracelets to relieve pain until they tell me they are for real. Then I need to see some data - not anecdotes.

Pass the preservatives, please.

Rose is a rose is a pork chop...

The ongoing strategy to creatively label products to convey some imperceptible quality in order to appeal to consumers is being worked to extremes with food.

Animal welfare is clearly a hot topic in the supermarket these days, as anyone can see just by taking a look at all the different types of labels and certifications that are meant to convince us that the animals we are eating led full, happy lives before they became dinner. The current list includes labels such as "free farmed," "certified humane," "cage free" and "free range," among others. Whole Foods is adding a new term to this group: animal compassionate. [More]

Now throw in the grass-fed/organic/free range stickers and the whole system is in danger of becoming perfectly obscure. The underlying reason: the products (meat, vegetables, etc.) are non-differentiable - you cannot take two competing products and test them and say which is which.

This will certainly be the case for the next technological "horror": cloned livestock. Despite the hopes of specialty producers, this fact sooner or later dawns on most buyers.

Not coincidentally, it also occurs to many producers who are tempted to falsify claims, since you essentially take their word for it.

To be sure, if the commerce is also coupled with an experience like a farm visit, or a farmer's market that adds some entertainment or social value, it becomes unique and can command a premium. But if it is simply sitting in a display case, this facade is hard to buy over time.

Certainly Whole Foods is finding the market more challenging than it appeared just a few months ago.

Whole Foods has enjoyed a great run as health-conscious shoppers paid premium prices for its fancy and organic produce. But analysts have warned that a slowdown in con-sumer spending and tougher competition from mainstream grocery stores could squeeze Whole Foods profits.

We do not know how large this segment of the food market can become. But it appears that in their desperation to offer food with ethereal, even spiritual qualities they may be drifting off the market radar.