Bring on the braised greens! Soul food—healthy, sustainable, soul food—has arrived, thanks to chef and cookbook author Bryant Terry.

By Elizabeth Castoria

Need a little extra help to secure that sought-after date? Let the, er, experts at VegNews show you how it's done.

1. If I said you had the body of an all-natural, organic-living, animal-loving, environment-nurturing, whale-saving sex machine, would you hold it against me? Please?

2. May I take your picture? It’s for the World’s Sexiest Vegetarian competition.

3. Could you help me out? I’m trying to decide if I want to keep these new hemp sheets, but I need a second opinion.

4. Your organic cotton t-shirt looks really soft. Can I feel it?

5. Wanna come up and see my Vitamix?

6. What’s your favorite thing to do with agave nectar?

7. Do you like my new skirt? I love pleather but it makes me all hot and sweaty.

8. Mmmmm. I could really go for a hot veggie dog right about now.

9. I’ll eat Hip Whip on anything.

10. How do you get your protein?

Change your lightbulbs? Or your car? If you want to fight global warming, it’s time to consider a different diet.
By Mike Tidwell/Photography by Catherine Ledner


Full disclosure: I love to eat meat. I was born in Memphis, the barbecue capital of the Milky Way Galaxy. I worship slow-cooked, hickory-smoked pig meat served on a bun with extra sauce and coleslaw spooned on top.

My carnivore’s lust goes beyond the DNA level. It’s in my soul. Even the cruelty of factory farming doesn’t temper my desire, I’ll admit. Like most Americans, I can somehow keep at bay all thoughts of what happened to the meat prior to the plate.

So why in the world am I a dedicated vegetarian? Why is meat, including sumptuous pork, a complete stranger to my fork at home and away? The answer is simple: I have an 11-year-old son whose future—like yours and mine—is rapidly unraveling due to global warming. And what we put on our plates can directly accelerate or decelerate the heating trend.

That giant chunk of an Antarctic ice sheet, the one that disintegrated in a matter of hours, the one the size of seven Manhattans—did you hear about it? It shattered barely a year ago “like a hammer on glass,” scientists say, and is now melting away in the Southern Ocean. This is just a preview, of course, of the sort of ecological collapse coming everywhere on earth, experts say, unless we hit the brakes soon on climate change. If the entire West Antarctic ice sheet melts, for example, global sea-level rise could reach 20 feet.

Since the twin phenomena of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Gore, most Americans have a basic literacy on the issue of climate change. It’s getting worse, we know, and greenhouse gases—emitted when we burn fossil fuels—are driving it. Less accepted, it seems, is the role food—specifically our consumption of meat—is playing in this matter. The typical American diet now weighs in at more than 3,700 calories per day, reports the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, and is dominated by meat and animal products. As a result, what we put in our mouths now ranks up there with our driving habits and our use of coal-fired electricity in terms of how it affects climate change.

Simply put, raising beef, pigs, sheep, chicken, and eggs is very, very energy intensive. More than half of all the grains grown in America actually go to feed animals, not people, says the World Resources Institute. That means a huge fraction of the petroleum-based herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers applied to grains, plus staggering percentages of all agricultural land and water use, are put in the service of livestock. Stop eating animals and you use dramatically less fossil fuels, as much as 250 gallons less oil per year for vegans, says Cornell University’s David Pimentel, and 160 gallons less for egg-and-cheese-eating vegetarians.



But fossil fuel combustion is just part of the climate–diet equation. Ruminants—cows and sheep—generate a powerful greenhouse gas through their normal digestive processes (think burping and emissions at the other end). What comes out is methane (23 times more powerful at trapping heat than CO2) and nitrous oxide (296 times more powerful).

Indeed, accounting for all factors, livestock production worldwide is responsible for a whopping 18 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gases, reports the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. That’s more than the emissions of all the world’s cars, buses, planes, and trains combined.

So why do we so rarely talk about meat consumption when discussing global warming in America? Compact fluorescent bulbs? Biking to work? Buying wind power? We hear it nonstop. But even the super-liberal, Prius-driving, Green Party activist in America typically eats chicken wings and morning bacon like everyone else. While the climate impacts of meat consumption might be new to many people, the knowledge of meat’s general ecological harm is not at all novel. So what gives?

Roughly three percent of all Americans are vegetarians, according to the Vegetarian Resource Group, a nonprofit that educates people on the benefits of a meat-free diet. Part of the reason, I know, is the unfortunate belief that vegetarianism is a really tough lifestyle change, much harder than simply changing bulbs or buying a better car. But as a meat lover at heart, I’ve been a vegetarian (no fish, minimal eggs and cheese) for seven years, and trust me: It’s easy, satisfying, and of course super healthy. With the advent of savory tofu, faux meats, and the explosion of local farmers’ markets, a life without meat is many times easier today than when Ovid and Thoreau and Gandhi and Einstein did it. True, many meat substitutes are made from soybeans, a monocrop with its own environmental issues. But most soy production today is actually devoted to livestock feed. Only 1 percent of U.S. soybeans become tofu, for example.

One day I get carryout veggie Pad Thai. The next I cook stir-fried veggies at home with soy-based sausage patties so good they fool even the most discriminating meat connoisseurs. Bottom line: Of the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my life, vegetarianism doesn’t even make the chart.

Some folks, I realize, have a deep-down, gut-level (so to speak) reaction to vegetarianism as “unnatural.” We humans have canine teeth, after all. We evolved to include meat in our diets. To abandon such food is to break thousands of years of tradition and, in some cases, ritual behavior bordering on the sacred.

All true. But we also evolved as people who defecated indiscriminately in the woods and who didn’t brush our teeth. Somehow we’ve moved to a higher level on those counts. Now, with potentially catastrophic climate change hovering around the corner and with our briskets and London broil helping to drive the process, it’s time to evolve some more.

A compromise in recent years, of course, has been the idea of animals raised locally and organically. Becoming a “locavore” who eats regional fruits and vegetables in season as much as possible makes abundant sense, of course. And animals from your area can lower the environmental impacts of your diet in many ways while simultaneously saving cherished local farmland and progressive farm families.

But with global warming, here’s the inconvenient truth about meat and dairy products: If you eat them, regardless of their origin and how they were produced, you significantly contribute to climate change. Period. If your beef is from New Zealand or your own backyard, if your lamb is organic free-range or factory farmed, it still has a negative impact on global warming.

This is true for several reasons. Again, the biological reality of ruminant digestion is that methane is released. The feed can be local and organic, but the methane is the same, escaping into the atmosphere and trapping heat with impressive efficiency. Second, no matter the farming method, livestock makes manure that produces nitrous oxide, an even more awesomely impressive heat trapper. Livestock in the United States generates a billion tons of manure per year, accounting for 65 percent of the planet’s anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions.

Even poultry, while less harmful, also contributes. Ironically, data released in 2007 by Adrian Williams of Cranfield University in England show that when all factors are considered, organic, free-range chickens have a 20 percent greater impact on global warming than conventionally raised broiler birds. That’s because “sustainable” chickens take longer to raise, and eat more feed. Worse, organic eggs have a 14 percent higher impact on the climate than eggs from caged chickens, according to Williams.

“If we want to fight global warming through the food we buy, then one thing’s clear: We have to drastically reduce the meat we consume,” says Tara Garnett of London’s Food Climate Research Network.

So while some of us Americans fashionably fret over our food’s travel budget and organic content, Garnett says the real question is, “Did it come from an animal or did it not come from an animal?”



Which brings us back to vegetarianism and why I live a meat-free life. The facts speak for themselves. If we really want to fight climate change, we should change our lightbulbs and purchase hybrid cars and, above all, vote for politicians committed to a clean energy future. But we should also eat less meat, a lot less, or none at all.

I believe consumer habits are starting to change similarly to the way they’ve shifted with compact fluorescent bulbs. Ten years ago people complained about the harsh quality of light from fluorescents and the hassle of switching them out. But the bulbs are now made to produce a much warmer quality of light and the price has come down. What’s more, in seven years of using only CFLs at my home, I’ve never had a guest make a single comment.

In the near future, as we increasingly discuss the climate “facts” of meat consumption, and as veggie cuisine gets still easier at home and at restaurants, we’ll see more and more people changing their diets in the same way they’re switching to CFLs in droves now. Of this I’m sure.

But when it comes to food, the facts are not enough for many people. Of this I’m also sure. A holistic nutritionist in my neighborhood says one’s ideas about food reside in the same part of the brain that houses our ideas and beliefs about religion. It’s not all rational, in other words. Facts abound about the harm of fatty, sugary foods, yet the obesity epidemic grows. And I can’t count the number of environmental conferences I’ve attended where meat was served in abundance. Even Michael Pollan’s 2006 bestseller The Omnivore’s Dilemma, wherein he dissects with encyclopedic thoroughness the eco-hazards and animal cruelty issues surrounding meat and egg production—even this book astonishingly mentions the words global warming only two times and climate change not at all. In 464 pages. That’s highly unreasonable, in my view.

All of which is to say that for people to care, the climate–food discussion must be about more than just facts, more than pounds of greenhouse gases per units of food. It’s got to be about morality, about right versus wrong. And I don’t mean the usual morality of environmental “stewardship.” Or even the issue of cruelty to farm animals. I’m talking here about cruelty to people, about the explicit harm to humans that results from meat consumption and its role as a driving force in climate change. Knowingly eating food that makes you fat or harms your local fish and birds is one thing. Knowingly eating food that makes children across much of the world hungry is another.

I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the mid-1980s, living in a tiny rural village where the staple crop was hand-tilled corn. It was harvested twice a year, in May and December. This meant the two annual “rainy seasons” had to begin right on time, in January and September, and continue for several months afterward. Any deviation from this rainfall pattern virtually guaranteed a lower corn harvest. And given the total absence of grocery stores, community granaries, or the money to buy extra food even if it existed, this meant hunger.

A signature impact of global warming, of course, is a dramatic shift in precipitation patterns worldwide, including longer and more severe droughts as well as extreme rainstorms and flooding in non-drought areas. Many scientists believe these impacts are already being felt by farmers worldwide and could spell future disaster, especially for subsistence farmers like those I lived with in Africa. Global wheat prices have jumped about 100 percent in the past year in part because a record drought in Australia—made worse by global warming—has devastated farmers across the continent. Food production in China alone could drop 10 percent as early as 2030, United Nations scientists warn.



The people I lived with in Africa contribute almost nothing to the problem of global warming, through their diet or otherwise. Coal-fired electricity versus wind power? They don’t have electricity. SUVs versus hybrid cars? They don’t have cars—none at all, or roads for that matter. And meat consumption? Tiny, tiny portions maybe twice a week.

If we in the West don’t alter course in the coming years, if we allow extreme global warming to become reality, an impact on the U.S. diet could very well be a great reduction in the amount of meat on our tables—a reduction imposed on us by nature instead of achieved by us through enlightened lifestyle changes. The wide and guaranteed availability of agriculturally productive land may simply cease. The crop yields we see now could shrink significantly, thanks to everything from weird weather to pest invasions. But it’s a safe guess to say we’ll have space for a national diet of plant-based foods (some crops are expected to benefit from global warming), just not the option of consuming all those animals.

But in the Congo and other poor countries, in places like Bangladesh and Peru and Vietnam, where meat consumption is already low, severe climate change means food off the table. It means hungry children. It means the rains don’t come on time or at all in tiny villages like the one I lived in. It means, in the end, cruelty to people.

Are we clear now on the raw facts and urgent morality of our present meat consumption in America?

We need much more than just a few magazine readers to voluntarily stop eating meat, of course. It’s a good start, but what we really need are national policies that encourage lower meat consumption by everyone. This could be achieved using fees or other market mechanisms that properly price greenhouse-gas emissions according to the harm they cause. The bad news, I suppose, is that the cost of meat could rise. The good news is we would finally have a fair and honest way to judge its danger, and thus more incentives to do the right thing, more incentives to switch to a healthy and convenient vegetarian diet of the sort I’ve joyfully embraced for years, despite my great appreciation for the taste of meat.

We could also, as a nation, just eat a lot less meat as an alternative to full vegetarianism. Anthony McMichael, a leading Australia-based expert on climate change and health issues, has crunched the numbers. He estimates that per capita daily meat consumption would need to drop from about 12 ounces per day in America to 3.1 ounces (with less than half of it red meat) in order to protect the climate.

I suppose I could measure out 3.1 ounces of meat per day, cook it, eat it, and still feel morally okay. But frankly I’d rather just go without. I’d rather be a vegetarian. It’s easier to explain. It’s easier to defend. And I just plain like it.



Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, is the author of The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities (Free Press).

A Guide to Living Life with Energy, Health, Vitality and Herbs

"If herbs weren't effective medicine, wouldn't a species intelligent enough to put a man on the moon have discarded them a long time ago?" - Rosemary Gladstar

Rosemary Gladstar's complete, holistic approach to well-being through herbal remedies, promotes energy, health and vitality at every stage of life. She focuses on the simple things in life - eating well, exercising, sleeping soundly, and using herbs every day.

Boost your immune system, soothe your tired eyes, moisturize your skin, or go to sleep easily - whatever you need, Rosemary Gladstar's simple, time tested, effective herbal remedies work. Her herbal apothecary is an A - Z guide to herbs, their characteristics and uses, along with safety precautions, dosage information, and when to seek medical advice.

This indipensible family herbal reference is a compilation of all the slim volumes on herbal healing published over the years by Rosemary Gladstar. By the way, this isn't one of those books you can pick up used on ebay (maybe rarely). People who own this book don't let it out of their sight! It's worth every penny of the full, new, retail price - in fact, it's one of the best bargains around.

Rosemary Gladstar has dedicated her life to the pursuit and practice of herbal knowledge, which she gives generously to others in her Family Herbal. In her own words, "What I know about herbs is shared information, passed down to me sometimes from people I know well and often from people who lived hundreds of years before me. It is our collective treasury, our birthright, and it is meant to be freely shared"

After you read Family Herbal, you'll naturally want to stock up on supplies to make your own herbal potions. Two of the best places to find them online are:
Frontier Herbs
Mountain Rose Herbs

Judith Kingsbury, Savvy Vegetarian

Savvy Vegetarian

Support For Your Vegetarian or Vegan Diet & Lifestyle

Vegetarian Cooking, Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes, Savvy Vegetarian Advice, Vegetarian Blog, Articles, Reports, and Resources

Savvy Veg Is For Everyone - long-time vegetarians and vegans, transitional vegetarians, or just thinking about going vegetarian.

No matter where you are in the vegetarian universe, you can be happy, healthy - and green

It's True! If more of us went vegetarian, our planet would be happier, healthier, and greener faster.

Fact Is: Any step in a vegetarian direction is good for you, and every living thing on the planet!

The Truth About Essential Fatty Acid Deficiency

Reply to Ray Peat on Essential Fatty Acid Deficiency

Ray Peat, PhD, is an influential health writer who claims that there is no such thing as essential fatty acid (EFA) deficiency. According to Peat, the body can make its own EFAs; furthermore, he claims that EFAs in the body become rancid and therefore cause cancer.

Unfortunately, Peat does not understand the use of EFA by the human body. He is trained in hormone therapy and his training in fats and oils has been limited to misinformation as far as the polyunsaturated fats and oils are concerned.

Research on EFAs is voluminous and consistent: EFAs are types of fatty acids that the body cannot make, but must obtain from food. We do not make them because they exist in virtually all foods, and the body needs them only in small amounts. The body does make saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids because it needs these in large amounts and cannot count on getting all it needs from food.

There are two types of EFAs, those of the omega-6 family and those of the omega-3 family. The basic omega-6 fatty acid is called linoleic acid and it contains two double bonds. It is found in virtually all foods, but especially in nuts and seeds. The basic omega-3 fatty acid is called linolenic acid and it contains three double bonds. It is found in some grains (such as wheat) and nuts (such as walnuts) as well as in eggs, organ meats and fish if these animals are raised naturally, and in green vegetables if the plants are raised organically.

Essential fatty acids have two principal roles. The first is as a constituent of the cell membrane. Each cell in the body is surrounded by a membrane composed of billions of fatty acids. About half of these fatty acids are saturated or monounsaturated to provide stability to the membrane. The other half are polyunsaturated, mostly EFAs , which provide flexibility and participate in a number of biochemical processes. The other vital role for EFAs is as a precursor for prostaglandins or local tissue hormones, which control different physiological functions including inflammation and blood clotting.

Scientists have induced EFA deficiency in animals by feeding them fully hydrogenated coconut oil as their only fat. (Full hydrogenation gets rid of all the EFAs; coconut oil is used because it is the only fat that can be fully hydrogenated and still be soft enough to eat.) The animals developed dry coats and skin and slowly declined in health, dying prematurely. (Interestingly, representatives of the vegetable oil industry blame the health problems on coconut oil, not on fatty acid deficiency!)

In a situation of fatty acid deficiency, the body tries to compensate by producing a fatty acid called Mead acid out of the monounsaturated oleic acid. It is a 20-carbon fatty acid with three double bonds named after James Mead, a lipids researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles who first identified it. An elevated level of Mead acid in the body is a marker of EFA deficiency.

According to Peat, elevated levels of Mead acid constitute proof that your body can make EFAs. However, the Mead acid acts as a “filler” fatty acid that cannot serve the functions that the original EFA are needed for. Peat claims that Mead acid has a full spectrum of protective anti-inflammatory effects; however, the body cannot convert Mead acid into the elongated fatty acids that the body needs for making the various anti-inflammatory prostaglandins.

Peat also asserts that polyunsaturated fatty acids become rancid in our bodies. This is not true; the polyunsaturated fatty acids in our cell membranes go through different stages of controlled oxidation. To say that these fatty acids become “rancid” is misleading. Of course, EFAs can become rancid through high temperature processing and it is not healthy to consume these types of fats. But the EFAs that we take in through fresh, unprocessed food are not rancid and do not become rancid in the body. In small amounts, they are essential for good health. In large amounts, they can pose health problems which is why we need to avoid all the commercial vegetable oils containing high levels of polyunsaturates.

Peat’s reasoning has led him to claim that cod liver oil causes cancer because cod liver oil contains polyunsaturated fatty acids. Actually, the main fatty acid in cod liver oil is a monounsaturated fatty acid. The two main polyunsaturated fatty acids in cod liver oil are the elongated omega-3 fatty acids called EPA and DHA, which play many vital roles in the body and actually can help protect against cancer. Furthermore, cod liver oil is our best dietary source of vitamins A and D, which also protect us against cancer.

Actually, Peat’s argument that polyunsaturated fatty acids become harmful in the body and hence cause cancer simply does not make sense. It is impossible to avoid polyunsaturated fatty acids because they are in all foods.

EFAs are, however, harmful in large amounts and the many research papers cited by Peat showing immune problems, increased cancer and premature aging from feeding of polyunsaturates simply corroborate this fact. But Peat has taken studies indicating that large amounts of EFAs are bad for us (a now well-established fact) and used them to argue that we don’t need any at all.

Finally, it should be stressed that certain components of the diet actually reduce (but do not eliminate) our requirements for EFAs. The main one is saturated fatty acids which help us conserve EFAs and put them in the tissues where they belong. Some studies indicate that vitamin B6 can ameliorate the problems caused by EFA deficiency, possibly by helping us use them more efficiently.

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"What is the hardest task in the world? To think." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mad Cow Disease in the U.S.

An Excellent Reason To Go Vegetarian

From Organic Bytes #26 - organicconsumers.org. This collection of articles offers the most comprehensive explanation of mad cow disease, and the situation in the U.S. that I've seen in one place. Please pass this information along to your meat eating friends and relations, who most likely won't hear about it in the major media. They deserve to know, even though they may not actually want to know! - Judith Kingsbury, Savvy Vegetarian

"Universal testing of every cow slaughtered for human consumption in the U.S. is the only way to ensure the safety of the American beef supply." - Dr. Michael Greger, M.D. 12-31-03

IS MAD COW DISEASE CAUSING THOUSANDS OF HUMAN DEATHS IN THE U.S.?

Thanks to a massive marketing blitz (funded by scarce taxpayer money) the U.S. Government has been working overtime to alleviate the public's concerns about Mad Cow Disease and its human counterpart Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease (CJD). Consumers no longer know who to trust. Regardless, experts on all sides of the political spectrum agree with one basic fact: the two diseases are undeniably connected. Read the article

BREAKING NEWS: HUMAN LIFE MAY BE WORTH AS MUCH AS A NICKEL!

U.S. banned beef imports and frowned upon the UK when Mad Cow Disease related CJD began to take the lives of British citizens, recently revealed documents show little has been done to protect U.S. consumers from similar outbreaks within our own borders. In fact, internal USDA papers dating back to 1991 show that the U.S. government (and related lobbyists) have been basing food safety related decisions on corporate profit margins over human health.
Reference: Rampton, S and J. Stauber; Mad Cow USA Common Courage Press

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MILLIONS OF CONSUMERS UNITE

Last year, while the E.U. tested 10 million cattle for Mad Cow, the U.S. only tested 20,526 cows out of 35 million slaughtered. In response to this threat to food safety and consumer rights, the OCA has launched a massive campaign to pressure the USDA into creating standards that emulate those of Japan and the EU. Every day, thousands of citizens are signing on to this important petition. Help the OCA in achieving its goal of gathering over a million petition signatures, demanding that the U.S. Government adopt and enforce:
-Mandatory testing for all cattle brought to slaughter, before they enter the food chain.
-Ban the feeding of blood, manure, and slaughterhouse waste to animals.
Please forward this email to family and friends!
Sign the petition here

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Recipe for Disaster--Feeding US Calves on Cattle Blood

The Mad Cow Disease outbreak in the UK sent off global warning signals, regarding various beef industry practices that perpetuate the disease. On the top of this list was the logical push to ban feeding cows to other cows, since the disease spreads via ingestion of infected beef. Despite this, in order to maximize profit margins in the U.S., calves are regularly fed cow blood as a protein supplement. The OCA is coordinating a donation drive to post a quarter page educational ad in the Sunday Washington Post, highlighting the obvious threats of cow cannibalism to the human food supply.

EPA: FACTORY FARMS POLLUTE WITH NO RESTRICTION

Reprinted from Organic Bytes - Organic Consumers.org

This news is rather alarming, but not surprising, given the Bush administration's record on the environment:

The day after the inauguration, January 21, the Bush Administration signed an agreement that allows factory farms to freely violate any and all clean air standards for the next two years, and forgives these same companies from paying fines for past air pollution violations. In exchange for the freedom to pollute without any restrictions, the deal "requests" that factory farms agree to monitor their air pollution and provide that data to the government.

Bush's "Dirty Air" agreement is outrageous, given that the Clean Air Act already requires factory farms to provide air pollution data, while also requiring facilities to adhere to clean air standards. One of the companies that will benefit the most from this arrangement with the Bush Administration is Tyson Foods, who also happened to be one of the largest donors to the Bush inaugural festivities.

Judith Kingsbury, Savvy Vegetarian

Radiance Dairy: Ecological Organic Agriculture

By Francis Thicke, Owner of Radiance Organic Dairy in Fairfield IA

Savvy Veg: Shortly after we printed an article by Ken Roseboro about Radiance Dairy, Got Local Organic Milk?, I came across this article by Radiance Dairy farm owner Francis Thicke in Acres USA. Not very coincidentally, Ken, Francis and myself all live in Fairfield, IA, where we enjoy Radiance Dairy organic milk every day.

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Organic farming is now showing up on the radar screen of industrial agriculture, after years of being ridiculed. Of course, this is inevitable now that organic sales in the U.S. are approaching $11 billion per year. But it is a mixed bag. On the one hand, we have been haranguing conventional farmers to get off the chemical bandwagon for years.

Now that the lure of organic premiums is making some of them give it a try, we should be glad, right? Well, on the other hand, organic markets are somewhat fragile, and can easily be overwhelmed, leaving us in the same low-price trap that conventional commodity production has been in for years.

There is, however, a deeper issue here than which chemicals are used or not used on an organic farm. If we can address this deeper issue, we can protect both the integrity of organic farming and our organic markets.

Maine leads the nation with more than 10 percent of the state's dairies, 50 of 420, now producing organic milk. The nation's two largest organic dairy producers are Organic Valley, based in La Farge, Wisconsin, and Horizon Organic Dairy, based in Boulder, Colorado. Both sell milk nationally, unlike Radiance, which refuses to sell even regionally. More about that later.

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Farming By Input Substitution

Now that organic farming is coming into vogue, a whole new breed of farmers is taking up organic production. They often approach organic production as just another specialty crop. The result is an increasing emphasis on farming by "input substitution." That means substituting conventional farming inputs with inputs that are approved for organic production, rather than using an array of cultural and biological practices to build soils, control pests and grow nutritious, productive crops--as had been the tradition in organic farming.

Another approach common among farmers who see organic production as a specialty crop is farming by "neglect." That means "organic farming" using neither any inputs nor any additional cultural or biological farming practices. The result, not surprisingly, is decreasing yields and increasing weed and pest pressures. These farmers usually give up "organic" production in a few years, convinced that it doesn't work.

Is organic farming by input substitution or by neglect really organic farming? Technically, yes, by today's working definitions, but not really, by the standards of traditional organic farmers.

As an aside, it is not surprising that studies comparing the nutritional value of organic and conventionally grown food are inconclusive. Clearly, that is because a lot of "organic" food is essentially "conventionally" grown--by input substitution or neglect methods. It is not likely to be nutritionally different from conventional food because it is grown under conditions that mimic conventional production. I suspect, however, that if we were to test food grown on an organic farm that utilized generous amounts of green manure and compost in comparison with food from an NPK conventional farm, the organic food would be found to be superior in taste and nutritional value.

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Crossroads

The crossroads where we now find ourselves is whether we will allow organic farming to become wholly defined by the materials that are allowed or not allowed in production. Or, can we take organic farming to a higher level, also defining it as an ecological production system that utilizes a range of biological and cultural methods to build soils, defend against pests, and achieve our production goals. The benefits of such a system should include more nutritious food, increased biodiversity, better protection of the environment and enhancement of the natural resource base, and greater prosperity for organic farmers and for rural communities.

Some claim that the National Organic Program (NOP) has set us on a course of input substitution and industrialization of organic farming. That does not have to be the case. The NOP Final Rule defines organic production as "A production system that...integrat(es) cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity." So, clearly, the NOP holds the possibility that organic farming can and should be more than merely following a set of rules regulating which inputs can be used and which ones are outlawed. Obviously, such rules are important, but are only the starting point for defining organic agriculture.

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Consumer Perception

At this point, most organic consumers have likely not thought much about the possibility of industrialized organic food production. If anything, they probably assume that organic food is not only produced without the use of synthetic materials, but that it also is produced by family farmers in an environmentally sound manner. Indeed, consumer polls show that one of the main reasons consumers buy organic food is the perceived benefits of organic production for the environment. Can we build off that perception to make it a reality?

If not, if we allow organic production to go down the road of industrial agriculture, we will end up bankrupting our profits, environment, and rural communities as surely as conventional agriculture is accomplishing that today. The consolidated agribusiness corporations are waiting in the wings to find ways to take control of the rapidly growing organic trade, to squeeze out its profitability and send organic farmers down the road to serfdom, right behind our conventional farmer friends.

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The Real Cost Of Food

Let's compare the real cost of conventional food to the cost of food grown locally by organic methods that are ecologically sound and protect the environment. The organic food costs more at the point of purchase, if the full cost of producing the food is charged. The conventionally produced food may appear to be cheaper but really is not if you consider all the ways we pay for that "cheap" food. When you pay for conventional food in the grocery store, you are only making your first installment.

You also pay for it in taxes for the massive subsidies for conventional agriculture. You pay for it in subsidies for transporting it (the average piece of food travels 1500 to 2500 miles). You pay for it in taxes for the military to secure oil from foreign lands to make fertilizer, pesticides, and fuel. Then, you pay for it to remove the pesticides and nitrate from drinking water. You pay for it through soil erosion and resultant sediment pollution. You pay for it when massive manure spills pollute rivers and kill fish. You pay for it with the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico and in damage to estuaries and lakes. How cheap is this conventional food, really?

We should not be reluctant to charge a reasonable price for organic food--if it is more than just warmed-over conventional food produced by input substitution or neglect. We are not going to be able to make a living trying to produce organic food at a price that competes with conventional food, which is made cheap by externalizing costs of production and keeping farm.

If there is to be a future for organic family farmers, we must convince consumers that there is value and benefit to buying organic food that is produced by family farmers in an environmentally friendly manner--and produced locally if possible. We must point out to consumers how industrialized food production--both conventional and organic--externalizes production costs, which they have to pay for later.

If we do not proactively promote organic farming as a production system that is friendly to family farmers, to our natural resource base and to farm animals, organic consumers will not be able to distinguish ecologically produced organic products from those produced by industrial methods.

Worse yet, consumers will wake up one day and realize that the cows producing the milk that is in the organic milk carton--with the picture of cows grazing in a pasture--are really in a concrete confinement facility, that the organic chickens they have been buying are raised in crowded conditions without access to the outdoors, and that their organic tofu is made with soybeans that are grown under conditions that cause excessive soil erosion. Then they will question the integrity of all organic products.

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Ecological Organic Agriculture

Small and moderate-sized organic farms have an advantage over industrial-scale organic producers. It is easier for us to diversify and integrate crop and livestock systems in ways that actually enhance the natural resource base, rather than degrade it. It is easier to design a sound grazing system for 50 to100 cows than for 4000. It is easier to provide outdoor access for 500 to 1000 chickens than for 40,000. It is easier to rotate soybeans with soil-building crops on a diversified farm than on an industrial-scale farm that grows only cash row crops.

We have the opportunity now to take the definition of organic farming beyond the discussion of which inputs are acceptable and which are not. To protect the future of organic family farmers, of our natural resource base, and of our communities we should create the perception - and the reality - that organic farming is truly an ecologically based system of farming that provides all the economic, environmental, and social benefits that consumers would like to believe it does.

Francis Thicke, 2004